Al Jazeera puts footage online, free to use
Al Jazeera has taken the unprecedented stop of releasing for free re-use some of its broadcast-quality footage of the unrest in Egypt, the peoples revolt in Tunisia and the War on Gaza. More than 800 photographs have also been placed on Flickr, the photo-sharing site, and are available for re-use.
The station has placed its video footage and photographs under a Creative Commons licence, which allows commercial and non-commercial use, for rebroadcast or other purposes: the footage can be edited, remixed, subtitled, downloaded or shared. Attribution is required.
This is the first time that video footage produced by a news broadcaster is released under the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license, Al Jazeera said.
Al Jazeeras Creative Commons repository
Friday night in Cairo Al Jazeera footage
Friday night in Cairo Al Jazeera footage, posted with vodpod
Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation dedicated to ease copyright restrictions on intellectual property and encourage sharing.
Video news footage is an essential part of modern journalism. Providing material under a Creative Commons licence to allow commercial and amateur users to share, edit, subtitle and cite video news is an enormous contribution to the global dialogue around important events. Al Jazeera has set the example and the standard that we hope others will follow.
Joi Ito
chief executive of Creative Commons
Al Jazeera is teaching an important lesson about how free speech gets built and supported. By providing a free resource for the world, the network is encouraging wider debate, and a richer understanding.
Professor Lawrence Lessig
founder of Creative Commons
Al Jazeera photos on Flickr
More than 800 photographs are now available.
(Personal note: I do think Creative Commons has a point, but copyright is reserved on my stuff on this blog, for utterly selfish reasons. But people still steal. I guess they think its worth stealing. Some consolation, I dont think.)
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