The team at ccAustralia and the Editorial Board and team at PLATFORM: Journal of Media and Communication are very pleased to announce the publication of the “Yes, we are open!” special edition issue.
Guest edited by ccAustralia staffer Elliott Bledsoe, and former staffer Jessica Coates, this issue presents submissions by postgraduate students around the world working in media studies or related fields which critically examine the legal, social and technical parameters of open source, open content and open access.
Jess and I received a number of really interesting submission exploring the question we posed in the abstract: why open? We open the issue with an interview with Esther Wojcicki, Vice-Chair of Creative Commons, to discuss the importance of teaching ‘open’ in schools. Rachel Cobcroft follows with an reflection on the development of the international Creative Commons Case Studies initiative. Cobcroft’s piece examines the progress of open content licensing; identifies models of implementation and licensing trends across industry sectors as diverse as music, government, wikis and fashion; and, perhaps most importantly, explores individual motivations for the adoption of open philosophies.
Cheryl Foong drills down into some of those motivations. Her article asks the question can open philosophies go hand in hand with commercial gain? Drawing on examples of adoption of Creative Commons licensing by content creators and intermediaries, Foong concludes that, if used wisely, the open licensing scheme can be a useful tool for those creators who wish to circumvent traditional distribution channels.
Following, Alexandra Crosby and Ferdiansyah Thajib explore notions of openness through the lens of video activism in Indonesia. They argue that in a world where attribution is the new currency open licensing is an improvement on the models, but there is not yet a solution for the problems of copyright management that fits the Indonesian context.
The final paper by Peter Jakobsson examines the relationship between the growing trend, and rhetoric, of cooperation on the ‘social web’ and the often undervalued importance of competition in the same field. In doing so, he argues that both competition and collaboration are not only valuable but central to the new forms and platforms of cultural production.
Please take a look at the issue here.
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