With great enthusiasm, I announce the upcoming Open Video Conference, slated for June 19th and 20th in New York City. PCF is co-organizing the conference along with the Yale Internet Society Project, Kaltura, iCommons, and the Open Video Alliance.
Open Video Conference
June 19-20, 2009
New York City
40 Washington Square South (NYU Law School)
We’ll have a full website up for the conference soon!
About the Conference
The conference will feature talks from internet luminaries, panels and discussions, screenings of video art, and demonstrations of the newest internet video technology. We expect more than 400 participants.
- Bring together stakeholders in the online video space (video makers, coders, lawyers, academics, entrepreneurs, etc.) for cross-pollination and development of the Open Video movement.
- Raise public interest and awareness around the Principles for an Open Video Ecosystem, a community effort to define best practices in online video.
- Raise the public profile of video creators and artists.
- Foster a narrative — why do these video artists and creators value openness? How does it affect their work?
Why is Open Video Important?
YouTube and other online video applications are rightly celebrated for empowering end-users; however, online video lacks some of the essential qualities that make text and images on the web such ubiquitous and powerful tools for free speech and technical innovation. Email, blogs, and other staples of the open web rely on ubiquitous and interoperable technologies that have low barriers to entry; they are massively decentralized and resistant to censorship or regulation. Video, meanwhile, relies on centralized distribution and proprietary technologies which can threaten cultural discourse and innovation.
Open Video is the growing movement for transparency, interoperability, and participation in online video. These qualities provide more fertile ground for bottom-up innovation and greater protection for free speech online. Many organizations are already taking steps to change the nature of video on the web: Mozilla is moving to support open video formats in Firefox, the Participatory Culture Foundation promotes open source and standards in video publishing and distribution, and Wikipedia has increased its focus on the open Theora codec.
A very important end note: Open Video is more than just having a functional open source video codec. It’s all the legal and social norms surrounding online video. It’s the ability to attach the license of your choice to videos you publish. It’s about media consolidation, aggregation, and decentralization. It’s about fair use. In short, it’s about a LOT of things, and that’s why this conference is guaranteed to be very stimulating.
