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January 26, 2005

Digital Civil Disobedience to save 'Eyes on the Prize'

eyes_on_the_screenEyes on the Prize is an amazing documentary about the US civil rights movement, a classic that is shown and re-shown every year around this time, for Black History Month. The problem is that the rights to the archival footage in Eyes on the Prize was only cleared for the initial production, and the cost of clearing the copyrights again is prohibitive. It seems, then, that this documentary is doomed to vanish, once the existing VHS copies wear out.

Music activist group Downhill Battle has decided to stage some civil disobedience around this. They're running a site called Eyes on the Screen, which is distributing copies of Eyes on the Prize via Bittorrent, and they're organizing a national network of screenings on February 8th -- have your friends over to watch your downloaded copy of the documentary.

I agree wholeheartedly with Cory Doctorow when he writes, "This could be a seminal moment in technology liberty. It's a brilliant campaign on Downhill Battle's part." I hope you'll participate. [Via Boing Boing]

By Colin | Free Culture | Link | Comments (0)

January 09, 2005

Mappr : Distributed Geographical Photo News

mapprCheck out Mappr! - a new tool that takes photos you've uploaded into Flickr, the coolest photo site ever, and looks to see if you've tagged them with place names (like "Omaha" and "Nebraska," or "San Francisco" and "California") and places them on a map of the US. Just like Ten by Ten, it's another example of using photos in innovative ways to geographically and psychologically map the mindspace.

A few sets of tags are already up, for example: all photos tagged with 'Christmas', Eric Snowdeal's awesome postcard project as well as pictures in California.

More sets are coming soon - plans are afoot to map the upcoming Day In The Life Project, and the project will be open to Flickr users any day now.
[Via FlickrBlog]

By Colin | Free Culture , Software , Technology | Link | Comments (0)