Consequences:

- equal redistribution of wealth in the long run (end of poverty; physical and psychological health stabilise society, prevention of pandemics; dramatically reduced chances for terror since there is hope/perspective for a good life on earth during one’s lifetime; strong basis for true Democracy)

- economies can simply serve the People, no need for growth, economies grow when needed (e.g. more people), shrink naturally when less demand (e.g. fewer people)

- no more bubbles, no more speculation affecting the lives and future of billions of people

- no more wars needed – the most cynical instrument of Capitalism that is there to destroy/create room for new “growth”

- no more destruction of nature in the name of “growth” (oil industry, rain forest, nuclear waste)

- no more rating agencies needed that are there to help the speculators destroy whole countries/continents

- no more aggressive ads/advertising industry needed as motor for “growth”, minimal style ads can serve a good purpose: information for those who seek that piece of information

- all the other helpers of our abusive system of exploitation like copyright and patents can easily get rid of as well, both have striking similarities with the interest concept/serve a similar purpose: make sure that those who have power (knowledge or financial one) get even more of it, while those who have little of it remain without it or loose the little they have (and with that monsters like ACTA, SOPA/PIPA or whatever they call those bills in their baby talk like language can get rid of easily as well – update: Sopa: Sites go dark as part of anti-piracy law protests (www.bbc.co.uk))

- Greed then will be excluded from the system by design instead of being built-in via interest, copyright and patents like now

***

It’s only one change in the system from which everyone will profit in the long run.

Imagine what it can do for you and those who are close to you. Imagine what it can do for others and how this will in return do even more for you. Just imagine.

Leave aside ideologies or believes: keep them for yourself, they belong to you. However this world belongs to everyone.

Just imagine what this one tiny change in our system can do for all of us. And then let’s get started with this a.s.p.

I decided to make those stats public and link the report: as you can see this still is a rather small blog yet it seems I can reach those (few) people that are actually interested in the topics I write about.

In the report they suggest to write more about those topics (from some older blog articles) that still get new readers. Good suggestion but I really hope that this particular topic (has to do with video encoding…) is done and won’t need so much attention from me anymore. To be honest I am a bit sick of it (it still can upset me quite a bit) and I really want to move on to more uplifting subjects now.

But most of all: I want to be more creative and productive in 2012!

So here is that WordPress.com report:

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,800 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Choice #2

(Both images above posted under traditional copyright, found on teh wide, wide Internets via reddit.)

So this is not really so much about a physical resemblance but rather about externalising what she sees going on inside those people she paints.

I told her I was going to post the result on my blog, yet I’ve been hesitating to do this for months.

Here is what I like/don’t like about it:

If you don’t know me you might think I’m chubby, wrinkled/old and grumpy. Yet in real life people tend to think I’m much younger than my physical age (which is 40) and for some reason I never had a weight problem, I simply often like to wear a comfortable sweatshirt.

However I know I’m often sort of lost in deep thoughts and my facial expressions are often misinterpreted as being grumpy when I’m really in a good mood but just thinking intensely about something. And this seems to be the kind of moment that Anna choose to paint/externalise. That I like about the painting, that inner state of mind is probably quite truthful.

Still I am a bit shocked about what this seems to make me look like when externalised – flattering it is not.

Yet I believe it is part of an artist’s job to be honest and if this is what my friend Anna sees in me I have to accept it and should post it, even though it might give a wrong impression to some.

But so what!

Me interpreted by Anna Safary Purath.

(Image posted under traditional copyright. Posted with permission by the artist.)

Transcript (via LYBIO.net):

“Can you imagine your internet service provider policing everything you do online? Can you imagine generic drugs that could save lives being banned? Can you imagine seeds that could feed 1000′s being controlled and withheld in the name of patents? This will become reality with ACTA!!!

ACTA is the “Anti-Counterfeiting Trading Agreement”. Disguised as a Trade Agreement, ACTA goes much, much further than that.

For the past three years, ACTA has been negotiated in secret by 39 countries. But the negotiators are not democratically elected representatives. They don’t represent us, but they’re deciding laws behind our backs.

Bypassing democratic process, they impose new criminal sanctions to stop online file sharing. ACTA aims to make Internet Service & Access Providers legally responsible for what their users do online, turning them into private copyright police and judge, censoring their networks. The chilling effects on Free speech would be terrible.

In the name of patents, ACTA would give large corporations the power to stop generic drugs before they reach the people who need them and stop the use of certain seeds for crops.

The European Parliament will soon vote on ACTA. This VOTE will be the occasion to say NO, once and for all, to this dangerous treaty. As citizens, we must URGE our representatives to reject ACTA!!!

NO To ACTA

Learn more
laquadrature.net/ACTA“

Two old school 16mm projectors each loaded with (a sandwich of) loops consisting of short pieces of “black” (basically non-transparent) emulsion and bleached (= transparent) emulsion arranged in rhythmical patterns are pointed to the center of the cinema’s screen where they create one single black/white flickering round corner 4:3 window-like shape – covering only something like 1/3 or so of the actual screen.

Two flickering strobe lights (during the first part of the performance) – positioned in front of the screen on the left and right – are pointed to the screen as well.

The what might be described (superficially) as hardcore avantgarde techno music (first part of the performance) is basically generated by what the optical sound head of (one of) the projectors makes of the rhythmically arranged non-transparent/transparent pieces of 16mm film, this sound being manipulated live by going through a series of  distortion pedals and other quite basic analogue sound (mixing) equipment.

Additionally the brightness of the projector’s lamps is being manipulated live as well.

That’s a rough (and possibly a bit inaccurate) description of the technical setup that Bruce McClure used for his “Smells Like Teen Spirit 1991? 2011?” projection performance at the Tonkino Saalbau in Vienna on October 20th, 2011.

This was not-a-movie cinematic experience

The actual experience as a member of the audience was nothing less than mind blowing. It was one of the best cinematic experiences I’ve ever had. Really. And there was no movie to see – at least not a movie in the classical sense.

Before the performance started earplugs were handed out. I ended up not using mine. Yet it was loud. Really loud. Think of going to a rock concert and being somewhere up front close to the speakers. With the difference that there is no band playing but you are watching those hardcore flickering patterns while the artist is creating his music sitting in the back of the room next to/underneath the 16mm projectors working on that old school analogue sound equipment as well as manipulation the brightness of the projector’s lamps.

Basically there were two things you would see: that what happens externally (the performance as described above) and that what happens internally. It’s hard to say which part was more interesting. In other words: think of something like a psychedelic experience while being 100% sober. I had not smoked anything that night. Yet when I left the cinema after the performance (first part 25 min., short break, second part 35 min.) I was pretty loaded. That is loaded with ideas I’ve had for my own project(s) that I’m thinking of at the moment:

This is not-a-classic-film school

Thing is I am back to film school. (I previously did the L.I.F.S., now just L.F.S. back in the early-mid ’90.)

Yes, that’s right, me being 40 years old and now having explored (some of) the basics of 3D/animation (using Blender) for the last couple of years I decided it’s time to go back to the roots of filmmaking – in order to come back later to what I do with 3D and hoping to find that unique combination of (minimal) 3D, (analogue/avantgarde) filmmaking and digital post production/compositing that I am looking for for my own future projects.

This is a new chapter in my filmmaker’s journey, my own quest in trying to combine all my skills and trying to create something that I am happy with and that others are willing to pay money for. Basically I still think I can make movies and sell art without becoming a prostitute. Maybe that’s (still) naive. But I won’t give up trying.

So last Wednesday was our first meeting at Schule Friedl Kubelka. We are only 10 students and everything here is close to no-budget and (at school) is happening in a rather confined space, Friedl Kubelka’s Atelier/flat. Projects are shot on either Super-8 or 16mm, we will be developing (and for 16mm) printing film ourselves using the filmkoop wien facilities. While editing may happen digitally (for Super-8) my plan is to avoid digital post production – at least for the picture – and  go back to the Steenbeck for editing (16mm) and then cut the negative myself – that I have never done before.

So while sitting in Bruce McClure’s projector performance last Thursday my inner eye was seeing that (possible) project to be made at some point in those coming eight months till the end of May 2012 when school ends. (I still live in Berlin and come to Vienna for the workshops, some key events etc.)

Following the performance at the Tonkino Saalbau last Thursday we had our seminar with Bruce McClure at film school on Friday, Saturday and Sunday last week:

This was not-a-workshop with Bruce McClure

There are a couple of things that Bruce McClure does not like: don’t call him a filmmaker. At least not after he told you he does not want to be called a filmmaker. You also might not want to call him an artist. And what he does is not a-r-t. Yet you might say he does t-a-r. He is much more happy with that.

Another thing that Bruce McClure does not do is give workshops. So what we had was not a three day workshop with BruceMcClure who is not a filmmaker and not an artist. Now that’s the short version.

The slightly longer version is this:

For three days we slowly, very s-l-o-w-l-y, went back exploring – opening one thread after the other, maybe coming back to it, maybe not – for three days we s-l-o-w-l-y went back exploring the roots of what a (presumably) moving (think strobe lights and a hand and its shadow) image is, for three days we s-l-o-w-l-y went back exploring – while freely associating and drifting to a new topic that came up and then coming back, for three days we s-l-o-w-l-y went back exploring the roots and fundamental basics of (re)producing (live) a (presumably) moving image in its most radically reduced form (loops consisting of rhythmical patterns of (non-)transparent (“black”) emulsion), we s-l-o-w-l-y for three days, sometimes painfully s–l–o–w–l–y went back for three days to our ancestor’s caves, their paintings and fire flickering, while we had two strobe lights and one single projector, one loop of found footage plus on top of that those loops Bruce McClure designs (sandwiched/laced up on top of each other, going through the 16mm projector), for three days we s-l-o-w-l-y kept going deeper, and deeper and deeper back to the roots of what a cinematic performance/moving images – and sound – may consist of in their very basic and reduced form.

There also was quite a lot of theory text reading. Excerpts here, a quote there.  S-l-o-w-l-y. Chewing one sentence after the other. Sometimes almost word by word. And then starting all over again after the first paragraph. Reading the same text once more. Chewing one sentence after the other. S-l-o-w-l-y.

Partly it was painful. At one point on the first day in the afternoon I had an impulse to just get up and go. And maybe come back the next day – or not. Yet having seen the performance first I knew I could/should trust Bruce McClure, who is not a filmmaker and not an artist and who gave not a workshop for three days.

So in the end I stayed (and so did everyone else). Going through what happened – both externally and internally – in those three days was definitely worth it in the end. Not everything was pleasant and that’s how it seems Bruce McClure wanted it: “I like to make people suffer” he said more than once. Yet I would question that. Here is my theory, be it something he did consciously or not: due to the s-l-o-w and often repetitive process of getting to a point via freely associating, going one way, coming back another and so on you end up being tired and your mind may drift to a more dream-like state. Just like at the performance at the Tonkino Saalbau. And possibly just like that state of mind where your brain is happy to learn new stuff, that state where you are open for new ideas or prepared to go deeper, and deeper, and deeper and deeper…

I should add that Bruce drew a lot of sketches to make a point. So the spoken/written word was translate to an image/icon for us to see. The workshop that Bruce – who is not a filmmaker and not an artist – did not give was, while minimal, still done with a multisensory approach.

Once in a while Bruce said a couple of other notable things in between our discussions like: “At home I eat shit every day.”

Did I mention he is not an artist and he did not give a workshop for three days…?

So in the morning of the second day of that workshop that Bruce McClure – who is not filmmaker and not an artist – did not give he was sitting outside in the courtyard waiting for us to arrive. (Wearing shorts while it was pretty cold. To make those who are late “feel guilty”.) When I arrived I had a short conversation with him and I said something that – seemed to – upset him:

Bruce: So you think I’m a jerk…?!

Me: Yes.

Bruce: Thank you!

Me: You’re welcome.

We then all went to church. That is we tried to get in but the actual entrance inside the building was closed. Bruce McClure’s former day job used to be the one of an architect. Hence the interest in that small church close to our school. Later in the afternoon when Bruce set up one of his projectors – using a compass and pointing it North our visit to that church was mentioned again, in regards to the geographic direction of how it was built. The found footage loop we went on watching – each time for 10 minutes – without sound, with sound and with one of his loops laced/sandwiched on top showed pelicans. One of them just took off and flew away. As one of us observed the bird was flying exactly South – that is in relation to Bruce’s projector/the screen that was pointing exactly North.

Bruce was quite thankful for that observation because this was the way he intended it to be – the bird flying South while the projector was pointing North – he simply had forgotten to actually mention it.

P.S.

If you are reading this and were there in those last couple of days feel free to comment and possibly let me know if I got e.g. some of the description of the performance at the Toonkino Saalbau wrong, if you feel something important is missing, if you disagree with what I write, you just want to add your own thoughts or link your own related blog entry etc.

This blog is published under a Creative Commons license – BY-NC-ND 3.0 – that e.g. allows you to copy/republish this text for non-commercial use as long as you give me credit.

Comments belong to their authors.

This blog currently gets around 600-700 hits/months. The unique visitors number may be quite a bit lower. A large part of the traffic comes via Google and people searching/reading only specific blog posts. Yet depending on how much I write etc. there may be about 100-200 (unique…?) visitors checking out the blog’s main page each month. Most of those might be interested in 3D, video and/or film. It’s a small platform but over the years I think I am able to reach at least a part of that audience that this blog is meant for. Why I mention this…? If you have something to say and comment there is a chance that – over time – those you may want to reach will actually read your comment. They might never contact you or let you know that they have read what you wrote. But your thoughts are out there and – over time – become part of a wider discussion about independent and/or avantgarde filmmaking etc.

Thanks for reading.

Update 25.10.11:

As usual when writing a longer blog post I now went through the text once more after publishing it and found/got rid of a couple of (minor) spelling etc. mistakes. English not being my first language and blessed with a dyslexic talent writing these things takes hours, sometimes days.

Also when thinking of that short projector/pelican story I’m wondering if something here may be 90° the wrong way round – or not. Maybe I’m misquoting directions, maybe not. Yet the essence of that story is still 100% true. So I leave it the way it is. Also: mistakes can be a true source of inspiration for new discoveries. That’s simply how we learn.

Underneath I now uploaded three pictures I took this morning of Bruce McClure’s program he handed out before the performance at the Tonkino Saalbau. I publish those images under traditional copyright since I am not the author of that program. I only took those pictures.

The third one may be the most interesting since it shows a sketch of those loops that Bruce McClure used for his performance and I have not mentioned those details in the text.

Update 26.10.11:

I just realised Bruce McClure’s performance at the Tonkino Saalbau took place on October 20th, 2011 (an not on October 25th as it says on the program – the location was Flachgasse 25…). So I changed the dates in my text even though the images say something different.

Additionally I also made it clearer where those two strobe lights – description performance beginning of text – were actually located.

Click the images (“open in new tab”) to see a larger version:

Detail (from page 1 out of 4) of the program for Bruce McClure’s projection performance at the Tonkino Saalbau in Vienna on October 20th, 2011

Page 4 (out of 4) of the program for Bruce McClure’s projection performance at the Tonkino Saalbau in Vienna on October 20th, 2011

Detail (from page 4 out of 4) of the program for Bruce McClure’s projection performance at the Tonkino Saalbau in Vienna on October 20th, 2011

Yesterday the Blender Foundation released Blender 2.60:

Download for all platforms.

While the previous Blender 2.5x series was all about making Blender ready for a wider user base (switch to an intuitive User Interface, a new Animation System, Color Management/linear workflow and much more) the Blender 2.60 series now focuses on upgrading Blender in some key areas important for those looking for a free and open-source all in one video post, compositing, special effects/3D package:

VSE Proxy Support now and Motion/Camera Tracking coming soon…

Sequence editor proxy support (missing in 2.5x) is now restored:

“Proxies are lower resolution versions of image or video files, that can be used instead of the full resolution for faster editing. Additionally to the way Blender 2.49 worked where you could make proxies for individual strips, you can now select several strips at once and build proxies in the background.”

Basically this means that Blender 2.60 is not only a platform independent NLE (edit/share your .blends across Linux, Windows or Mac), but Blender 2.60 with Sequence Editor proxy support brings high-end free and open-source video editing to almost any PC you might be using: the Blender VSE (Video Sequence Editor) works quite well even on older hardware recycled with e.g. Linux Mint.

New Blender versions are coming out every two months now and while 2.60 is great news the truth is that there are many now waiting for Blender 2.61 – expected to be released mid-December: Motion/Camera tracking (!) as well as Cycles, the new render engine, will be added.

You can always check out unofficial builds and test/use the new features months ahead of a release via those builds available from GraphicAll.org.

Extend Blender, Mango and links for new users

Blender can be extended via Add-Ons (scripts), either write your own in Python or get those from the Blender 2.5 Scripts Catalog (learn how-to install an Add-On). For new users e.g. the Compositing Presets or for editors the Jump to Cut Add-On may be of interest…

The Blender Foundation’s current open-movie project (previously Elephant’s Dream, Big Buck Bunny, Sintel) is called Mango, a “Sci-fi in Amsterdam” and “with real actors, 3-5 minutes”. Basically this one is about upgrading Blender in the SFX department.

For documentation see the BlenderWiki.

For community support see the Blender Artists Forums.

For “Fresh Blender News, Every Day” see BlenderNation.

For “Developer musings on Blender” see the Blender developer Blog.

For more about Blender and video post production see the Blender’s VSE blog.

You can also still check out my old Blender 2.4x Presets for editing and 2D titles via my tutorials page. (Learn the basics using the old/classic Blender 2.49b and then switch to Blender 2.60.)

If you want to report a bug here is a good place to start.

Blender is a truly amazing piece of software. Blender means high-end 3D, video editing and compositing for everyone. On every platform. For free.

Blender is Power to the People.

8,9% of Berlin voted for the Pirate Party last month and I’m proud to say that I was able to contribute to that outcome: while being an Austrian living in Berlin I am allowed to vote in my district. For the first time there was the candidate “Piratenpartei” on the ballot and that’s where I made my cross. And So did many other. And news that close to 10% of Berlin is now in Pirate Party hands spread quickly around the globe (blog.p2pfoundation.net).

I was actually a bit surprised about just how wide that news travelled: it seems people have been waiting for this (blog.p2pfoundation.net). Those 8,9% for the Pirates in Berlin are a signal for others: if Berlin can do it your city, your country can do it too.

And guess what, now after the success in Berlin the German Pirate Party gets around 7% in polls – that is 7% Germany wide: should there be general elections next Sunday we’d had the Piratenpartei sitting in the German Bundestag.

And there is still much more potential for sure: I would not be surprised at all should Pirate Parties around Europe get two digit results in elections within the next five years.

People this is it, this is the time to get out and vote for the Pirates. And if you can’t vote let your family know, your father, mother, brother, sister, grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt etc.:

Let them know why you want the Pirate Party in your (local) government, explain to them why the Pirate Party is like “a patch for Democracy” as I read somewhere.

Let them know why (software) patents are truly evil and why Copyright is in fact Copywrong.

Let them know about the Patent Trolls and Copyright Thieves.

Let them know about h.264.

Let them know that Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Samsung, Frauenhofer Institute and all those others h.264 patent holders are S-T-A-E-L-I-N-G everyone’s video footage using software patents (you do not own your own h.264 video footage, not even after transcoding to e.g. an open format: licensing fees for any “commercial” use will need to be paid to all those thieves hiding behind the acronym MPEG-LA).

Let your people know the truth about why a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs could “achieve” what they did in those last 30 years:

Gates, Jobs etc. are a simply a special kind of breed of thieves who (while now retired used to) organise, set up and run a wide range of (in the US legal, in Europe for sure quite illegal) extortion schemes based on software patents and related “legal” constructs. Latest examples: the Samsung tablet that Apple tries so hard to block via court orders or the fact that Microsoft will make money with basically every Android phone you buy ($5/phone Protection Money for the IP lawyers thanks to software patents).

Or maybe there is something else that makes you angry…? Maybe it’s the RIAA or the MPAA (better know as MAFIAA)…?

There surely are many good reasons to be very angry these days (WikiLeaks censorship, youngsters/hackers who defend Democracy put in jail, Greece looted by the Banks, …) and each reason is a good one to turn your anger into real political change by voting Pirate Party!

This is our chance to get rid of those governments that have been corrupted be the Content and Copyright Mafia.

This is our chance to get rid of ACTA and all future attempts by the Content Mafia who is trying to undermine Democracy in order to save their dying business model, a model that never was right in the first place, a business model that is based on stealing but never giving back to society. One of the best examples being The Walt Disney Company and the Micky Mouse Protection Act from 1998.

Occupy Wall Street and World Revolution

“I see Corporatism, Fascism, chronic Capitalism. I don’t see a free market. I see a police state, I see an American Empire, I see 700 military bases in 135 foreign countries. I see 5000 dead bodies in Iraq. A welfare warfare state which gives out billions of dollars in foreign aid for dictators (…).”

(From the Voice Over/interview at the beginning of the embedded video about the current Occupy Wall Street movement:)

Nobody Can Predict The Moment Of Revolution (2011), 8:01

by Martyna Starosta & Iva Radivojevic, CC BY-NC 3.0

Video’s page on Vimeo.

One more thing…

Now that we have Freedom from Steve:

Steve Jobs,

You personally may get away with this and keep making your dirty money for quite a while. Yet not forever.

Thing is you are old and I am so much younger than you. Chances are I’ll still be around when you are long gone. And I’ll make sure the world will hear the true story about h.264. I’ll make sure that people get a chance to remember Steve Jobs for who he really was. You are no innovator, your are no inventor. At the end of the day you are simply that: a thief.

And Fuck You for that.

FUCK YOU STEVE JOBS FOR H.264.

FUCK YOU.

FUCK YOU.

FUCK YOU.

And FUCK YOU.

Update (06.10.11) :

Steve Jobs died this morning. Here the discussion on Slashdot.

Yes, it’s always very sad when someone dies and I’m sure many including his family will miss him. Yet death does not mean you have to be dishonest. The man may have done a lot for the Apple shareholders and may have pushed the industry in the directions he wanted, but for me personally he is one the biggest disappointments when it comes to role models:

I used to watch his Apple sales shows back in the ’90 on a Performa 5200, connected to the internet via modem. He was a brilliant sales person. He really was. Unfortunately he was not honest about his products shortcomings and he betrayed a whole generation of artists, film makers and young ones who bought his h.264 pitch. Steve Jobs choose to betray and steal from everyone (h.264 video footage) so that he could build a monopoly around/by using the moving image:

* He tried to push h.264 as the only legal video codec for distribution: when you already own an online store for movies (iTunes) as well as parts of a Hollywood film studio (Disney, before that Pixar) this simply is extremely greedy and shows you do not like competition at all. For over ten years open-source audio/video codec developers were severly bullied by all those who stand behind h.264. In his own words (blogs.fsfe.org):

“All video codecs are covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other “open source” codecs now.”

* At the same time, knowingly, just as all the other h.264 patent holders, he was happy with stealing your and mine h.264 video footage: I got an h.264 camera and went out shooting footage, for weeks, months. I was planing to use that footage commercially until I found out about the scheme that Jobs etc. had set up/were happy to make their dirty deals with: the MPEG-LA.

Jobs not only wanted a monopoly on distribution but he also wanted to control independent content, e.g. accepted – and never communicated – the MPEG-LA’s rules e.g. about how long (!!!) your h.264 online video can be before you have to start paying fees to them. Steve Jobs was prepared to and did sell his user, did betray those artists who trusted him and who supported his company in all those years when Apple almost went out of business.

Steve Jobs betrayed us with h.264. I won’t forget that. And I will make sure that this story reaches as many people as possible, now and in the future.

A monopoly on the moving image is simply a very, very dangerous thing. It would be highly irresponsible not to let future generations know about this. Basically what Jobs opened up/promoted is a road to Fascism. People need to hear the h.264 story so that something like this can never happen again!

I agree with David Cameron that society as such (not just in the UK) is “sick”. Yet when you have a serious flue what does the doctor do to cure you? Punish you for being sick? Or find out why you are sick and see how he can help you getting back to normal?

It is most astonishing to hear Nottingham Magistrates’ Court Judge Devas say to a convicted looter: “Don’t you feel ashamed that you are now counted among the hundreds of yobbos arrested and now considered as scum by the public?” So this is justice in the year 2011? Public humiliation..? Just wow. And people wonder why there is no respect for society and the system. Just listen to yourself Judge Devas…!

We have David Cameron talking about “phony human rights concerns” (in context of identifying potential rioters) and hear suggestions to evict people involved in riots from council houses.

Of course with this kind of language there was quickly a successful e-petition (100 000+) that asks for rioters loosing their benefits.

A social media ban for suspected rioters is yet another of David Cameron’s brilliant ideas.

And of course we had a suggestion of assembling all the rioters in Wembley stadium… Just wow.

This is politics and courts failing those they have failed before yet once more:

rubber bullets, humiliation and exclusion are the answers to a “sick” society from those in charge. Fail, fail, fail.

Yes, society is sick. But it’s also true that:

The fish always stinks from the head downwards.

Be careful who you call “scum”. If the tone we hear does not change quickly this will backfire sooner or later with much greater force than what we have seen in recent days. And next time I guess the mob will be smarter and attack the CCTV cams first: Big Brother is not the solution but part of the problem.

This surely does look like Capitalism failing and Fascism rising.

Update 1:

The system is obviously a joke: you steal a bottle of water worth £3.50 and get six months in jail plus the prime minister’s and the honorable judges’ “scum’” tag. Yet those who looted society – politicians helping bankers, bankers helping politicians – are still walking around freely, anonymously and with no justice done whatsoever! David Cameron tries to punish and exclude the UK youth out of fear of loosing his job. So 11-17 year olds, their families and communities are now paying the prize for the failure of politics. The world is looking at you UK, the world’s youth is looking at you David Cameron and be sure that people know who the real “scum”, the real looters are. Can you spell h-y-p-o-c-r-i-s-y…?

Why, just why is it that the majority of our leaders are such a miserable failure…?!

Update 2:

London riots: Wandsworth council moves to evict mother of charged boy (www.guardian.co.uk): “…they will have to find housing in the private sector and that will be tougher for them. But they should have thought about that before they started burgling” = “Let them eat cake.”

David Cameron, your society is very, very sick. Excuse me, I now need to go and puke while thinking of you and your pals from Wandsworth coucil!

So instead of blaming social media (expect more calls from clever politicians to censor teh evil Internets) why not blame the bankers who robbed and looted our society for months and years and who received bonuses on top…?

Maybe those young people (some around 10-14 year olds!) are not just “criminals” as the politicians and the police say but maybe they simply also expect some “bonuses” now…? You know the young ones, the “copycats” just do what they are being shown on TV by the responsible adults, the social-funds cutting politicians helping the “markets”, the bankers and the corporations.

We are loosing much more than “trillions” of made-up money on the stock markets these days, we are loosing so much more than what is being destroyed physically by the looting. We are loosing a generation of young ones who don’t see a future. And as a society this is our future.

Go capitalism! More growth! Go markets! Go…!

Here some of the best comments and articles I have found so far:

There is a context to London’s riots that can’t be ignore (08.08.11, www.guardian.co.uk)

Looting ‘fuelled by social exclusion’ (08.08.11, www.guardian.co.uk)

Panic on the streets of London (09.08.11, pennyred.blogspot.com)

Also, in case you are a BlackBerry customer, you may want to know more about this: RIM Helping UK Police Track Down Rioters (08.08.11, yro.slashdot.org)

Updates…

Young adult unemployment (www.poverty.org.uk)

and

If the rioting was a surprise, people weren’t looking (08.08.11, www.guardian.co.uk)

International press reaction to UK riots (09.08.11, www.bbc.co.uk)

UK riots: What turns people into looters? (09.08.11, www.bbc.co.uk)

The UK riots: the psychology of looting (09.08.11, www.guardian.co.uk)

The sad truth behind London riot (09.08.11, worldblog.msnbc.msn.com)

Riots without responsibility (10.08.11, www.guardian.co.uk)

These riots reflect a society run on greed and looting (10.08.11, www.guardian.co.uk)

and

BlackBerry blog site hacked by TriCk – TeaMp0isoN against London riots (09.08.11, www.thehackernews.com)

IWW poster printed 1911

(Source: Wikipedia)

While this old days info graphic style poster is now 100 years old it could hardly be more up to date today – and it also works for any kind of suppressive regime (with e.g. a centralised economy): “We shoot at you” is what is happening in Syria these days (www.bbc.co.uk).

Yesterday I started again reading Robert Peston’s business blog: How close is Credit Crunch 2? His latest post from today: The origins of today’s market mayhem (www.bbc.co.uk).

For a look at alternatives to our current money (based) system see the P2P Foundation blog and those posts with the P2P Money tag (blog.p2pfoundation.net).

And for those enjoying their rides on the world’s biggest Casino today: just don’t forget that when “zero” comes up it is always the Bank that wins! You won’t be able to change that… Yet we might be able to change the rules. So that it won’t happen again. Of course this means that there would need to be serious consequences. The pyramid scheme would need to go and those responsible would need to be held accountable.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that currently Apple Inc. has more cash than the United States of America (!) (www.bbc.co.uk): (software) patents and traditional copyright have brought us here. Yet it is also no coincidence that right now software patents as well as copyright are finally being investigated and changed by those in charge: UK to legalize private copying of CDs (www.reuters.com) (“Britain will signal on Wednesday that it intends to legalize copying of CDs or DVDs onto digital music players or computers for personal use“). Basically this is the beginning of (a long…?) end of traditional copyright! Software patent reform is happening (politics.slashdot.org) as well as mentioned in a previous post.

And while companies like Apple now have started selling hot air over the internet (“cloud services”) they forget to mention that where there are clouds there will be rain. Sooner or later.

People like Steve Jobs are like those bankers who also generated their financial “products” out of thin air. Their greed brought our financial system close to collapse while the lobbyists were busy targeting Democracy via ACTA. *)

Today we are only a few steps away from real Corporate Fascism, a system where those who can’t pay shall have no voice. More than one politician made suggestions along that line in recent weeks and months. Shame on you.

So have a nice day, make your bets – faites vos jeux, before the croupier says: “Rien ne vas plus!”

And then…?

I guess the People will let you know when the Day of Glory has arrived, when le Jour de Gloire est arrivé…

Update:

*) One of many reasons why ACTA is a real, dangerous threat to Democracy: Leaked “ACTA” Lobby Letter Reveals Hollywood Pressure On EU (06.05.11, torrentfreak.com):

“A letter sent on behalf of 21 pro-copyright outfits including the Motion Picture Association and IFPI shows how the European Parliament is being urged to sign the controversial ACTA anti-piracy agreement. The backroom lobbying effort document which came into TorrentFreak’s possession, reveals how the organizations ask Parliament not to wait for a response from the European Court of Justice but simply sign “with no further delays.”“ (!!!)

Here is my public comment, I took the liberty of adapting some of my favourites lyrics for the occasion. Do sing along by all means!

Another big Bag of Hurt (part 2)

We don’t need no software patents

We don’t need no Jobs control

No unfree codec in the classroom

Lawyers, leave them kids alone

Hey! Steve! Leave them kids alone!

All in all it’s just another big Bag of Hurt.

All in all you’re just another big Bag of Hurt.

“This video is based on an old Apple commercial with real pictures of Spain and Greece.” (Video’s page.)

See also: real-democracy.gr (or in English via Google Translate)

Video may need to load first for smooth playback! A smaller Flash and a high-res open-source encoded version will be posted later. Thank You! (You can also right click “Click To Play”, then “Save Link As…”  to download the video and use the VLC for playback!)

Space Visual – Early Period (v2) (2011), 3:48

Music: Jan Joachimsen Video: Valentin Spirik (CC) 2011 BY-NC-SA

The above video is version 2 of this project first posted last October.

Some thoughts to the project

Overall Space Visual (v2) is closer to where I want it to be than version 1 was, yet a couple of things are not quite there yet:

technical:

- there is an issue with the toon edges, they appear in places where there is a certain 2D/3D logic, yet where they don’t make real sense. Not sure if this can be fixed easily… Overpaints (can be time consuming and not so much fun) will be the most practical solution here. If so then for a full HD rendered version:

- it is still only rendered in 960×540, Full HD simply takes that much longer and files are that much heavier to handle (in compositing). A hardware upgrade will make it much easier to go full HD with my online videos.

- there are a couple of features missing that I originally wanted for version 2 but then left out for various reasons: a believable cam shake, stars and grass (on the outside)

- it’s not been colour corrected in a technical sense, most of my online videos are not. There are practical reasons (effort vs necessity) and then there are artistic, or rather philosophical questions that I still have: basically the artist in me wants this to be a fully trust-your-own-eyes-and-feelings-process whereas the reality of colour correction is a rather cold, technical one with neutral-Grey-workplace-calibrated-monitor-trust-the-scopes-readings.

I want to understand how a Leonardo, a Van Gogh or a Turner could do what they did in a pre-digital time and why we today need all this complex high-tech equipment and then still are rather limited and have to make sure we don’t e.g. broadcast “illegal colours”. The artist in me says: no colour can be illegal. It’s simply a limitation and therefore can/should be challenged.

concept:

- while the minimalism of it is fully on purpose, I am wondering if part 1 (going down) works as well as it could. Since in part 2 we see halo light it may work to have dust/sun rays in part 1, this could further help with getting a feeling for the room (this I already tried to improve via textures and light:)

workflow:

- this was my first Blender project where I was not able to do an all in one render at the end: (in addition to a Sun and a Spot, and Sun/Sun for the Color/Shadow pass layer) I was using AO, Environment Lighting, toon edges and that Color/Shadow pass. So I had 3 copies of the same mesh in different layers for light/compositing reasons. Now in this setup, even if you exclude AO/Environment Lighting from the Color/Shadow pass layer, it seems that you will still get an “overall” AO/Environment Lighting render for this mesh once combined in the Compositing Nodes (=unwanted effect of meshes on top of each other)…! There is a certain logic to it, yet it also seems limiting (at least in this setup) and not quite right at the same time. So I ended up rendering my main layer first without any nodes, and then do a second round and render toon edges as well as Color/Shadow over that first render plus add other 2D effects on top (all by going through the Compositing Nodes, loading the first render and adding the rest).

As with all things 3D: there may well be a better solution for this workflow, I just may not have figured it out yet… Non photorealistic rendering (NPR) can be more tricky than you first think!

(Note: The 3D/visual part of this project was entirely made with Blender 2.57b.)

encoding:

- I still find it ridiculously hard to do open-source video (e.g. VP8) encoding (and no Blender is not the problem…). I really want this. I’m really trying. (See here and here). I’ll get there, our tools are about to get there.

Yet I also know who is to blame for high-quality open-source video encoding not being there today in every video “app” – on all platforms – in the year 2011, about 15-20 years (!) after the digital post-production “revolution” took place:

There are forces out there, multinational corporations as well as specialised law firms, who want a monopoly on a particular video codec since:

- it would be the key to control content ($$$) (imagine the possibilities if you were to own parts of a Hollywood film studio at the same time as well as an online store for movies…)

- it would be the cash cow of the century if you could just get people to pay fees for every single frame of video that is shown (“commercially”) at every given moment on this planet!

Just think of it: you could first sell them the cameras (or better: sell them a “smart” phone with a camera), and then make them work for you! Imagine a whole generation of minors, working for free for you and uploading their videos to Web 2.0…! You could make the video platform pay licensing fees and those stupid kids who work for free for you will on top of it then pay for it via having to watch yet more ads! Wouldn’t that be a plan or what…?!

I know who to thank if high-quality, open-source audio/video encoding still does not work out of the box in 2011.

I know who took care of this and who is to blame.

And I won’t forget!

Copying Is Not Theft – Official Version (1:00)

Creative Commons license: BY-SA 3.0

Video’s page (questioncopyright.org)

Copying Is Not Theft

Show this to your kids, pupils and everyone you can think of and educate them about the merits of a free (digital) copy!

And someone show this to all those RIAA lawyers that “Hope” Obama brought to his government:

Obama Taps 5th RIAA Lawyer to Justice Dept. (www.wired.com, 13.04.09)

Obama, Keep Filling Administration with RIAA Insiders (www.wired.com, 21.04.09)

Obama Nominates RIAA Lawyer for Solicitor General (www.wired.com, 24.01.11)

And someone show this to Obama’s choice for the vice president, Joe Biden, who not only famously said:

Biden to file sharers: ‘Piracy is theft’ (news.cnet.com, 22.06.10)

but went on displaying his competence and wisdom when he commented on Julian Assange in late 2010:

Julian Assange like a hi-tech terrorist, says Joe Biden (www.guardian.co.uk, 19.12.10)

and then while the People were out on the streets of Egypt:

Joe Biden says Mubarak isn’t a dictator, questions legitimacy of protesters’ demands (boingboing.net, 28.01.11)

Software Patents = Organised Theft

You see the same people that still want to uphold traditional copyright are of course also the ones that keep supporting the patent trolls and thieves:

Obama cites Steve Jobs’ wealth, product success (news.cnet.com, 22.12.10)

To all you Corporate Fascists, to all copyright thieves and patent trolls, to all the abusers, to the Joe Bidens, the Steve Jobs and the Bill Gates of this world (and their patent troll Moloch organisation MPEG-LA that steals everyones h.264 video footage *), h.264 still being used in every Apple smart phone as we speak while the first Android phones using the open-source WebM/VP8 codec are coming out right now), to all you greedy thieves:

I turned 40 earlier this year and I believe I now have seen enough crap and need to clearly warn the generations coming after me! You know those who may or may not vote for you at the next election and opt for the Pirate Party instead, or those who may stop buying your products because they realise you simply screw them wherever you can (would you trust a company with non-linear video editing that at the same time holds patents on a video codec that you (may need to!) use and that you need to pay licensing fees for every time you use your own work commercially…?!).

To all you rich, disgusting, organised thieves:

FUCK PATENTS. FUCK COPYRIGHT. AND FUCK YOU.

—

*) See also: Web Video Rivalry Sparks U.S. Probe (online.wsj.com, 04.03.11): this is basically about the MPEG-LA finally being investigated for their abusive comments (see also what Steve Jobs had to say) made after Google’s free and open-source WebM (VP8) codec was announced a year ago!

Download Blender 2.57

More about this release on Blendernation.

I’ve been using/switching to the Blender 2.5x beta releases since around late last summer (my first test project “space visual – early period” done in 2.5 from last October) and found it more than usable while still being labeled “beta” for a coupe of months already…

Now that the transition from the classic Blender 2.49 with the old loved/feared interface is mostly done (I first feared it, then loved it) expect a quite significant addition of features to Blender for the next couple of releases.

Open-source animation and platform independent video post production have just been upgraded and there is so much more to come now…!

The interviewer does not interrupt and this is in contrast to so many of the fast cut, sensationalist style TV interviews, reports and also those misinformed or even hate-filled blog posts like some of those recently found on the usually respectable Boing Boing.

Recommended.

Frost over the World – Julian Assange (24:01), December 22, 2010

“The WikiLeaks founder talks about secrets, leaks and why he will not go back to Sweden.”

Al Jazeera English (www.youtube.com)

“Trudy Muller, an Apple spokeswoman, said the company had removed the app “because it violated our developer guidelines.” Ms. Muller added: “Apps must comply with all local laws and may not put an individual or group in harm’s way.”“

This is simply an excuse for censorship.

I’ve been of course boycotting Apple (and switched to PC hardware/Linux) ever since they let me down with my broken iMac G5 after a Leopard “upgrade” that went badly wrong and when they then even removed my post to their forum about the matter in April 2008.

Apple is of course also on the list of patent trolls that steal your and mine (not any more since I got rid of that camera) H.264 footage.

Beware of those who offer you “Freedom from XXX” (techcrunch.com). You pay for it. You get it.

Freedom from WikiLeaks you got today.

Freedom from Freedom it will be tomorrow.

War is Peace

Freedom is Slavery

Ignorance is Strength

But then I saw the following video and even though I am not really that much into rap I think this one summarizes pretty well in pop culture speak what is going on right now and what is at stake…

Much more interesting than what I had prepared!

Rap News 6 – Wikileaks’ Cablegate: the truth is out there (6:23)

Update:

Creative Commons license for the video (as shown on the artist’s YouTube page): BY-NC-SA

Artist’s website (thejuicemedia.com) for donations and more. For their lyrics and more (www.reverbnation.com).

The video’s website on YouTube offers an interactive transcript in various languages (click icon bottom right of video).

What follows are the lyrics from www.reverbnation.com via saving the whole page as a .html – somehow that widget did not allow me to simply copy/paste the lyrics…:

Rap News 6 – Cablegate: The truth is out there
Lyrics by Hugo Farrant & Giordano Nanni

Good morning, this is a Juice News call out
in the wake of Cable Gate and the subsequent fall-out
balls out revelations, observations of diplomats
giving actual confirmation of hidden facts

spilling backroom deals, leaking leaders’ chit chat
money laundering and tit for tat spits and spats:
The picture that emerges, provided by the servers
shines light further behind the wire curtain

Certainly this has divided views of the populace
Some say it’s obvious, ‘nothing new in these documents’
Others say it’s ominous, and applaud the revelations
Others still call for the messenger’s assassination

Following Assange’s arrest and calls for his head,
over nine 9000 counterattacks on all of the web,
the state department being forced to defend
spying at the UN and a secret war in Yemen

Despite DDOS attacks on Wikileaks’ system
Day by day cables still spray through mirror reflection
Will cable-gate change the game or lead to repression?
We get face-to-face with Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton, how does it feel to get leaked on?
It’s scandalous, this is a case of high treason
It’s against the land of the brave and divine freedom –
We’re the good guys, for democracy, we fight evil

And we’ve waged peace around the world, proud of the flag
These leaks could devalue this powerful brand
Bring military operations straight to a halt
Our shareholders, clients and partners would plainly revolt

But, aren’t you beholden to the American Public?
And isn’t the US one of the primary culprits,
In overthrowing governments?
Such as? Chile, Iran, Nicaragua?
Please, stop with the drama!

The American People are our employees
whose taxes fund the wars that support our schemes
their kids become troops we send overseas
in return for mega malls and the American dream

And if our client states don’t like the things that we do
we install a dictator with a CIA coup
in foreign relations, subversion is the method we use
Wikileaks threaten this system so it’s a terrorist group

But the people of the world seem to generally approve
of Wikileaks’ actions in spilling the truth…
They do? Well, then, they’re terrorists too!
dissentors are traitors, as history proves

And they always lose. That’s curious,
weren’t some of our greatest heroes persecuted for this
reason. Who? Mandela, Gandhi, …Jesus
Ahhh… you idealists.

Now for a different perspective, Prison-Planet host,
Alex Jones. Sheeple, heed the megaphone,
This Assange has apparently shown
The emperor on the palace throne grabbing at clothes

But I’ve heard anecdotes, I’ll show it fits
This Patsy’s a triple agent for the globalists
He claims openness, but he’s actually a catalyst
For the one world government of commie nazi fascists

Robert, I’m getting paranoid, I need to state
This is a false flag to bring in a police state
A cyber 9-11, that’s the secret vision
Right now they’re de-briefing Julian in a British prison

So Wikileaks is an inside job? They hide the thruth
To distract from the climate deal in Cancun
You try and do my job without hiding something
I ain’t called the SECRETary of State for nothing.

But surely, now the leaks are exposed out on the stage
You’d expect the world’s leaders to be outraged
By the spying, lies, emerging charges
Now on the line it’s Colonel Gadaffi

Asalamalekum. Alekumasalam,
Are you outraged? Well, now that there’s a muslim
Brother President of US, we expected secrets
to be kept, but now we have to keep abreast

Of these.. huge… security leaks.
Obama must get firm grip on Wiki-tits
Er.. ok, how about you Mr Berlusconi, will
your reputation fall more in this pandemonium?

Ma Roberto! Gli italiani mi amano come bambini
E glielo metto in culo come Mussolini
The American flag is symbol global of liberty
And I love Hillary… though she’s a bit too old for me

By the way, Robert, how much for your news show?
I pay cash — I just got some Rubles
Sorry, Silvio, we have scruples, it’s not for sale
Va bo, Hillary, come have a cigar at the hotel

Well, Hillary it appears that the leaders
Are not that outraged. Ha! Are you serious?
Of course not. We’re one happy family tree, son
As you’ll see soon when we hang  Assange for treason

Treason? could an Australian ever stand trial?
Ha! Australia’s in the American Empire!
We have puppet states, franchisees, subsidiaries,
Provided they obey, they’re guaranteed liberty

We’re not letting Assange get out of our grip
You know how hard it was to plant a condom that split?
Hill, ya turd, your Bilderberg lies are blatant
But, Alex, where’s your evidence that Assange is an agent?

Well, obviously this is a globalist psi-ops plot designed to keep us in the dark

They’re climbin in your windows
They’re snatchin your income tax
tryna enslave you so y’all need to
hide your kids, hide your wife
buy a gun , buy a knife
watch my show, buy your gold
and buy your silver
cuz they enslavin errbody out here
We don’t have to look for no facts
we know this is true …
they gon chip you
they gon tag you
but we can run and yell that,
run and yell that
run and yell that! New World
New world order!

We got his IP
he done left data discs and all
he is so done
he is really going, on trial
But what is Assange accused of?
I was molested by Julian in the Stokholm

So done, so done, so done, so

Ok, It’s almost time to end for the day
But until we meet again, a few questions remain
Is Wikileaks really the greatest threat that we face?
Or is it the response we are seeing in defense of the state?

A response which is building and seeks
To turn back the clock on freedom of speech
And fundamental rights earned over a century
This should ring alarm bells for all who know their history

From this evidence, are we neglecting our memory
And repeating the trajectory of the twentieth century?
And if so, upon seeing the facts
But ceasing to act, don’t we deserve the leaders we have?

What needs to befall before we open the door
and yell “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore!”?
Or shall we sit waiting for messiahs or aliens,
Or a super-hero, if they’re not all one and the same meme?

History, dear viewers, is happening
Will we ever get a similar chance again?
History books will be written about events this month
The story they will tell — is up to us

So sanity has prevailed after all. It also seems that politicians are finally starting to understand the dynamics of the net and what the online generation can contribute to that ongoing experiment we call Democracy.

It still remains to be seen how a future version of the JMStV will be drafted and what it might look like: anyone planing an online project in Germany is well advised to follow closely all developments leading towards a JMStV v2011…

See also Scheitern des JMStV ist ein Sieg der Vernunft (ak-zensur.de)

Update:

See also JMStV vor dem Aus (www.heise.de/tp) for a critical look at the way the JMStV v2010 was drafted. The article basically says that the process was not an open one and that old media (TV) and its close ties to politics had a lot to say. Some of the comments to the article also question the motivation for stopping the JMStV and suggest mainly tactical reasons.

There are lessons to be learned for everyone, that seems pretty clear to me. For me personally one lesson is: even if you live in a supposedly free country like Germany there are certain values like free speech that constantly need to be tested and defended if necessary. JMStV v2010 had the potential of destroying (not only) wide parts of the German blogosphere. In the end sanity prevailed, but things could have gone the other way and this is something that I simply had not anticipated in this country in the year 2010. Everyone needs to keep their eyes of vigilance open at all times from now on.

For more about this, not quite as diplomatic as the German text that follows, see my previous blog entries here and here and here.

For the latest news about this see also JMStV: Die Woche der Entscheidungen and JMStV: Vor-Vorentscheidung in NRW? (www.netzpolitik.org).

Update…

It now looks like all parties in NRW will vote against the JMStV on Thursday. I believe it when it happens.

+++ Eil & Kurz +++ (Update) JMStV in NRW vor dem Aus (www.netzpolitik.org)

Offiziell: Jugendmedienschutzstaatsvertrag gestoppt – Landtag NRW wird #JMStV morgen ablehnen (www.netzpolitik.org)

Yet of course many questions still need to be answered:

* Who drafted the current proposal and why and how and for whom?

* How will a future version of the JMStV be drafted and how will it look like?

Germany’s politicians will still have a lot of explaining to do if they want to regain some of the trust they lost to the net community. At the moment it is also unclear why exactly NRW will possibly vote against the JMStV.

Free speech and free access to information are too important and should never have been taken so lightly by those in charge in Germany today.

Let’s keep those eyes of vigilance wide open…

JMStV: Nach dem Vergnügen kommt die Arbeit (www.netzpolitik.org)

Mein Kommentar

Sehr geehrte Entscheidungsträger,

Der Ihnen vorliegende JMStV scheint mir, höflich gesagt, im besten Fall ein Schildbürgerstreich der Sonderklasse zu sein.

Als Netzbürger mit 15 Jahren Onlineerfahrung, Blogger, New Media Künstler und ehemaliger Moderator auf der Medienplattform Ourmedia kann ich nur meine Hände über dem Gesicht zusammenschlagen, in Verzweiflung den Kopf schütteln und sehr unschöne Worte über den JMStV laut ausrufen.

Hier haben die Verfasser ihre Hausaufgabe nicht gemacht, und die Konsequenzen bei Abnicken dieses JMStV würden verheerend für die Zukunft des Internets in Deutschland sein.

Ich bin 1999 von Wien nach Berlin in Ihr schönes Land gekommen, um der wie ich meine dort (damals) vorherrschenden engen Sichtweise bezüglich Film und Neuen Medien zu entkommen.

Ab 01.01.2011 könnte nun Berlin/Deutschland wegen des JMStV auf einmal ein völlig unattraktiver Standort für mich sein. Ich bin ehrlich schockiert. Fragen stellen sich: wer hat warum, wie und für wen diese Vorlage erstellt?

Alleine die Idee mit den “Sendezeiten” ist, wieder höflich gesagt, sehr verwunderlich. Selbst wenn das technisch für meine Onlineauftritte durchführbar wäre, würde ich dann ja immer noch, für die der Vorlage nach zu schützende Jugend, z.B. in den USA erreichbar sein…

Besonders übel würde es, wenn man in den USA dann auch noch auf die Idee mit den “Sendezeiten” käme… Usw.

Es scheint mir schlimm genug, daß es der vorliegende JMStV überhaupt zu Ihnen zur Abstimmung geschafft hat, und ich bitte Sie, den Vogel jetzt nicht auch noch mit Ihrer Zustimmung abzuschießen.

Schützen Sie die Jugend, stimmen Sie für den globalen Zugang zur Information für die Ihnen nachfolgenden Generationen, und geben Sie diesem Land weiter eine Zukunft in Sachen Internet und Neue Medien!

There is some war footage in there (the one previously released) that is disturbing. But so is war.

Recommended viewing.

WikiRebels – The Documentary (2010), 57:25

Video’s page (svtplay.se).

Here is US Congressman Ron Paul saying what should seem obvious to anyone with a clear mind when looking at the facts around the latest WikiLeaks revelations. Ron Paul asks questions and I believe he asks the right ones. Questions are always more powerful than answers and he knows it.

Ron Paul recently also said: ‘What we need is more WikiLeaks’ (www.rawstory.com)

Politics in a pre-WikiLeaks aera mainly seemed to be about spitting out insulting sound bites towards the political enemy. And so it came that politicians and governments all over the world not only have become whores to lobbyist and big money, but also to that important Fourth Estate (en.wikipedia.org).

Ron Paul is one of those rare politicians, be it on the left or right of the political spectrum, who is not caught up in a narrow-minded ideology and some -ism, but simply analyses with sanity, asks questions and speaks his own mind.

We not only need more WikiLeaks, we also need more Ron Pauls.

Lying is Not Patriotic (5:23)

To those few – on all parts of the political spectrum – who yesterday voted against the JMStV because you care about free speech and your good conscience means more to you than “parlamentarische Zwänge” (“parliamentary necessity”): I raise my virtual hat to you!

To all those who voted against it simply for tactical reasons and to all those who voted for it simply for tactical reasons (while you actually would have liked to vote against it but felt you could not because of the “parlamentarische Zwänge”) I say: you’ve proven yourself an unworthy representative of the people. May another generation forgive you your weakness. I can’t.

I believe it is now fair to say that the majority of the delegates of the city of Berlin:

* may be to weak to vote according to their conscience or

* may be uninformed/incompetent in regards to new media and internet or

* may have been corrupted by lobbyists.

This is a very sad outcome for the capital of Germany!

All bloggers, (online) artists, new media producers, filmmakers and investors take note of this. Serious and very dangerous online censorship in Germany is now one step closer!

Here one comment from the netzpolitik.org article linked above:

“Wer hat uns verraten? Sozialdemokraten

Wer war mit dabei? Die Linkspartei.

Wer verrät uns eh? Die FDP.

Wahlen boykottieren!”

For me this is another very good reason to only vote Pirate Party in all future elections!

No politician who voted for – or against – the JMStV and who did not vote according to his or her good conscience after thoroughly listening to the experts *)

* is in a position to ever lament again over a low turnout at any future election

* should be surprised about (political) radicalisation of young people

* and in the case of Berlin should not be surprised at all about new media artists now possibly leaving this wonderful city and moving on to another country where there is political sanity and understanding for online media.

You have utterly failed. Shame on you!

*) see:

Gesellschaft für Informatik und SIBB e. V. fordern Stopp des JMStV! (2. Update) (www.netzpolitik.org)

Schützt endlich unsere Kinder! Katholische Junge Gemeinde fordert Stopp des JMStV – “Echter Jugendmedienschutz geht anders” (www.netzpolitik.org)

One seriously wonders why but:

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange refused bail (www.bbc.co.uk)

This of course will not stop WikiLeaks:

WikiLeaks to keep releasing cables despite Assange arrest (www.guardian.co.uk)

The Guarding quotes in the WikiLeaks US embassy cables: live updates (www.guardian.co.uk) US defence secretary Robert Gates:

“Speaking to reporters on a visit to US troops in Afghanistan, Gates smirked on hearing the news. “I hadn’t heard that, but that sounds like good news to me,” he said.”

Since Julian Assange is simply supposed to clear his good name in front of a Swedish court one can only assume that the US defence secretary was glad that this matter can now be cleared up… Right…? Right…?

See also Justice for Assange (www.justiceforassange.com).

Consumers, Freedom of Speech and Internet-Vietnam

After Amazon, EveryDNS, Tableau Software, PayPal, Switzerland’s PostFinance and Mastercard now Visa joins the club of “independent” entities that consumers who care about free speech will want to investigate for their business practices and may want to avoid in the future:

Wikileaks’ Visa payments suspended (www.bbc.co.uk)

For how-to donate to WikiLeaks see WikiLeaks – Support (wikileaks.ch)

*** *** ***

Update 2:

The shit hits the fan now…

WikiLeaks cables: US ‘lobbied Russia on behalf of Visa and MasterCard’ “US diplomats intervened to try to amend draft law so that it would not ‘disadvantage’ US credit card firms, cable says” (www.guardian.co.uk)

The actual cable in the Guardian: US embassy cables: Revealed: US secret operation to help Visa and Mastercard (www.guardian.co.uk)

Also: PayPal admits US pressure over WikiLeaks account freeze (www.guardian.co.uk)

*** *** ***

The Austrian Green Party wants to set up an association, Freiheit, and a capital company, Freiheit GmbH, for supporting the freedom of the press on the net. In regards to the ongoing infowar:

Pilz: “Das wird das Internet-Vietnam für die USA” / Pilz: “This will be the Internet-Vietnam for the US” (diepresse.com)

Recommended reading: Julian Assange in The Australian today. Don’t shoot messenger for revealing uncomfortable truths (www.theaustralian.com.au) and `The truth will always win’ – Julian Assange writes (blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au)

And of course for a good overview to all new WikiLeaks and the latest related news see: The US embassy cables + News (www.guardian.co.uk) or BBC News – Wikileaks revelations (www.bbc.co.uk)

It’s most interesting to see which (online) newspaper brings which WikiLeaks (and related) story…

This is where you can see where everyone stands. This is where you can see whom you can trust.

Anonymous, Operation Payback and a possible candidate for a viral video

Meanwhile Anonymous (en.wikipedia.org) is on the move:

Wikileaks defended by hacktivists (www.bbc.co.uk)

This is their latest video, total views on YouTube are rising fast for this one at the moment…

Operation Payback – Anonymous Message About ACTA Laws, Internet Censorship and Copyright (1:50)

Update 1:

It’s a bit hard to catch everything that’s being said in the V.O., so here is the text from the video’s YouTube page (click those arrows under the total views number to see it):

“Corrupt governments of the world, we are anonymous. For some time now, voices have been crying out in unison against the new ACTA laws. The gross inadequacies of the new laws being passed internationally have been pointed out repeatedly. Our chief complaint is that such measures would restrict people’s access to the internet.

In these modern times access to the internet is fast becoming a basic human right. Just like any other basic human right, we believe that it is wrong to infringe upon it. To threaten to cut people off from the global consciousness as you have is criminal and abhorrent. To move to censor content on the internet based on your own prejudice is at best laughably impossible, at worst, morally reprehensible.

The unjust restrictions you impose on us will meet with disaster and only strengthen our resolve to disobey and rebel against your tyranny. Such actions taken against you, and those you out source your malignant litigation too, are inevitable, unavoidable and unstoppable.

We Are Anonymous,

We Are Legion And Divided By Zero.

We Do Not Forgive Internet Censorship

And We Do Not Forget Free Speech.

We Are Over 9000,

Expect Us!”

“We are no longer that generation that does not care. (…) We are now the generation at the heart of the Fight Back. We are now the generation that will stand with everyone who is fighting back.”

Coalition of Resistance conference | School Student | 27 Nov 2010 (4:50)

Counterfire (www.counterfire.org) and Coalition of Resistance Against Cuts & Privatisation (www.coalitionofresistance.org.uk)

Found via P2P Foundation (blog.p2pfoundation.net)

So this is basically like an Alpha/Beta test run for getting started with Lightworks if you don’t mind using Windows and know what you are doing.

Having seen Paul give a Lightworks demo at our last final BUG meeting I was still quite impressed. So assuming the source code will be released in 2011 and all remaining issues they might have will be solved I definitely can see the potential here:

* I believe after seeing that 30 min. or so demo I’d feel comfortable enough to start editing/working on a (short test) project without any further manual reading (assuming I’d have a stable version already installed). Lightworks is pretty easy and intuitive to use while also being different to others NLEs:

* Basically there is not much to see at first except for that left hand (floating) side bar with those icons. What you then do is choose the tools you need for the particular task you wish to perform. So at first it’s tabula rasa and not the usual timeline with the player/recorder (or whatever they might be called) windows on top. Experienced Blender (2.49b) users will be familiar with this kind of philosophy…

* It has advanced trimming features some of which not even Avid has. Again these tools are easy to use, also easier compared to what you need to do in Avid and certainly much easier and much more useful than what in comparison seem to be only half hearted trimming features in FCP.

* While the Blender VSE (see my Tutorials page for more) is a wonderful, minimal style NLE that already works on all major platforms and will most probably remain my tool of choice for my own (3D) shorts, Lightworks has the potential of becoming something like the LibreOffice (was OpenOffice) of the NLE world: it’s a specialised tool for (film) editing, it’s very powerful, quite elegant and has a well known track record in the industry.

From the Lightworks website:

“Having cut hundreds of films such as Pulp Fiction, The Departed, Centurion and Shutter Island, it includes a full feature set of editorial tools, from advanced trimming and media management, through to stereoscopic support and realtime effects including multiple secondary colour correctors.”

In any case: competition is always good for the users. :-)

There will be another Lightworks session at the next final BUG meeting, so drop by if you are in Berlin and want to check out what may well turn out to be the (open-source) film and video editing solution in the not so distant future.

So Avid, FCP and all others beware of that shark…!

Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne

Und die trägt er im Gesicht

Und Macheath, der hat ein Messer

Doch das Messer sieht man nicht

(Source)

Oh the shark has pretty teeth dear,

And he shows them pearly white

Just a jack-knife has Macheath dear

And he keeps it out of sight

(Source)

PayPal Cuts WikiLeaks’ Access to Funds Amid Global Scrutiny (www.businessweek.com)

Paypal bans Wikileaks just before midnight Friday (www.boingboing.net)

Paypal stoppt Geldfluss an Wikileaks (www.spiegel.de)

Maybe Flattr is an interesting alternative for you…? (en.wikipedia.org)

Update: see also Wikileaks, UFOs, Fatwas und PayPal (www.heise.de/tp/)

Julian Assange answers your questions (www.guardian.co.uk):

Do you have leaks on ACTA?

Yes, we have leaks on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a trojan horse trade agreement designed from the very beginning to satisfy big players in the US copyright and patent industries. In fact, it was WikiLeaks that first drew ACTA to the public’s attention – with a leak.

Recommended reading.

Showdown for free speech in Germany

As previously discussed it does not look good at all for blogging, online indie media, art and free speech in Germany. Next week might already tell if Berlin and Germany will still be a relevant place to be for new media, online art and anyone considering investing time and money in this country:

Berlin: Infoveranstaltung & Entscheidung zum JMStV (www.netzpolitik.org)

JMStV: Emails an Abgeordnete (www.netzpolitik.org)

And there is yet another potentially serious problem for bloggers in Germany, the Leistungsschutzrecht: think of it as software patents for snippets of words. Basically established media will have exclusive rights to certain phrases they “created”. The article says a website explaining the problem will go online in mid-December.

Ein neues Monopol mit irreführendem Namen (www.heise.de)

Update 1: This is related… One wonders if the same might not have happened in Germany in regards to the JMStV…?!

Wikileaks cables reveal that the US wrote Spain’s proposed copyright law (www.boingboing.net)

Update 2: The Wikileaks Copyright Cables: Confirmations Not Revelations (www.michaelgeist.ca)

In the Land of the Fee free speech is no longer welcome:

WikiLeaks website pulled by Amazon after US political pressure (www.guardian.co.uk), Sen. Joe Lieberman: Amazon Has Pulled Hosting Services For WikiLeaks (techcrunch.com) and WikiLeaks website kicked off Amazon’s servers (finance.yahoo.com)

That’s it for Amazon for me then. I was just about to order a whole bunch of DVDs and I do like the idea of voting with my wallet. Boycott Amazon now!

WikiLeaks is the best thing that could have happened to this crazy world we live in. I can’t express with words how grateful I am for the courage of all those making this possible. Finally some sanity.

Being a 100% Atheist I usually don’t quote from that particular book, but this is a good one: “The truth shall set you free”

WikiLeaks links

The US embassy cables + News (www.guardian.co.uk) and News blog: see daily WikiLeaks US embassy cables: live updates (www.guardian.co.uk)

Documents WikiLeaks (www.lemonde.fr)

Los papeles del departamento de estado (www.elpais.com)

State’s Secrets (www.nytimes.com)

Die Botschaftsdepeschen (www.spiegel.de)

also:

WikiLeaks website (wikileaks.org) and Cable Viewer (cablegate.wikileaks.org) and for donations: WikiLeaks Support (wikileaks.org)

Update 7:

WikiLeaks – Mirrors of our website (wikileaks.ch)

Update 6:

See also WikiLeaks address finder (savewikileaks.net)

Update 5:

WikiLeaks website: http://wikileaks.ch/ or http://wikileaks.de/ or http://wikileaks.fi/ or http://wikileaks.nl/ or http://88.80.13.160 or http://213.251.145.96/

WikiLeaks on Twitter (twitter.com/wikileaks)

WL Central (wlcentral.org)

Source WikiLeaks logo

Update 1: See also Assange lawyer speaks for more about those “rape charches”… (www.crikey.com.au) and No, Wikileaks’s Julian Assange isn’t accused of rape “Assange is being prosecuted for having sex without a condom…” (!!!) (liberalconspiracy.org)

Update 2: As always my favourite news source for breaking news, also one of the best ones for a quick overview of all new important WikiLeaks is BBC News as well as their Wikileaks revelations (www.bbc.co.uk)

Update 3:

Cyber attack forces Wikileaks to change web address (www.bbc.co.uk)

WikiLeaks web address killed after week of attacks (www.guardian.co.uk)

Lieberman Introduces Anti-WikiLeaks Legislation (www.wired.com)

WikiLeaks.org killed – discussion on reddit (www.reddit.com)

Wikileaks Mirrors (wikileaks.info)

Update 4:

France seeks to bar hosting WikiLeaks website (www.reuters.com)

Troubled Wikileaks Moves To Pirate Party Domain (torrentfreak.com)

The legal hoops for a small blog like mine with self produced media content (incl. links and “making available for free download” of my own feature film Vincent, 44 min., 16mm > 35mm blow-up, made in Austria in 1996/2003) seem too complicated, expensive and for sure too risky to take without legal advice, that I now seriously ponder about doing the following:

* remove my indiworks.wordpress.com blog
* remove my indiworks.blip.tv videoblog
* remove all my online videos from the Internet Archive (incl. Vincent and His Girl Friday – Between the lines edit (www.archive.org) as well as all my 3D shorts)

and

* move from Berlin/Germany to another EU country where I find political sanity and understanding of new media/online art/blogging etc.

If you happen to be a new media investor, blogger, artist, film maker etc. planning to move to Berlin/Germany (as I did in 1999) because you’ve heard of a vibrant, off-mainstream (online) art/media scene:

* you may want to think twice now and keep a close look at the events unfolding in the days and weeks to come and opt for another location than Berlin/Germany for your investments and business to be

* it may well be that we now only have 31 days left until a de facto censorship law will make it easy for (big media) lawyers to either get rid of your work or to force you into classifying your work with a (from) “18″ (years on) label

I do hope that EU commissioner Neelie Kroes (and her staff), who recently held a vibrant speech for a copyright reform (europa.eu) will recognise these established media tactics for what they are: force indie content provider (self made, original works!) to shut down distribution of their e.g. Creative Commons licensed works using laws like the Jugendmedienschutzstaatsvertrag (JMStV) that is really only going to be there to help big media widen it’s existing monopoly-like position.

Not only copyright law needs to be reformed but Europe also needs to protect art and artist from hidden censorship like the German Jugendmedienschutzstaatsvertrag (JMStV).

In other words: even if you are trying very hard to abide to the already very restrictive copyright and “intellectual property” laws (e.g. doing remix works with Public Domain footage like myself) you may still get into expensive legal troubles or have to label your work with only for “18″ in order to be on the safe side. I’d rather move to another country. Thank you very much Greens for betraying us (parlamentarische-zwaenge.de)! Yet another reason for only voting Pirate Party in all future elections!!!

So this in short is why I now soon may have to say:

Goodbye to Berlin

Meine Damen und Herren, Mesdames et Messieurs,

Willkommen, bienvenue, welcome

Im Cabaret, au Cabaret, to Cabaret

…

Update(s):

see also:

http://t3n.de/news/neuer-jmstv-286977/

http://www.schockwellenreiter.de/blog/2010/11/30/jmstv-und-weiter/

http://yuccatree.de/2010/11/jugendmedienschutz-staatsvertrag-bundeslander-beschliesen-juristisches-chaos-fur-blogger/

http://blog.pantoffelpunk.de/brechmittel/wieder-neue-wahlplakate-der-gruenen-geleakt

http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/0,1518,732060,00.html

http://www.netzpolitik.org/2010/wider-das-grose-blogschliesen-wegen-des-jmstv/

http://www.netzpolitik.org/2010/jugendmedienschutz-wende-nach-dem-shitstor/

http://www.netzpolitik.org/2010/jmstv-in-berlin-parlamentarische-zwange-auch-bei-der-linken/

http://www.golem.de/1011/79772.html

http://ak-zensur.de/

and some first legal analysis (found via http://blog.fefe.de/):

http://blog.beck.de/2010/11/30/jugendmedienstaatsvertrag-und-altersfreigabe-im-internet

yet more…:

http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2010-11/gruene-nrw-internet-jugendschutz

http://www.testspiel.de/archives/2010/11/30/linksammlung-zum-jugendmedienschutz-staatvertrag-jmstv/ (more links, some listed here some not)

http://berlinnow.org/?p=737

http://www.robertbasic.de/2010/11/jmstv-novellierung-herkunft-und-gruende/

http://www.indiskretionehrensache.de/2010/11/deutschlands-parteien-unwahlbar-eine-wutrede/

http://itspublique.de/archives/8795

and don’t forget:

https://twitter.com/gruenenrw/status/9305356467445760:

Wir sind weiterhin gegen den #JMStV, die Fraktion hat sich aufgrund parlamentarischer Zwänge anders entschlossen.

some more links:

http://pressetext.at/news/101201003/internet-jugendschutz-geht-an-realitaet-vorbei/

http://diepresse.com/home/techscience/internet/614762/Jugendschutz_Deutschland-droht-die-InternetWueste

and not much more to say than that one…

http://www.fischfresse.de/2010/11/jugendschutz-medien-der-neue-jmstv-satire-jugendmedienschutz-staatsvertrag/

WikiLeaks is expected to release a substantial number of documents that seem to make the US pretty nervous: “Reports say Turkey, Israel, Denmark and Norway have also been warned to expect potential embarrassment from the leaks.” (www.bbc.co.uk)

I think it’s only fair that some politicians should feel really embarrassed: the Irak War was started, as most wars, under a pretext, there was, as always with wars, a higher good that needed to be defended, yet many people already knew at the time that it was really only about oil and influence in the region.

100 000s of people paid with their lives (en.wikipedia.org) for the greed, cowardice and incompetence of those in charge. The truth must be known. That’s the least we can do now.

I also feel that there is some real justice about to be done by these leaks: governments all over the world ignore their people’s calls for more (online) privacy and have simply become whores to big money/lobbyists: RIAA, MPAA (today better know as MAFIAA) or TSA porn scanners are just a few of the more recent and better known examples.

While the actual context is a bit different, I just need to quote again from that new Harry Potter movie when thinking of WikiLeaks: “You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide” Right…? Right…? I guess this is a bit like Operation Payback (torrentfreak.com) only bigger. Go WikiLeaks!

WikiLeaks links

WikiLeaks on Twitter (twitter.com/wikileaks)

WikiLeaks website (wikileaks.org)

Update 5:

WikiLeaks – Mirrors of our website (wikileaks.ch)

OWNI, Digital Journalism, is liveblogging about the events unfolding! (owni.fr)

Update 1, 28.11.10, 18:06:

WikiLeaks on Twitter:

“We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack.”

and

“El Pais, Le Monde, Speigel, Guardian & NYT will publish many US embassy cables tonight, even if WikiLeaks goes down”

davidleigh3 on Twitter: “The #guardian will publish US embassy #cables tonight, even if #wikileaks goes down”

Some other alternative news links

It’s always interesting to check out some more alternative/specialised news sites. Not only in context of the upcoming leak:

NachDenkSeiten – Die kritische Website: a critical look at (mostly but not only) German politics. (www.nachdenkseiten.de)

heise online is the alternative German tech news site. As with so many sites this is one where I just skim the articles and mostly read the user’s comments! (www.heise.de)

Fefes Blog, in German and from Berlin, is about not so well known or perceived events/facts. Recommended for news/trend hunters and critical, open-minded people. Not only, but also focus on Germany. (blog.fefe.de)

Slashdot is of course “News for nerds, stuff that matters”, a classic, tech news and more, it’s all about the discussions to those articles… (slashdot.org)

OSNews is “Exploring the Future of Computing“, this is the site that earlier this year had that MPEG-LA/H.264 story. (www.osnews.com)

TorrentFreak is about the People vs. The MAFIAA and more, in addition to the articles I also recommend reading some of those many comments. (torrentfreak.com)

Democracy Now: alternative world news from the US. (www.democracynow.org)

Update 3-4:

netzpolitik.org: in German, web, media, politics and more (www.netzpolitik.org)

TELEPOLIS: in German, politics, culture, media and more, sister site from heise online (www.heise.de/tp/)

Der Schockwellenreiter: in German, web, politics, media and more (www.schockwellenreiter.de)

Update 2:

Just one mainstreamish news link: one of the best and most comprehensive all in one news sites I know, with a wonderful layout in traditional newspaper style with columns (good to read), also has links to the most important major news sites/publications on the left hand sidebar:

Arts & Letters Daily – ideas, criticism, debate

“David” by Michelangelo can – at this point – still be seen at the Galleria dell’ Accademia, Florence/Italy

(Source: Wikipedia)

In the near future it may not matter how old you actually are (!!!), “erotic” depictions of your naked body or any erotic material may be highly illegal to produce or possess, even if you can prove that those involved are e.g. 25!

Of course there is a very cynical pretext, this legislative proposal says it aims at child pornography. Yet de facto this is “freedom from porn” the way Steve Jobs was preaching it. This law should be a pope’s wet dream come true…

So e.g. if your partner happens to be Asian and you made some nude snapshots on the beach you may already be out of luck: if a European judge feels that your Asian partner “looks younger than 18″ you and your partner may already be in serious legal troubles.

And what about art…? Caravaggio’s nude boy in “Amor Vincit Omnia”…? Will it have to be moved from the museum…? Could Michaelangelo’s David not seem (too) erotic and look like he was under age…? Careful if you are a film maker and planing a coming of age drama! I guess Larry Clark’s “Kids” could already be highly problematic in this context…

Of course a whole generation of Xtube, Porntube etc. (young) adults of 18+ will face a serious problem: if someone thinks you “look (!!!) under 18″ it will be enough to criminalise you and your fans. Your ID card will not help you here! And once e.g. a news paper writes that you have produced or possessed child porn it will be almost impossible to defend your good name.

“Amor Vincit Omnia” by Caravaggio can – at this point – still be seen at the Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin/Germany

(Source: Wikipedia)

This really is simply how censorship starts. Just take a delicate topic like CP, broaden the definition and once the laws are put in place it will be easy to use this to get rid of anyone you wish to target. An art book with nude paintings or a David Hamilton photography book may be enough. And an erotic Manga style comic book may be even more dangerous to possess… Also be sure to get rid of that old sex education book or your parent’s naturist guide from the 1960s, it may well get you in serious trouble!

I wonder if those “looking younger than 18″ or those possessing “erotic” depictions of those “looking younger than 18″ will at one point have to wear some kind of label…? I suggest a star. Pink should do. This worked before and should work again.

As the lawyer linked from that article above says: this legislative proposal does not help children at all, actual victims of CP. What it does is possibly criminalise any “erotic” depiction of those who are 18+ and it also potentially criminalises a whole generation of teens/young adults. The only legal porn in Europe then would be one for and with old people. I’m sure there is a market too. Yet all youngsters and couples who might share nude pics and videos among one another or anyone using sites like Porntube could easily face jail time. So if you are a parent beware of your teenage kids: their naked bodies are about to be declared “illegal”. Be prepared to visit them in prison.

Europe beware. It looks like a storm is coming. (Corporate) Fascism is definitely just around the corner. This one is about censorship and the pretext is as cynical as it could possibly get.

And what a coincidence that at the same time the TSA porn scanners, that are according to experts not helping with safety at all, but as Americans found out are only there to humiliate you, are being installed at an airport near you. This is all about intimidation and control. “You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.”

ACTA is on the way (EU-Parlament begrüßt Anti-Piraterie-Abkommen ACTA/EU parliament welcomes Anti-Piracy-Agreement ACTA) (www.heise.de), “terror warnings” make the round and lobbyists are trying to pass laws that will bring us back to the middle age. That’s real “freedom from porn”. By all means do enjoy your iPad – while you still can…

It’s so good to know that young people will still be sent to fight wars and while they may drive a car and buy alcohol at (around) 18, “erotic” depictions of  their bodies and their sexual practices may soon be illegal and could destroy their and their loved one’s lives.

I also wonder if those very young, semi-nude boys with wings in all those Catholic Churches around Europe will then have to be removed one day too…? Probably they will be exempt from censorship for “religious” reasons – now that the pope has allowed condoms for male prostitutes it looks like these are going to be good times indeed for those highly respected moral guardians of our society. Think of the children…!

Witches will be hunted. Books will be burned. Again.

Specially the beginning of the “Deathly Hallows” is quite eerie since right now here in Germany we have to endure government “terror warnings”: as you might have guessed, those in favour of more restrictive (on-line) surveillance laws could not have hopped for a better occasion.

Who is trying to scare whom and for what purpose one might ask? Surely the financial crisis that the Euro/Europe is facing has nothing to do with it. And there is also no currency war as our papers, our “Daily Prophets” let us know.

Harry Potter fans will also find it too easy and inappropriate to replace “half-blood” with the latest minority scapegoat: Niedersachsens Innenminister fordert Handy- und PC-Verbot für “Gefährder” (Niedersachsen’s Minister of the Interior asks for PC and mobile phone ban for “endangerer”) (www.heise.de).

Meanwhile, also in real life, we have a new “Enemy Undesirable no. 1″, Julian Assange of Wikileaks, now there is even an international arrest warrant for him. Like before the charges are rape. Whatever the truth turns out to be, the whole story surely must be extremely inconvenient for some…

The timing for the release of the “Deathly Hallows” could not have been better, the only real downturn today were those 45 min. (!!!) of ads before the movie started. But not even they could ruin it for me. You just might want to be really late if going to see the “Deathly Hallows” at the Cinestar/Potsdamer Platz in Berlin. 45 min. of ads that’s half a feature film! They really try very hard to make you not wanting to go you to the movies these days and then even insult you with state television ads (for ARD, ZDF): I don’t have a TV, I don’t watch TV, yet I have to pay my GEZ fees since I own an “internet ready PC”. And when I go to the movies and pay for seeing a film I now have to watch ads for some crappy TV shows that I surely don’t want to see yet even had to finance with my GEZ fees for that “internet ready PC”… I’m just glad we still live in a Democracy, have free media and fair competition in the TV/media world!

Oh well, back to film life. There is a really quite wonderful and also beautifully edited moment/scene in the “Deathly Hallows”: Harry/Hermione dancing in the tent… This movie works because the film makers trust their own story, the pacing is very good, the music subtle and never over the top till the very end of the credits. J.K. Rowling’s story telling power totally pays off, I’m really looking forward to the last part of the series now.

While certainly not an indie movie, I’m writing here about the “Deathly Hallows” since the (hidden), what I’d call subversiveness of the story/the books (I’ve read them all) is really well captured and should be inspiring for anyone interested in (what I believe is great) story telling.

“Deathly Hallows” is told in darkish, almost pastel style colours *) (similar to the previous one from the series, also directed by David Yates who now did three in a row), the young heroes are on their final journey through a post-time England, London, small towns, (snowy) landscapes and forests, on the run and searching for those Horcruxes that need to be destroyed... *) After a second viewing: the colours are maybe better described as somehow desaturated, blue/grey and brown pastelish, the overall mood of the film being dark.

Having read the books I know of course how it all will end, yet I wonder, where a real life Harry Potter type hero would be looking for a Horkrux and what they might look like…?

“You have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide.” That’s a good one, really.

Will we be hearing more of those type of quotes in the not so distant future…?

Check your “Daily Prophets” to find out…

“Unter Freunden” is a short by WEED (www.weed-online.org) (Weltwirtschaft, Okologie und Entwicklung) about the intentions of the financial lobby/politics.

It’s in German with no subtitles: basically you have the Maker (politician), the Tactician (banker/lobbyist) and the Seller (finance fund industry/lobbyist). The Maker talks on TV and urges not to “question the whole financial system” just because there is a crisis… Then we are in a room where the Tactician and the Seller talk to the Maker and seem to tell him that banks etc. should be paying for the financial crisis and so on. The Maker is confused… In the end it turns out that the Tactician and the Seller were only joking, pulling the Maker’s leg…

I guess if you are Irish you would not know whether to laugh or cry when seeing this… Ireland ‘in preliminary talks with EU on bailout’ (www.bbc.co.uk)

Also in German but related: Neue Impulse (www.neueimpulse.org), see e.g. their Downloads section for a short about money/the financial system.

If you are currently researching that subject you might also want to check out writer/director G. Edward Griffin (en.wikipedia.org) and his work (“The Creature from Jekyll Island”). I have  neither seen the whole movie yet nor read the book, but from what I’ve seen this should be another mind opener like the previously posted “Zeitgeist: Addendum” by Peter Joseph.

I guess it’s time to wake-up, again… So be sure to know which is the blue and which the red pill. Scary stuff indeed.

Corporations, their lobbyists, the puppets they bought (aka politicians) and those who make the world go round (aka bankers) will be meeting for another secret round of ACTA talks soon: Anti-Piraterie-Abkommen ACTA wird weiter verhandelt (www.heise.de).

Time for the system we got to know as Democracy is running out.

I believe the only acceptable way out of this mess will be to completely:

* reject ACTA
* name and shame those who initiated, designed and promoted it

But this might not happen.

That’s why we should be thinking ahead, for a solution to ACTA, once/if it is put in place. After thinking long and hard about all of this I believe I found it: FACTAP

You see once a system is so badly broken, so unjust, so corrupted as ours, there might not be an easy fix, a simple reform might not do any more.

On the positive side…

Lately there seem to be a few sane high-profile voices joining in an important debate, see (EU) Commissioner Kroes: Copyright Reform Needed (www.osnews.com), European Commissioner Lambasts ‘Copyright Middlemen’ (torrentfreak.com) or UK copyright laws to be reviewed, announces Cameron (www.bbc.co.uk).

I wonder if this is not too little too late…?

I’ve been supportive of the Creative Commons movements for years by publishing all my online works under one of their licenses and I will be supportive of this movement in the future. It’s a good start. Yet I feel it might not be enough any more…

I used to vote for the Green Party and while I am delighted that the Greens are doing sensationally well in Central Europa at this moment (23% in Germany should there be elections) I will be voting for the Pirate Party at future occasions where possible. I can’t agree with the argument that “Those pirates who really want to shape intellectual property policy will be better advised to join the more established parties” (fosspatents.blogspot.com). I’d be glad to see the Greens taking on the copyright issue, yet so far I simply have not heard enough from them to satisfy me. And even the Pirate Party might not be enough once and if ACTA is in place…

“Reforming” a system that’s so badly broken as ours simply might not work out: once Democracy is gone for good and Plutocracy, Corporate Fascism or whatever you want to call it has (semi-)officially arrived it might be too late to even talk about these things in public.

We live in a time where those defending free speech (in Europe) have to fear for their safety: Wikileaks founder may seek Swiss asylum: interview (news.yahoo.com). Be prepared to hear about people with critical minds tragically dying in an “air plane accident”, a “car crash” etc. It happened before and it might happen again.

Add to the mix yet more government surveillance (look at the UK for inspiration). This of course will, as always, be for “public safety”: Big Brother, thanks to TV networks, is now simply known to most people as an entertainment format. That’s brainwashing at it’s best. George Orwell would be proud.

In the end I don’t care if the Green Party or the Pirate Party or (as unlikely as it seems) any of the more mainstream parties brings back sanity.

For me this is not about about left and right, simply about right and wrong, or better: it is about fair and unfair.

So what is FACTAP…?

First of all it is a cure for ACTA, the antidote.

ACTA is a “treaty” negotiated in secrecy by lobbyists. It’s about corruption and it is dangerously undemocratic.

FACTAP shall be a public discussion – if public discussions will still be possible that is… Food for thoughts: ACTA will force your ISP to censor your work if someone lodges an unsupported trademark claim (www.boingboing.net)

The idea is that the system then will be broken so badly, so corrupted that something more radical than a simply “copyright reform” will be needed.

Basically FACTAP is about:

* Getting rid of copyright altogether. No replacement. Whatsoever.

* Getting rid of (software) patents altogether. No replacement. Whatsoever.

* What remains is that someone gets credit for their work.

Now it’s interesting that credit not only is about getting named in the context of your work/recognition for your work, but also has to do with credibility, someone might trust you with money (that is if money should still be worth the sum that’s printed on it in the near future…), someone gives you credit, since you previously have proven to produce something of value, e.g. written a book. Getting credit is like collection Karma points.

Since I still think that no one actually can “invent” anything that was not there already (we can only “discover” what nature previously “invented”), copyright and patents are simply an expression of human arrogance, they show our darker sides, the urge to control, conquer and posses for the sake of feeling in control of life, yet in the end we all still remain mortals. “Intellectual property” is really just the latest new age religion (without a spiritual element) for the rich and wealthy, an intellectual frame work constructed to justify their highly immoral deeds and practices.

I believe getting “credit” for one’s work is really all that we need.

Money of course always seems to mess up things and instead of going the more adequate, more humble road, we (might) end up with a monster like ACTA.

And if you think the content MAFIAA was bad then be prepared for the next round: White paper on 3D printing and the law: the coming copyfight (www.boingboing.net)

So dear “politicians”, if you still care a little bit about the people that elected you (that is if elections were not rigged), now is probably one of the last chances to stop this madness and reject ACTA for good!

Then maybe a “copyright reform” might still make sense.

Yet if ACTA should be installed, Democracy will be gone. There will be no need to insult us any further by holding elections that fewer and fewer people turn up to for good reasons. Be honest and call it Corporate Fascism. It’ll make things much easier for everyone. Really.

Once ACTA is in place the only thing we might need is FACTAP as its cure.

And FACTAP is so simple, that even politicians should be able to understand it:

Fuck All Copyright Trolls And Patents

That’s FACTAP.

“Choose wisely”, as they say.

LimeWire Resurrected By Secret Dev Team (torrentfreak.com)

It is based on LimeWire 5.6 beta and “in many ways, it is better”: “All dependencies on LimeWire LLC’s servers have been removed, all remote settings have been disabled, the Ask toolbar has been unbundled, and all features of LimeWire PRO have been activated for free.” “There’s no adware or spyware: the piratical monkeys are doing this for the benefit of the community.”

TorrentFreak’s verdict so far: “Currently only available for Windows, in our tests LimeWire Pirate Edition functioned perfectly well and is already circulating on BitTorrent.”

While I personally neither use Windows nor have use for this (see here for why) I believe it is a good thing to have yet one more P2P client available for those who need it!

As others have said before: cut off one of the hydra’s heads and two new ones will grow. Now there is not even a company behind this software that the nice gentlemen from the MAFIAA might be able to talk to.

Life finds its way. All for one, and one for all. The bitch is back.

space visual (early period) (2010), 3:48

watch the flash video above or download (xvid, 960×540)

music: jan joachimsen

video: valentin spirik

license: by-nc-nd 3.0 *)

a theora etc. encoded version will be added – this one needed to be in xvid for a submission!

as of today the flash video above and the download linked above feature an optimised encoded version (as opposed to the original upload to my blip.tv account from two days ago): same source but the more accurate gop size (from 15 to 5 now) got rid of a semi-visible encoding artefact and overall improves the quality without adding much to the file size.

*) 26.10.10: I will upgrade the license later to a more remix culture friendly one – the plan is to do this for a yet to do full HD rendered version that will also only be available in a real open-source codec that is actually compatible with remix culture. (The Xvid one then will be removed!)

Download

Discussion

or

get Blender…

Filed under: 3d, animation, blender, creative commons, open movie, sintel ]]> http://indiworks.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/sintel-the-new-blender-made-open-movie-is-here/feed/ 0 vsworks sintel_poster http://indiworks.wordpress.com/2010/09/26/the-content-mafiaa-vs-the-people-week-382010-mpaa-acta/ http://indiworks.wordpress.com/2010/09/26/the-content-mafiaa-vs-the-people-week-382010-mpaa-acta/#comments Sun, 26 Sep 2010 21:56:47 +0000 vsworks http://indiworks.wordpress.com/?p=1629 ]]> The EU, Gallo and ACTA

Bericht über “geistige Eigentumsrechte” passiert EU-Parlament (www.heise.de)

Auch Tote unterstützen den Gallo-Report (www.gulli.com)

The MPAA > ACTA link

MPAA Asks If ACTA Can Be Used To Block Wikileaks (yro.slashdot.org)

MPAA Wants To Know If ACTA Can Be Used To Block Wikileaks? (www.techdirt.com)

Civil Disobedience

Stallman Crashes Talk, Fights ‘War On Sharing’ (news.slashdot.org)

Disconnecting the People

In France, Hadopi Reporting Begins, With (Only) 10,000 IP Addresses Per Day (yro.slashdot.org)

Multinational copyright companies will require French ISPs turn over 150,000 subscriber names and addresses per day (www.boingboing.net)

US ISP Suddenlink Claims The DMCA Requires They Disconnect Users (www.techdirt.com)

US ISP Adopts Three-Strikes Policy (yro.slashdot.org)

US ISP Disconnects Alleged Pirates for 6 Months (torrentfreak.com)

Bill Would Allow US DoJ To Shut Down Piracy Sites Worldwide (www.osnews.com)

Extorting the People

ACS:Law Anti-Piracy Law Firm Torn Apart By Leaked Emails (torrentfreak.com)

ACS:Law (Gay) Porn Letters Target Pensioners, Married Men (torrentfreak.com) (This by the way is what you get when you preach “Freedom from porn“ (techcrunch.com).”)

ACS:Law Email Database Leaked onto The Pirate Bay (www.slyck.com)

UK Anti-Piracy Firm E-mails Reveal Cavalier Attitude Toward Legal Threats (yro.slashdot.org)

Leaked Emails Reveal Profits of Anti-Piracy Cash Scheme (torrentfreak.com)

*** *** ***

In other news…

Google, Apple Settle Justice Dept. Hiring Probe (yro.slashdot.org)

EU stellt Verfahren gegen Apple ein (www.heise.de)

Apple Passes PetroChina to Become Second-Largest Stock (www.bloomberg.com)

Facebook’s Zuckerberg Now Richer Than Apple’s Steve Jobs (blogs.forbes.com)

Some perspective on those last links…

From Steve Jobs to MPAA, MPEG-LA, ACTA and your life

Steve Jobs of course is not only the CEO of Apple, but used to be the CEO of Pixar, that was before he sold Pixar to Disney and subsequently became “Disney’s largest individual shareholder at 7% and a Director of the company” (see Wikipedia).

***

Now there is an organisation called Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

“MPAA members include the “seven big” Hollywood studios:

Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group (The Walt Disney Company)

Sony Pictures (Sony Corporation)

Paramount Pictures (Viacom)

20th Century Fox (News Corporation)

Universal Studios (NBC Universal)

Warner Bros. (Time Warner)” (see Wikipedia)

***

And there is another interesting organisation called MPEG-LA (links to my related blog entries),

this is the patent pool behind H.264 and MPEG-2:

MPEG-2 is what everyone needs for a DVD.

H.264 is the codec used in basically any (prosumer) camera, including mobile phones like in Apple’s offerings. As previously discussed: you do not own your own H.264 footage, even transcoding will not help you in escaping the MPEG-LA’s licensing fees (for commercial use).

Apple of course is also an H.264 patent holder and was the only major player not willing to give some kind of official support to the free and open-source WebM project.

And of course you may not use any open-source codec if Steve Jobs will have it his way.

So there are two interesting sets of links to remember in all of this

Steve Jobs > Pixar > Disney > MPAA > ACTA > your (digital) life (think freedom of speech, WikiLeaks, …)

Steve Jobs > Apple > MPEG-LA > software patents > ACTA > your digital life (think fees for H.264, “freedom from porn“, freedom from…)

The Content MAFIAA

vs.

The People

Austrian newspaper derStandard.at reports Urheberrechtsabgabe auf Festplatten ab Oktober (derstandard.at) – (new) fees on hard drives etc. for the content MAFIAA in Austria (Austro Mechana etc.) from October on.

The funny part: they say it’s for media that consumers already legally obtained…! So if you are stupid enough to still buy your content at the iTunes store (all your songs have dirty DRM (techcrunch.com) on it), you’ll now pay again, and then again, and again for the DRM content that you paid for already and do not own.

Now that seems just a little bit too greedy to me…

***

Meanwhile Jean-Luc Godard has said: “Il n’y a pas de propriété intellectuelle. Je suis contre l’héritage, par exemple.” “There is no such thing as intellectual property. I’m against the inheritance [of works], for example.” (www.ecrans.fr)

More on Boing Boing (boingboing.net): “I am against Hadopi [the French internet-copyright law, or its attendant agency], of course. There is no such thing as intellectual property. I’m against the inheritance [of works], for example. An artist’s children could benefit from the copyright of their parents’ works, say, until they reach the age of majority… But afterward, it’s not clear to me why Ravel’s children should get any income from Bolero…”

***

In other news the HDCP (en.wikipedia.org) Master key has been “leaked” (by whom…?), Sony’s DRM infested Blue-Ray has been cracked (hardware.slashdot.org) and Intel Threatens to Sue Anyone Who Uses HDCP Crack (www.wired.com).

***

When you read the comments on derStandard.at from that article linked above you can see that a lot of people are getting really angry at the content MAFIAA’s doing.

It’s a good thing that there are elections in Sweden this weekend. Unfortunately I am not Swedish and so the Swedish Pirate Party will have to do without my vote. But I am sure others will be there.

You see once people are really angry it’s just a matter of time until the day of glory has arrived…

***

Update: In yet more related news TorrentFreak reports that in “a call to arms yesterday” 4chan DDoS Takes Down MPAA and Anti-Piracy Websites (torrentfreak.com). “Don’t mess with the Internet they say.” (19.09.10): See also 4chan to DDoS RIAA Next – Is This the Protest of the Future? (torrentfreak.com), RIAA Goes Offline, Joins MPAA As Latest Victim Of Successful DDoS Attacks (techcrunch.com).

Update 2 (19.09.10): Looks like Intel is now trying to win an unpopularity contest with Apple when it comes to lock-in strategies and screwing the customer, not only will they sue you for using the HDCP crack: Intel wants to charge $50 to unlock stuff your CPU can already do (www.engadget.com), Intel Selling Scratch-Off “Upgrade” Cards To Unlock Processor Power (techcrunch.com)

Update 3 (21.10.10): Discussion/comment (by user blacklightknight from September 18, 2010) on HDCP Master Key Confirmed; Blu-ray Content Vulnerable (www.pcmag.com):

‘“a huge blow to Hollywood” ……really.

The only huge blow to Hollywood is the cocaine they snort every morning for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I have no love for them. They are nothing but organized criminals calling themselves an “industry”.‘

Hey Hollywood, notice just how much people love you…?!

For those not speaking German: the artist was angry when he could not watch a particular clip on YouTube because it “contains content from Sony Music Entertainment” and is “no longer available in your country”.

Fuck Sony Entertainment (sidsong.blog.de) by YouTube user KeinInterpret

C G
Ich wollte gestern morgen gern
am G
ein Lied von Rio Reiser hörn,
C em D
auf Youtube, wo sonst all seine Musik war, doch da hieß es:
C G
„Dieses Video enthält Content
C G
von Sony Music Entertainment.
am em D
Es ist in deinem Land nicht mehr verfügbar.“

C G D
Was würde Rio sagen
zu dem was Sony da tut?
Was würde Rio sagen?
Fände er das gut?
D D7
Ich weiß es nicht, aber ich sage:

G G/Fis em
„Fuck Sony Entertainment
für all die Videos die sie sperr’n!
Anwälte im Abmahnwahn
C G
sind Wichser vor dem Herrn!
G G/Fis em
Ich scheiß auf euern Content
ich kauf bei euch nix mehr ein!
Fuck Sony Entertainment
C G
und EMI obendrein!“

Ich seh das nicht zum ersten Mal
und am Anfang war’s mir fast egal,
doch langsam aber sicher packt mich echt der Hass.
Die sperren in Deutschland Stücke von
Michael Jackson, Johnny Cash, Van Morrison,
aber grad bei Rio finde ich das besonders krass!
Denn was würde Rio sagen?
Was hätte er gedacht?
Was würde Rio sagen
zu dem was Sony da macht?
Ich weiß es nicht, aber ich denke, irgendwie sowas wie

„Fuck Sony Entertainment
für eure Scheiß-Zensur!
Was Ihr euch davon versprecht
versteh ich nicht die Spur!
Ich komm zurück als Zombie,
das lässt mir keine Ruh!
Fuck Sony Entertainment
und Warner noch dazu!“

hm em
Ich finde, Rio ist für alle da
C G
doch scheinbar zählt ja nur
C G
deren Recht auf Umsatz
am G
und nicht unser Recht auf Kultur

Kein Pandora oder Spotify,
nein, in Deutschland geht das nicht.
Weil man ja hierzulande
mit streaming Gesetze bricht!

und wofür soll das gut sein?
Das ist es, was ich nicht versteh …
Denken die, wenn ich das auf Youtube nicht seh
renn ich los und kauf die DVD?

Das mach ich nicht, sondern ich sage:

„Fuck Sony Entertainment!
Fickt die großen Vier!
Die Plattenmultis, die ich hier
von jetzt an boykottier.
Ich zahl euch keinen müden Cent –
ich klaue, was ich brauch!
Fuck Sony Entertainment
und Universal auch!
Ich scheiß auf euern Content
ich kauf bei euch nix mehr ein!
Fuck Sony Entertainment
und EMI und Warner und Universal (und die Gema) obendrein!“

Watch the Flash Video on blip.tv

or

download

(you may want the VLC for playback)

This is a 2 min. remix using footage from my own movie “Vincent”, the original soundtrack to “Vincent” is by Konrad Richter.

“Me and h.264″ is distributed under this (by-nc-nd) Creative Commons license.

This is now the last video I upload in h.264, it’s also going to be the only one of my online videos left that will be in h.264.

All the others, old and new ones, will be in VP8 and/or Theora and other open-source codecs.

Yet this one just needs to be in h.264: as a reminder for why I have no plans to ever use h.264 again for anything!

= “In view of the FUD we spread…”

“…there have been expressions of interest from the market urging us to facilitate formation of licenses…”

= “…we’ve been repeatedly told that we are nothing but a patent troll Moloch (supported by Apple, MS and others)…”

“…that would address the market’s need for a convenient one-stop marketplace alternative to negotiating separate licenses with individual patent holders…”

= “…that is simply collecting protection money…”

“…in accessing essential patent rights for VP8 as well as other codecs, and we are looking into the prospects of doing so.”

= “…since we actually believe we own the moving image per se.”

Once more the translation:

“In view of the FUD we spread we’ve been repeatedly told that we are nothing but a patent troll Moloch (supported by Apple, MS and others) that is simply collecting protection money since we actually believe we own the moving image per se.”

Source Larry Horn interview: Digital Daily (digitaldaily.allthingsd.com)

Further reading and discussion: Patent Troll Larry Horn of MPEG-LA Assembling VP8 Patent Pool (www.osnews.com)

Watch online or download

About the movie (patentabsurdity.com)

CC licence: by-nd/3.0

(if you need it: VLC)

“After a landmark court ruling, the German perspective on the validity of software patents is now closer than ever to that of the US.”

When looking at the financial situation in Europe we should ask ourselves if we can afford these dangerous kind of situations. The H.264 licensing fiasco will probably go on for a while and might cost some (Apple…?) more than they would like to.

Update 1: Bundesgerichtshof ebnet Weg für Softwarepatente and BGH-Urteil zu Softwarepatenten stößt auf viel Kritik (www.heise.de)

Now what if political instability (due to the financial situation in Europe) is the next thing…? If my to be founded company will suffer in the future thanks to this (I live in Germany) I will remember that it were Microsoft’s FAT patents that brought us to this. Will those people ever learn? Will they ever be held responsible for their greed? This is the second time within a few weeks that Microsoft’s actions/patents are potentially threatening my future as an independent artist/filmmaker (first the H.264 licensing fiasco and now this).

Update 2: The discussion on Slashdot German High Court Declares All Software Patentable (yro.slashdot.org)

Entry for this particular patent, Xa ZB 20/08 (a Siemens patent), in the End Software Patents Wiki (en.swpat.org)

The part that worries me: (from the second www.heise.de article above)

“So gehen sie etwa bei der “Verbesserung des Kontrastes” eines Bilds oder bei der effizienteren Aufteilung von Arbeitsspeicher durch eine auf einem Computer laufende Software von einem “technischen Effekt” aus, der schutzwürdig sein könne.”

In short this basically says that enhancing the contrast of an image might be “a technical effect” that could be patentable…

Seems like an invitation to patent trolls, maybe from the video codec department…? At least we’ll have a very public discussion about why one would (not) want to use an H.264 camera…!

From a comment on www.heise.de (user B-E-N):

“Er hat, was es Computersoftware betrifft, ein
Urteil im Sinne von ”Alles unter der Sonne ist patentierbar”
getroffen. Damit sind wir selbstständigen Softwareentwickler und
kleinen Firmen im Abmahnland Deutschland juristisch gesehen tot,
beziehungsweise alle mit einem Bein im Knast. Der gesamte Kampf um
die Softwarepatente in Europa ging gestern für das größte und
wirtschaftlich bedeutendste Land der Union verloren.”

The user basically says that now “anything under the sun” could be patented, de facto a legal disaster for all small shops/software developers.

On a personal level this is just extremely disappointing, and having followed patent troll cases on Slashdot for the last ten years or so I now also have to consider the options of:

* leaving the country

* going back to analogue film/video

or

* changing profession and

* becoming an atheist monk in the Himalayas

Well done ladies and gentlemen from all those institutions/companies/corporations in this world that hold patents on software, well done!

You made my day.

WebM an open media project (www.webmproject.org)

Introducing WebM, an open web media project (webmproject.blogspot.com)

“The WebM project is dedicated to developing a high-quality, open video format for the web that is freely available to everyone.”

(Update 1)

An introduction to the WebM project:

Google Frees VP8 Codec for HTML5: the WebM project (openvideoalliance.org)

The WebM Project : about : WebM Supporters (www.webmproject.org)

(Update 2)

The announcement/discussion on the web:

BREAKING: Google Opens VP8 Codec, Enables it on YouTube (www.osnews.com)

Microsoft: Internet Explorer 9 To Support VP8 (www.osnews.com)

Google, Mozilla, And Opera Take On H.264 With The WebM Project, A New Royalty-Free Video Codec (techcrunch.com)

Google tries freeing Web video with WebM (news.cnet.com)

Microsoft planning to support VP8 in Internet Explorer 9 – with a catch (www.neowin.net)

Google launches open WebM web video format based on VP8 (update: hardware partners and Microsoft statement) (www.engadget.com)

Theora Founder: WebM Project is ‘Wonderful’ (newteevee.com)

The first in-depth technical analysis of VP8 (x264dev.multimedia.cx) – [Wikitech-l] VP8 freed!(lists.wikimedia.org)

Software and Hardware Companies Jump on Google’s WebM Train (mashable.com)

In the light of the recent aggressive attacks against filesharers this is an interesting turning point in this real life drama/story about (our) culture…

As I previously said it’s a bit silly to help your ideological/cultural “enemy” push the warez, but seen as political activism my sympathy is with the pirates:

Hollywood needs to understand the message behind all of this instead of trying to put that genie back into a bottle that never was right in the first place.

Hollywood, Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture book is a very good starting point to learn more about your fans/customer’s world and needs…!

Update 1: This is related, seems like a good time for a (new) discussion about copyright…! Why I Steal Movies… Even Ones I’m In – Peter Serafinowicz – Gizmodo (14.05.10)

Update 2: And this is the official announcement on the Pirate Bay blog (in lolcat):

PLZ LEARN: TPB CANT BE SHUT DOWN
LOL!
AS U MITE HAS READ OR NOTICD, PEEPS ONCE AGAIN R TRYIN 2 SHUT US DOWN. DIS WILL NOT SUCCED, LOL. OURS RLY NICE WEBHOST WUZ THREATEND WIF RLY HUGE FINE, SO WE DECIDD 2 MOOV TEH SIET SO DAT THEY DIDNT GOT INTO TROUBLE, LOL. TEH DECISHUN 2 MOOV WUZ TAKEN BY US, TEH PIRATE BAY, LOL.
TEH PIRATE BAY IZ AN UNSINKABLE SHIP. IT WILL SAIL TEH INTERWEBS 4 AS LONG AS WE WANTS IT 2. REMEMBR DAT, K THX.
TPB, ONLY IN IT 4 TEH LULZ SINCE 2003

(Source: Wikipedia MPEG LA)

Apple Inc.
DAEWOO
Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation
Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute
France Télécom, société anonyme
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.
Fujitsu Limited
Hitachi, Ltd.
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
LG Electronics Inc.
Microsoft Corporation
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
NTT docomo
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
Panasonic Corporation
Robert Bosch GmbH GmbH
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Scientific-Atlanta Vancouver Company
Sedna Patent Services, LLC
Sharp Corporation
Siemens AG
Sony Corporation
Ericsson
The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York
Toshiba Corporation
Victor Company of Japan, Limited

Further reading

Why Our Civilization’s Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the MPEG-LA

No, you can’t do that with H.264

Is H.264 a legal minefield for video pros?

Why this list…?

It’s a reminder for myself when it comes to spending money or investing in equipement. And yes, I like to share this list with everyone who cares about free artistic expression and who thinks that the moving image is too important and precious and should not be controlled by anyone and surely not by corporations or patent pools. (Software) patents are the cancer of this economy: they encourage greed, create monopolies, discourage innovation and as we are now seeing with the H.264 licensing fiasco they can seriously harm your video business, specially smaller ones.

This is also the project used to test the later this year to be released Blender 2.5, a pretty big leap forward from the current 2.49 series, specially but not only in terms of usability.

I am also one of the many mini-investors of this movie and you could be too! The Blender Foundation presells DVDs and you’ll get your name in the credits. Check out the Sintel (was: Durian) Blender Open Movie project blog!

My work would simply not be available online any more (thanks to software patents no alternative). Welcome to the age of Corporate Fascism. It’s standing at your and my front door. But you can still act now:

* vote with your browser: since Apple and Microsoft – both H.264 patent holders – are pushing for H.264 as the future web standard for video: simply dump your Apple/MS browsers now and use Firefox, Chrome or Opera. If not: you might be paying for the rest of your life with more ads (yes, H.264 is “free” for the end user…).

* let others know what is at stake here: those people would like to/are about to establish a MONOPOLY ON THE MOVING IMAGE (lock-in via video codec) – a pretty scary systemic change:

Why Our Civilization’s Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the MPEG-LA

And for all my younger – and not so young – readers: if this was a Harry Potter movie Dumbledore would say:

“Dark times lay ahead, Harry. Soon we’ll all have to choose between what is right — and what is easy.”

I see.

And here in Europe there is now one buyer less for “The Hurt Locker” DVD: me.

I’m quite of a fan of Kathryn Bigelow’s work, I was hyping that movie (among my friends) long before everyone was only talking about the movie that brought DRM to the mainstream cinema, “Avatar” (and no, I still have not seen “Avatar” yet because of the DRM they use).

From now on I will write about individual Hollywood movies and pick them out for boycott – just like Hollywood picks out individual fans that they’ll sue!

I love (good) movies. I don’t “pirate” movies for one good reason: “piracy” simply helps promoting (Hollywood) movies and I wish people would stop distributing what I think is really to about 9/10 unwatchable anyway.

Yet if Hollywood continues to sue my movies loving brothers and sisters I will stop buying from Hollywood entirely and I will stop watching new Hollywood movies entirely.

And in the long run:

I hope that all sane and creative people will stop working for an industry that has lost its touch to the audience long ago.

And this is not even talking in detail about the incredible superficiality and the poor handwork (e.g. scripts) that Hollywood pushes on the market these days.

I am specially sad that the makers of “The Hurt Locker” are now joining in the corporate fascism tactics that Hollywood is using. This movie is an exception, it’s actually really, really good – yet I will not buy it on DVD now, the movie simply will not exist in my collection, it will be missed, yet this is what needs to be done now.

This system needs to be changed. I won’t shut up. Not me.

Quickly they went and brought him a horse – a dead horse…

And when they took away his kingdom the King complained:

“But this is a dead horse…!”

They told the King that where they come from there used to be an old saying:

“When your horse is dead, get off the horse.”

Now over time, they told the King, things changed a bit and today the saying goes:

“When your horse is dead, go and sell your horse!”

And so it came that the King gave his whole kingdom -

Yet all he got – was this old and dead horse…!

The One and only,

Owner of all legal moving pictures compression algorithms of this world,

Great conqueror of Theora, Dirac and all the other “open source” algorithms,

Master of all moving pictures distribution channels that legally exist:

May You find the grace to give me my daily fix of de/en-coding today.

Hail to MPEG LA!

Hail! Hail! Hail!

As explained on engadget:

“…the person who sells the encoder and the person who sells the content are the ones who have to pay.”

So this here (also quoted from engadget) is *not* good:

“Yes, but it’s not as bad as it seems. First off, we’ve directly asked MPEG-LA whether or not using an H.264 camera simply to shoot video for a commercial purpose requires a license, and the answer is no.”

They are lawyers! R-e-f-r-a-s-e your question…!!!

“We’ve also asked whether an end user watching H.264 videos would ever have to pay or be licensed, and the answer to that question is also no. Yes, the license terms are worded poorly, but those are the answers straight from the patent horse’s mouth. Everyone can breathe again, ‘kay?”

Someone down the line will have to pay: “…the person who sells the content are the ones who have to pay”.

And what do you think will hold up in court? The written agreement you bought with the camera or what a clever lawyer says who obviously was sent to this H.264 PR event…? Those a l-a-w-y-e-r-s!!! Make them sign their own statements and be very careful with your wording…!!!

H.264 based video business = lock-in as soon as you push that record button

So if you are having a video business licensing fees for your H.264 recorded footage will be due down the line!

Basically your business will be *disadvantaged* over the business that avoids the H.264 lock-in!

H.264 licensing = the last one in the distribution chain pays, he gets the “Schwarzer Peter” (= the looser card – an old children’s card game here in Europe).

So what are my clients going to say when I sell them footage that they will need to pay licensing fees for…?! My guess is the bill will land on my table, at least it will weaken my position when it comes to selling/licensing my own video clip/3D footage!

I’m not so stupid and will build my business upon that model, pass on the “Schwarzer Peter” card (= looser card) to my clients!

As a film and video maker I like to 100% own my work.

What a lock-in business model it is that Apple, MS, the MPEG LA and all those companies that hold H.264 patents have built!

H.264 is the appropriation of your work from the moment you press that record button on your H.264 camera.

Why on earth is this legal? I can see the word m-o-n-o-p-o-l-y written all over this, specially when thinking of Steve Jobs/Apple (quoted from Open Letter to Steve Jobs): “All video codecs are covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other “open source” codecs now.”

I guess it comes down to this:

All video codecs are equal, but some codecs are more equal than others.

Hello FCC…, hello EU commission…, hello consumer rights advocates…, hello film and video makers of this world:

This is our wake-up call…!!!

Every time I read a longer document or blog entry about H.264 licensing (www.engadget.com) my head starts spinning, every article that tries to explain H.264 gets complicated when it comes to the dreaded fine print of what you may or not may do…

And that’s the point, you see!

It’s the same trick as used on your average (mobile) phone/flat rate ad in the streets:

“It’s (almost) free to use, anywhere, anytime. Try it…!!! *)”

*) The fine print: It may cost you dearly.

The MPEG LA says they are “The Standard for Standards”. (How exclusive, almost noble that sounds…!) And to achieve that they have dug both very deep and wide and built something…

At least that’s how I think I dreamed it last night…

The Tunnel Of Babel

Here I was. A dark entrance. There was a sign but I did not have to read it, I knew that this was the entrance to

The Tunnel Of Babel

I hesitated. While being a film maker and looking for a good moving pictures (post) production infrastructure I knew what the deal was… By entering The Tunnel Of Babel you accept a set of rules:

1) Every motion pictures compression algorithm belongs to the Authorities Of The Tunnel Of Babel

2) No other motion pictures compression algorithm may exist outside The Tunnel Of Babel

3) Every time you use one of The Tunnel Of Babel’s Almighty Algorithms (known as TBAAs or ToBAAs), in particular the TBAA know as i.OU (sometimes also spelled i.Ou) you may – or may not – need to pay licensing fees. But no need to worry…! The Authorities Of The Tunnel Of Babel will let you know the moment your fees are due.

4) *New!* For distribution via the Intertubes there is now a special offer: for non-commercial use it’s free!!! *)

*) At least until 2015…!

Before I could decide not to enter The Tunnel Of Babel I woke up and realised that this was only a bad dream…

But then I looked around and saw my new Samsung WB1000 camera next to my bed and started thinking about that footage that I shot in the last couple of weeks, the footage that I now possibly can’t use commercially because it’s H.264 tainted (= possible licensing fees down the road) from the moment I pressed that record button.

Looking at the headlines on news.bbc.co.uk I was reminded of the financial situation in Europe…

What if one day I wake up living in a country that is (no more) an EU member and respects software patents…? Update 21.05.10: The EU is still standing, but software patents may be on the way to Germany…

And thinking of my camera:

Could I shoot footage with that camera in a country that respects software patents and still 100% own my H.264 footage…?

Could I use H.264 recorded footage coming from a country that respects software patents…?

What about selling my footage to a country that respects software patents…?

Could I sell my camera on eBay to an American an s/he use it commercially…?! (Or is this where ACTA might come in one day, restrictions like the region code system on DVDs but for all sorts of goods…?!)

What about transcoding to an open format for editing? Where is the free, worldwide legal to use de-coder from the MPEG LA for H.264 to PNG etc. for H.264 camera owners in order to legally escape the lock-in…? Should that not be mandatory, an open-source app for all operating systems, available as a download from the MPEG LA’s site…?!

I realised I was daydreaming already and quickly got up.

And while drinking my coffee I started thinking about all the options I now still have when it comes filmmaking and staying 100% independent.

This here is an eye opener and will make you think twice about ever wanting to use H.264 again, anywhere in the production or post-production process:

Why Our Civilization’s Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the MPEG-LA (www.osnews.com)

You may not know it, but one day you might find out, that you’ll have to pay licensing fees for your own (H.264 recorded) footage that you shot with the camera that you bought with your own money!

Some business models, as it seems, are more successful than others – and there is one for the music, one for moving images (lock-in via codec) and another one on top of that, just to make sure that it all works out:

RIAA – MPEG LA – ACTA

Do you own your own footage…?

Steve Jobs (quoted from Open Letter to Steve Jobs): “All video codecs are covered by patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other “open source” codecs now.”

And as it seems there is “a patent for everything”: MPEG LA

Good analysis: Jobs: Patent Pool Being Assembled To Go After Theora

Very interesting read, from the Theora mailing list: Mutually assured minefields

This is not only about video codecs, this is about the future of (free) video/moving images distribution (including post production) across a variety of devices and services. And it’s about (corporate) control over media content (via licensing fees, that you need to be able to afford, as e.g. big media always would…).

Yesterday I had to take my Notic Nastic “Sleep Tight Live Clip” offline.

The act is now a member of their local equivalent to the American RIAA.

I did not have a written agreement with the act, making the video was not a money deal for me, we simply granted each other the right to show our works online.

I was 100% sure we would do the paper work once it actually matters, e.g. before a record deal and as in this case before the act would sign up with their RIAA-like organisation. But that just did not happen. I only heard about the news after the fact.

Of course the act still has use for their song without my video, but I have no use for my video clip without their music. From a business perspective this is a lost investment.

On a personal level I lost much more than that.

Where I am today with this blog, what this all means to me and the consequences

This really is a rather small blog, about 1000 (unique?) visitors/month, sometimes a couple of hundred more, sometimes less. Yet I know via the links clicks/search results I get that I am at least reaching some of those people that I want to reach. For example about two years ago, to my great surprise and joy, I got linked by an indie friendly Hollywood editor/teacher/writer. Of course I immediately returned the favour in my blog roll and we still link each other to this day. I know that there are people out there who (try to) survive in the film/media business without simply using others or seeing all of this simply as a money printing exercise. But we probably are a minority.

What I do with this blog and all my previous online projects (moderator at Ourmedia, digital_kevin’s blog, writing for the P2P foundation Wiki or my Blender VSE/2D title presets) is probably what you would call “grassroots” work. I have a long term plan for all of this and I can be very patient if necessary.

Being in my late 30′s it’s now twenty years ago that I decided to go the indie way and I made a lot of sacrifices for that on the way. More than once I traded so called career opportunities for creative freedom and my good conscience. Sometimes it’s a very, very high prize to pay, yet I definitely do not regret one single time I did it.

Now there is another moment like that in my life – the Notic Nastic video clip is not the only one I lost within just six months. I had another project, another act, a completely different kind of clip, a combination of remix video and 3d. The plan was to enter the video to the Blender Suzanne Award last October. Weeks before the deadline it turned out that the artists actually did not have the last say when it comes to using their own music – this act was a member of AKM (the Austrian equivalent to the American RIAA) and they simply said “no (exceptions)”.

Again this really was all my mistake, I did not have anything in written form (yet), had already invested months of work and the project died very painfully after my failed attempt to produce an alternative music track while still trying to finish the video in time for the deadline.

I can imagine how naive that might all sound to some, yet when you are a one man studio, totally plunged into your work, simply full in love with your latest and most beautiful baby, these things actually can happen, at least to me.

Since I am currently busy with other projects those were my only two (online) video projects I did in 2009. With the Notic Nastic clip gone I now have zero projects to show for that year.

While all deeply frustrating I am somehow glad this all happened now, while I am still preparing to launch a video/clip related business. (It’s done when it’s done, I’ll write about it once things are there.)

For me the consequences are:

When it comes to music videos I will exclusively be available for acts that are not a member of any organisation like AKM, GEMA, BPI, RIAA etc. And I mean it. Even if Madonna was going to ask me to do a video for her (she most probably won’t), my first question would be if the song was an RIAA free track. If the answer was “no” my answer would be “I’d love to do it, but I can not afford it artistically – I would not be allowed to show my own video on my blog without (someone) having to pay for it.” As an artist I simply find this unacceptable.

Some roads are harder to walk than others and I think I have never felt used so much as right now with the lost Notic Nastic clip. It might have only been a 1′ 14” clip, yet for me personally this still was my latest and most beautiful baby, edited with lots of love while using an open-source editing solution, working on an open-source operating system, promoting the video on an open-source powered blog, working with an indie act that had no record deal but a lot of talent and then even making it to BlenderArt Magazine with the “Editing with Blender, Ubuntu: Screenshots, workflow from my Notic Nastic live clip” blog entry. The clip so far also was my most radical attempt at further exploring an (experimental) jump-cut and anti-continuity editing style that is wild yet still looks smooth and sexy.

Some roads are harder to walk than others and I will always keep choosing the ones that I feel are right and true to my art.

You can’t buy me and if you use me I will not accept it and will let others know.

Hardly a day goes by where I don’t see yet another good reason for making my cross at the next general elections next to that new candidate called “Pirate Party”.

This system needs to be changed. I won’t shut up. Not me.

Ever heard that old saying that “the RIAA eats your babies”…? I’m pretty sure now that this is actually true.

This week DRM prevented pre-screenings of James Cameron’s latest movie “Avatar” from taking place in Germany.

It took them a day to figure out the problem. When you read the comments from the German news site heise (heise.de covers topics like Slashdot) you’ll find a lot of people expressing their schadenfreude. While I feel sorry for James Cameron the director I feel not sorry for the businessperson James Cameron. DRM simply sucks. If you make evil deals with the copyright/content protection industry (allow your movies to be distributed with DRM – in all it’s flavours, this includes the incredibly stupid region code system on DVDs) you are collaborating with what I would consider the ultimate enemy of creativity. Yes, Karma is a bitch.

If this is the future of cinema I am now seriously thinking of boycotting DRMed digital cinema altogether. I might not go and watch Avatar now and I might not go and watch any movie that is digitally projected and uses DRM technology.

And yes, I too can feel schadenfreude here. Quite a lot actually. DRM is simply a tool to screw the customer. But it’s good to see that it also keeps screwing those who use it. Karma is a real bitch. And so is DRM.

And while corrupted politicians are busy working on a secret deal to implement ACTA (basically a carte blanche for the copyright industry and the MAFIAA) Pirate Parties all over the world are forming and gaining more and more mainstream attention. 2% of Germans voted for the Pirate Party at the last general election. Let it be 20% next time. Or more.

You can’t sell art and bring joy to people when you are just milking the cash cow and screwing your customers.

I really do love the bitch that Karma is.

Help and documentation are central to the openArtist user experience, in short (from the website):

“The applications are not only installed: They are configured”

And very important for me: openArtist comes without PulseAudio installed…! This finally allows me to upgrade to a more recent Ubuntu-like Linux version (I am currently still using 8.04 with PulseAudio disabled, see here for how-to do this in Hardy.)

PulseAudio/its implementation in Ubuntu have been extremely frustrating for me and I am glad that with openArtist there is now an up to date solution for those who like the general idea of Ubuntu but need to have things configured and documented in a more user friendly way!

Also very interesting: there is “massive blender focus” in openArtist (see openArtist website/documentation: features > blender).

For a full list of included 2D, 3D, Audio, Video, VJ etc. software have a look at the openArtist website.

Note that currently there is no 64-bit version of openArtist and that it is bound to one user (“tux”). Make sure to read the readme before/after installation files on the desktop!

Download (directly):

MKL Graz
openMaterials
groundhog media

Or download the torrent

If you haven’t seen it yet I can recommend Pixar’s latest:  Up, in pretty good 3D (here in Amsterdam at the Pathé). Up is a wonderful story really well told. It’s quite moving at times actually. If you cried when you first saw E.T. you might want to have a tissue ready…!

Now this just makes me wonder again why so many other Hollywood movies seem to be made with only a half backed script ready…?

Issue 21 of BlenderArt Magazine

What I’m really glad about is that my “Video Editing Preset” and “2D Titles Presets” .blends tutorials also get distributed with this edition of BlenderArt Magazine – if anyone ever needs them and/or can’t download them via my tutorial page simply also see the .blends that get distributed with Issue 21 of BlenderArt Magazine (“Editing a music video” > “video post blends presets from article.zip”)!

*24.03.10*

As of today the Notic Nastic “Sleep Tight Live Clip” is no longer available. The act is now a member of their local equivalent to the American RIAA. Since I have nothing in written form that would give me reassurance that the deal I thought I had with them is still there (I make a video and get the right to show the video with the music on my blog), this is now simply what I need to do.

Every video I make is also a part of myself. In that context there is now a whole new meaning for me to the old saying that “The RIAA eats your babies.“

I’ll be writing more about this on my blog in the days/weeks to come.

(Watch the Flash Video above or download (“Save Link As…”) the .mov.)

1: Selecting “the good stuff”

Click the image to see a larger version.

I load my whole footage into the Blender Video Sequence Editor (VSE) and start selecting “the good stuff”: with the mouse over the Image Preview window (see screenshot 3: Selecting “the really good stuff”) I use Space for start/stop and Right/Left Arrow for going back and forth. In the timeline (= Sequence): K for Cut and Shift S for snap editing (shortens/extends clip to the playhead when start/end is selected). The “good stuff” gets moved upwards a row (= Channel) with G for Grab and Y for Y-Axis. I keep the uncut original inside a (muted) Metastrip should I need it later since I am working without timecode. (You can use the Stamp render option for overlaying time information.) Then I make a back-up of the .blend.

2: Selected vs. original footage

Click the image to see a larger version.

3: Selecting “the really good stuff”

Click the image to see a larger version.

Same procedure as above (1: Selecting “the good stuff”) with the mouse over the Image Preview window (top right) and Space for start/stop, Right/Left Arrow for going back and forth… Since I easily get realtime playback using DV footage (no effects applied) with Ubuntu 8.04 and Blender 2.48a on my PC (current Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB of RAM and a reasonably fast 250 GB harddrive) this workflow allows me to find my in and out points while looking at moving images the way the audience will see it… Frame 6 067 is now the last one after “the really good stuff” is moved together (that’s down from 20 520 from the previous step). I use the Blender Text Editor for taking notes. Again I make a back-up of the .blend.

4: Sorting the clips

Click the image to see a larger version.

I add a Text Editor window left of my Sequence and name/tag my tracks. I adjust the Sequence window with (Number Pad) Home and then use Middle Mouse Button and Ctrl to fit the Channels to my tagged tracks. Then I move “the really good stuff” clips in the appropriate track (for moving clips up or down without moving them in time I once again use G and Y, for selecting multiple clips I use B for Border Select…).

5: Editing the video

Click the image to see a larger version.

I use Markers for the points where the singing starts. Then I move the best of the previously sorted clips to roughly where I need them and work on the details again using Shift S for snap editing and also G for Grab to shorten/extend a clip’s start/end… The basic structure for the edited video: details/close-ups at the beginning, the artists performing in the middle and a longer zoom out close to the end. I move the unused clips into Metastrips on the left.

As before I use (Number Pad) Home for seeing everything that’s in the timeline. But since there are the unused clips on the left now I then select the music track and (Number Pad) Dot/Del (normally used for “zooming in” on a single clip) for focusing the Sequence window to the area that I actually want to see when editing…

I export the edited clip as a PNG Sequence (= series of .png images). (F10 (pressed multiple times) for switching between the Sequencer buttons when editing and the Render buttons when exporting.)

The annotations in the screenshot above show what’s important for exporting/rendering.

6: Through the Compositing Nodes

Click the image to see a larger version.

I load the previously exported PNG Sequence into the Compositing Nodes and let it run through a series of filters: DV video artefacts get smoothed out and my own graininess/structure and artefacts get added. The particular filters used here may be experimental and only make sense for this clip, but a couple of combinations can be useful for other projects (values would need to be adjusted): Gauss-Darken for a toon look, Screen-Overlay-Mix for optimising an image, Sharpen-Soften for focus related compositing tasks (high values for Sharpen may introduce artefacts).

The yellow and blue annotations in the screenshot above show what’s important for processing a series of PNGs with the Compositing Nodes: in this set-up navigation is possible by moving the Sequence playhead (the green line at frame 90 940) for previewing different parts (individual frames) of the Nodes processed video. I export the Nodes filtered PNGs once more as a Sequence of PNGs.

7: The final look

Click the image to see a larger version.

I load the Nodes processed PNGs into my VSE Sequence (Space to Add Image Sequence), add and finetune a Glow (with clip selected Space to Add Glow), make a Metastrip of both (with clips selected and M) and use Color Balance (with clip (Metastrip) selected: Filter tab > Use Color Balance) for creating the basis of the yellowish (but at this point rather dark) look. I then add a one step Strobe (Filter tab > Strobe: 2.00). With Shift D I duplicate the Metastrip, move it up one Channel and also move it one frame out of sync (see screenshot). The Glow for this FX 1 track gets removed (Tab to open/close a Metastrip) and in the Edit tab I select Blend Mode Add and Blend: 33.00. (31.01.09: And Use Color Balance – as can be seen in the screeshot above – gets also unselected for this FX 1 track.) I also duplicate the FX 1 track, move it up one Channel and also move this FX 2 track out of sync for yet another frame. There is one last step not shown in the screenshot: a final, subtle Glow is applied to all strips.

I once more export the clips as a Sequence of PNGs, import them one last time and change the export settings in the Render Buttons > Format tab to FFMpeg, make my selections for the video and audio format/codec and make sure that Multiplex audio is selected in the Audio tab before exporting the finished video clip with sound.

8: Credits

Click the image to see a larger version.

This is actually done somewhere before finishing the editing (5: Editing the video) and using my own 2D Titles Preset .blend/tutorial. I adjust the text to the right size first. In order to have the Center where I need it for my title animation: Object > Convert Object Type… > Mesh. Then: Object > Transform > Center New.

Tutorials etc.

Download my Video Editing Preset .blend (Quick Start tutorial inside) for all the basics you need to get started with the Blender Video Sequence Editor.

Download my 2D Title Presets .blend (tutorial inside) for making “crystal clear” titles with Blender.

*Update* These presets are meant to be used with the old/classic stable Blender 2.49b: get it here!

Or get a recent version:

Download Blender for all major platforms.

Thanks to Paul for hosting these .blends on the Final BUG server!

See Using VSE (and Previous/Next pages) from the Blender Wiki for the official Blender Video Sequence Editor documentation.

See Using Nodes (Blender Wiki) for getting started with the Compositing Nodes.

Check out Ubuntu for getting started with GNU/Linux.

Notes for editors new to Ubuntu

While many to most things in Ubuntu will “just work” this is not the case for most things related to FireWire. Either plan some time for testing/research or get help from an experienced Linux user. It may be best not to rely on external FireWire drives for anything other than copying media to your internal drive as long as you are new to Ubuntu.

For help with all things related to Ubuntu and multimedia see also the Ubuntu Studio pages.

(26.04.09:) Ubuntu 9.04 users who experience problems with opening Blender 2.48a, exporting video with sound or audio playback in Blender see my comment below (April 26, 2009) for solutions!

Click the image to see a larger version.

The Quick Start guide (inside the .blend) now with “More” for “moving beyond the basics”. (Note that the layout has been arranged for this screenshot…)

Video Editing Preset (v0.1.1):

Download the .blend

*Update* This preset is meant to be used with the old/classic stable Blender 2.49b: get it here!

(Or get a recent version of Blender here.)

Next to the new selected shortcuts and tips that you can find under “More” a series of smaller additions has been made throughout the text (e.g. to “Snapping”, “Add Media” or the “Questions/Answers”) to further make sure that everything you need to get started with free and open-source video editing using Blender is there. The file now also works better as a preset as such: e.g. Scrub audio is now on but the text still shows you where to turn it on and off…

Why…?

Blender works on all major platforms and you can share .blends between e.g. Ubuntu, OS X and Windows. At the same time Blender is free and open-source and the Blender VSE also works on older hardware – e.g. recycled with Ubuntu (or the lightweight Xubuntu): if no other solution happens to be available you could still get some work done or discuss a project using an old PC…!

Whether you are a video artist and always curious about new tools, a production company specialised in (3D) short format video (even if you don’t do your 3D work with Blender) or a (non-profit) organisation with a tight budget: the Blender VSE brings high-end video post to virtually any PC at no cost. (See the official Blender Wiki for more (“Using VSE”) including current limitations and workarounds.)

Change the size of the tutorial text with one click (see image…) or add Blender’s actual Timeline (e.g. under the Preview window, see tutorial for details) that offers more features for Markers.

Missing features…?

Blender is very flexible and can be customised in ways that commercial and closed source NLEs simply can’t: e.g. you could add smaller features like (a currently missing) Time code display via Python script (or simply use the built in Stamp option (Render buttons) for overlaying time information…).

The Blender VSE is not Final Cut Pro or Avid, but in the long run you might find that Blender (which is a 3D programme after all) allows you to realise projects that you previously simply could not do without an extra investment in yet more proprietary (and possibly limiting) commercial solutions (see all the new VSE feature (“Sequencer changes”) since Blender 2.46).

Suggestions and feedback

…for improving the tutorial/preset welcome!

And special thanks

…for hosting the .blend to Paul from the final BUG blog!

*02.01.09* Ubuntu (8.04, 8.10) users who experience problems with sound playback in Blender, are looking for solutions for FireWire related issues or have problems with the windowed (= not fullscreen) Blender version see the second comment!  (And feel free to post solutions to other related problems as a comment…)

it basically explains why we need to change our money based economy if we want to live up to our true potentials.

There are one or two points where the movie seems to shift a bit too far into another direction, but in the end I think it all works out well enough. This movie will have its strong critics, they will say that it’s just propaganda, but it also will have its fans…

I would call “Zeitgeist: Addendum” an anti-propaganda movie – offering the viewer radically different perspectives than those that we get to see everyday in our world (in the mainstream media, at work, in school, etc.). One quote from the beginning sets the tone of what this is about:

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” (Goethe)

Whether you (politically) agree with some of what is being said or not, I think the decision to (not) watch this movie is a real life red pill/blue pill moment…

On the film making side the editing has to be specially mentioned, its sometimes minimal style (only voice over and an (almost) black screen for more than just a short moment) offers room to form your own images and this is quite powerful… All in all it’s a bit like an indie editor’s “J.F.K.”.

Maybe “Zeitgeist: Addendum” could be a bit shorter and some of the changes might come across as too radical for some viewers… While it’s not perfect it attempts to achieve so much and succeeds in so many areas that its shortcomings don’t harm the overall experience and effect I think. The movie is very inspiring. Towards the end there is maybe a bit too much of the techno/spiritual theme and maybe there is just a bit too much of believing in technology at times, but all in all there is so much that works so well (and that makes so much sense) that this can be seen as a good starting point for a discussion…

“Zeitgeist: Addendum” is like “The Matrix” but for real – if you are ready to take this cinematic blue red (just remember which is which…!;-) pill…

(Link to its Goolge Video page, link to the film maker’s site.)

“presented at the Library of Congress, June 23rd 2008. This was tons of fun to present. I decided to forgo the PowerPoint and instead worked with students to prepare over 40 minutes of video for the 55 minute presentation. This is the result.”

Here another screenshot from the Blender Video Editing tutorial where you can see more of the actual Quick Start tutorial text. If you want to learn how-to edit video with Blender this text will show you all the basics – inside the .blend file!

Click the image to see a larger version.

This is an interactive tutorial – all things in this .blend file have been arranged in a way that it will be fairly simple to learn all the basics in a very short period of time – no need to have a book or a web page open, you don’t even need video footage for the main part of the tutorial:

Learning the Basics With Colour Strips

All the basics like Navigation – Shorten/Extend – Moving A Clip – Snapping – Cut – Delete (including: selecting, dropping clips; frame counter, “Channels”) are shown with simple colour strips in the first part called “Editing/VSE Basics”- you can read and practise at the same time!

“Questions/Answers”

…is how the second part of the tutorial is called. Here the most common questions new users have when getting started with the Blender VSE are answered. (E.g.: How can I fade-in/fade-out video? How can I export video with sound? Etc.)

Blender VSE: De Facto Platform Independent NLE

This is one of the most interesting, maybe overlooked features of the Blender VSE: the same .blend file can be opened and edited on five different operating systems, e.g. on a Mac, a Windows PC or a laptop running Ubuntu – this is a de facto platform independent NLE! Try to do this with Final Cut Pro… And best of all: Blender is free and open-source – install it on as many PCs as your production requires – no need to buy any license for non-linear video editing (or SFX works). See all the new features the Blender VSE has since Blender 2.46, a good starting point for more information – also points out current limitations and workarounds – is the Using VSE page from the Blender Wiki.

In Three Steps to the Tutorial

*link updated* (v0.1.1, 15th November 2008)

1. Download the .blend file (depending on your browser/platform: simply click or right click and “Save As”)

2. Download Blender (you need the latest Blender 2.46 for this tutorial to make sense)

*Update* This preset is meant to be used with the old/classic stable Blender 2.49b: get it here!

(Or get a recent version of Blender here.)

3. Double-click the .blend – the Quick Start tutorial text is inside the .blend: it will guide you through all the basics you need to get started with the Blender Video Sequence Editor!

Feedback…

…or suggestions for improving the tutorial always welcome.

Quick Start shows the very basics needed to quickly get started with the Blender Video Sequence Editor (VSE).

*Update* This preset is meant to be used with the old/classic stable Blender 2.49b: get it here! (Or get a recent version of Blender here.)

*link updated* (v0.1.1, 15th November 2008)

1) Download the Video Editing Preset .blend – Quick Start tutorial included (works without extra video files!)

2) Download Blender (in case you don’t have the latest Blender 2.46)

3) Double-click the .blend

Since Blender works under FreeBSD, Linux, OS X, Solaris and Windows the Blender VSE offers free and open-source video editing for almost any platform that an editor, video artist or company might be using. This means you could start working on your old iMac, send the .blend to your co-editor who has a Windows PC and once you get it back you could finish the project on your new Ubuntu workstation – the same .blend can be opened and edited on all platforms!

See all the new features that the Blender VSE offers since Blender 2.46. For more information, including some current limitations and workarounds, see the Blender Wiki: Using VSE.

2D Title Presets: Updated

*Update* This preset is meant to be used with the old/classic stable Blender 2.49b: get it here! (Or get a recent version of Blender here.)

*link updated* (v0.1.1a, 15th November 2008)

1) Download the 2D Title Presets .blend – the tutorial (included) now begins with a few quick steps to get started in no time

2) Download Blender

3) Double-click the .blend

Tutorials = CC Licensed – Your Work = Yours!

Both .blends/tutorials are (now) distributed under a Creative Commons license (Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported) – however you may use these .blends as starting points for your own commercial Blender made projects! Simply remove the tutorial texts (and rename the .blend) before sharing your .blends with others. The license restrictions only apply to the tutorial text and the tutorial as such!

Your editing projects and titles are yours!

If you are an educator, teacher or trainer: you may use these .blends in your classes (e.g. film school, multimedia training etc.) as long as they are distributed in their original form (no changes made) and free of charge.

See the .blends and the CC license for details.

One reason for the restrictions: I plan to update the tutorials, maybe extend them and simply can not support multiple versions. Thanks for understanding.

Special Thanks

…to Paul from the final BUG for hosting the .blend files!

With the June 08 update I am stepping down as the maintainer of the P2P Audiovisual Guide, I’ve been working on this project for the last two years and now need to focus on being productive with some of the tools we list. The June update features a small but fine selection of the best and most promising free and open-source animation tools (2D, 3D and code based animation) that could be of interest to both beginners and experienced animators: P2P Audiovisual Guide (scroll down for the June 08 update…)

Indie media links

A couple of weeks ago I already decided to stop updating another one of my online project, remixlinks.ning.com, one reason being that since the latest ning.com update it became clear that “older” apps like mine (I was an early adopter of the ning platform about three years ago) would not remain fully functional in the future without extra work on the app’s code – while I am now starting to look into Python scripting for my blender 3D works I am still far away from being a programmer and don’t want to spend time fixing my bookmarks app…

Both the P2P Audiovisual Wiki and remixlinks.ning.com feature selected (open-source) tools, sites and services that could be of interest to indie film makers, artists or researchers… I am still thinking about how-to organise my future online projects, I am not sure if the Wiki format is ideal for me, nor do I want to start using another web 2.0 service that might not function properly in a couple of years time or (like previously del.icio.us) sell out to a company that I don’t feel comfortable being with. Probably an open-source solution running on my own server will be what I’ll end up doing, but those are just plans for the time being…

End of a journey

In a way this is now the end of a virtual journey through the Wild West of (indie) online web services and projects for me that has been going on since about 2004: after surfing on del.icio.us waves for a couple of months I started my own link collection on del.icio.us, moved on to ourmedia.org (first as a user then as a moderator), started remixlinks.ning.com and for the last two years now helped building the P2P Foundation’s Wiki by writing/maintaining the P2P Audiovisual Guide. See this page for all my (other) online projects – for now I am putting all of them aside, including my indiworks channel that I probably will not update any more. The current video RSS feed solution via videobomb is far from ideal. Still, my indiworks channel/video RSS feed will be available as long as the videobomb service remains functional. Later this year, once I’ve found a satisfying solution for all my online projects, I plan to offer some sort of replacement for it. In any case: all my videos will of course remain available for download via the Internet Archive, I have no plans whatsoever to change that, the IA is the best and most reliable service of its kind that I’ve had the pleasure to use since I uploaded my first online video to their open-source movies section around autumn 2004. (Note that the download numbers on a video’s IA page only include the downloads made directly via the video’s page – those made via a link or a video RSS feed are not included…)

And now…?

After exploring (indie) online video distribution, researching free and open-source media creation tools, learning (and still learning…) blender for two years now and recently switching from OS X to Ubuntu the time has come for me to focus on the production side of things as well as finding a more satisfying way of presenting and distributing my work. I’ll keep (updating) this wordpress.com blog for a while to come, but plan to have a better (= more online video friendly) solution in place when the reorganisation of my online projects is done…

See you in Cyberspace!

I am aware that the text might come across as a bit extreme or seem strange to some – others just might find this particular style and energy interesting – I do and that’s why the text is the way it is. Sorry if you don’t like it, what I tried with this is to write down all of my thoughts about online video and the new medium itself – how I see film, video and storytelling developing into something new: the open video and story remix platform – an online “theme park theatre”.

I see a medium evolving from film and cinema, not as its replacement, but as “the next thing” – I believe that there will always be something like cinema – in one form or another – and this text is about that other form…

The Online Theme Park Theatre: an Open Video and Story Remix Platform

(1.0 version, 04.04.08; for this blog post, 20.06.08: three minor changes/corrections concerning the hyperlinks as well as bold highlighting for skimming the text and some underlining for layout/clarity reasons.)

The author likes to thank Till Alberts and Nicolai Gütermann for giving their valuable feedback and input to a first draft version of this text.

Introduction

This is a collection of thoughts about the collaborative possibilities that online video offers and a look at free solutions for setting up an independent online video remix platform powered by free software.

This is not a technical manual nor is it a detailed business plan – it is a “free idea”. Free as the air and in the sense of obvious.

This text is the introductory chapter to a book that has not been written yet. And, when thinking about it, you might agree that this would be a book where everyone just has to write their own version: the theme/story platform concept is about just that.

This is also a new look at the medium itself that we are dealing with – the medium that we simply refer to as “online video”.

A free idea for free stories

One of the biggest possibilities for online video lies in its collaborative potential. What we are witnessing today is the birth of a new medium: grainy, handheld phone cam YouTube videos watched on laptops instead of silent, static, b/w film projected onto a screen. But this time it all seems to happen so much faster – and there are two key differences: this time the tools needed for producing moving images are much more accessible, while all potential participants are connected via networks and channels of all kinds. It is this powerful combination that makes the web, seen as a platform, an extremely exiting place to be as a film maker: an open video and story remix platform, a “virtual theatre” – a new, mashed-up medium, a “killer app” for the web.

A little more than 100 years after film was born the aristocratic/monopolistic structures for the production and distribution of moving images (and media in general) are falling apart (we even have phone cams and online video editing solutions now…) and rising is a much more diverse, richer and powerful infrastructure for moving images creation. But video sharing platforms and media archives are only the beginning – just like when editing a video you first get all the footage in one place (on a media platform you upload it) and make a preselection while organising your work (on a media platform you label/tag the video). Once that is done you start with the actual, creative editing process…

In the video editing world “online” can mean two things (that have nothing to do with the World Wide Web as such): “available” (footage from a disconnected hard drive that is still part of the project you are working on is referred to as being “off-line” – it is not available). The other meaning: “online editing” (meaning you were first working with a lower quality copy of the video and now that the actual editing is done you replace the lower quality copy with its original master footage – you “on-line” it. Now, from an editor’s point of view and in the context of the World Wide Web, there is a third meaning to “online video”: video footage that is free and legally (or you just don’t care like the avant-garde has done for decades) available on the web for reuse (and for retransmission to the collective audiovisual information stream). If you connect all three meanings from above the unified definition for “online video” turns out to be “free available master (footage)”.

Editing is about structuring and a film editor can be seen as someone who is programming a series of moving images. As increasingly well connected internet users we have started conversations on a multitude of levels – e.g. by making a video, reacting in one way or another to a video we’ve seen. Reacting becomes remixing. Fake movie trailers, popular online in recent years, will most probably prove to be real movie trailers, in fact. The remix feature film is likely to be “coming soon to a browser (and portable media player) near you”. We’ve finally build ourselves repositories and networks that allow us to start realising so complex undertakings as the community made open-source feature length film. Example for a finished remix feature length documentary made by one single editor (with the Final Cut Pro files available for further remixing): “Panorama Ephemera” (2004) by Rick Prelinger – www.archive.org/details/panorama_ephemera2004.

How it works

Within a few years the world of blogs (the “blogosphere”) has established itself as a highly effective, alternative infrastructure for publishing and delivering news (open for anyone to participate, accessible for minorities and specialists of all kinds). Something very similar is happening right now with the world of moving images: the cinema of the future seems to crystallise itself to be an online video remix platform – open for anyone to participate, allowing the audience to interact with the content on a multitude of levels. An existing example is YouTube: you can make playlists, find clips that are related to others, react to a video by making and uploading your own video and allowing others to view and share it and to react to it again – YouTube really is a new kind of movie: a dynamic, interactive show with thousands of channels and millions of clips forming a part of the “free available master (footage).

Just like YouTube seemed like a far out vision only ten to fifteen years ago (remember the time when there was no internet and when no one had a mobile phone?) the cinema of the future might seem like an idealist’s dream today while in fact it is materialising already – in platforms such as YouTube. In the end it is likely to be some kind of open, social media network: the “online theme park theatre”. Core product of such a platform will be a cinematic presentation of a story that relates in a strong way to the theme that the platform is centred around. Since different themes attract different audiences, and different people develop different kinds of stories, a multitude of such platforms (possibly evolving as “genre platforms” and offering a multitude of theme centred, individual projects) will exist. At the same time these shows will also be screened in real world cinemas while digital distribution/projection will further help to democratise the new medium and bring high quality, content rich community produced projects to large mainstream audiences and their established viewing environments. And online you’ll be able to watch a movie in a virtual theatre (either alone or with many others) that you (can) create/interact with while you are watching. The stories you’ll see will have a life of their own, might first need to be developed over a longer period of time (just like e.g. Linux took about ten to fifteen years to mature into a mainstream product), but in the end these multimedia shows will turn out to be our generation’s online classics: myths, legends and stories with heroes and heroines from the new world. It also seems very likely that real world/online (story) worlds will melt into one another in unprecedented ways – which again is only reminiscent of one of the oldest movie themes we know: the exploration of that fine line between dream and reality.

Movies today are prepackaged dreams – movies of the future will be modular, dynamic and interactive dreams.

A visualised stream of thoughts

Online video allows creators to innovate, something a big Hollywood studio just can not afford because of ever exploding budgets – and the budgets themselves are just consequences of the attempts to fix with money what a special effect can’t buy: a good story. And so it became possible that simple stories – told from one person to another, by people gathering in groups, sitting around computer screens (our modern day fire places) – that these simple stories are now a serious competition for the industrial FX magician from Hollywood who lights very bright, very expensive fires that may look nice, but too often turn out to be illusions of fire places with no storyteller around.

In ten to fifteen years time we might already visit a (virtual online) theatre offering a 3D holographic experience and connecting tens of thousands of people at the same time – a bit like today’s “massively multiplayer online role-playing games” (MMORPGs) – people coming together in one place to experience a multimedia show that can be consumed, customised, contributed to, shared with others, remixed and retransmitted to another remix node in the network. The most effective way of realising this will be by using a totally open, non proprietary infrastructure without any kind of DRM or creativity restricting copyright laws.

But since this is a new medium we should not limit ourselves to think of it as a 90 minutes long experience…

Moving images are a visualisation of thoughts. And since the human mind likes stories we arrange those images into stories that can easily be shared and communicated: video is becoming a unifying language that almost everyone understands. Online video, our “free available master (footage)”, is a visualised stream of thoughts in an ongoing global conversation with feedback loops of all kinds – with each conversation a video stream gets better, smarter – like a programmer’s code evolving from a 0.1 beta version to the 1.0 final release – and all of this is happening while old media still tries to adapt, e.g. by suing its fans and costumers who try to integrate the static, old media content with the dynamic online one by sharing and remixing it!

Some tools and questions

Some of the tools needed for a meta platform like a virtual remix theatre already exist, others are just being built. We already have a couple of open-source movie projects (e.g.: “The Digital Tipping Point” – www.archive.org/details/digitaltippingpoint or “Big Buck Bunny” – www.bigbuckbunny.org) while a multitude of high-quality, free and open-source media production and distribution tools are flooding the market that was once dominated by commercial, closed-source, proprietary software from monopolists.

Some of the free and open-source tools (many, many more available) already in place are:

- on the content creation side:

Blender (3D modelling, animation, rendering, video post – www.blender.org), Gimp (image and photo manipulation – www.gimp.org), Inkscape (vector graphics editor – www.inkscape.org), Ardour (digital audio workstation – ardour.org), Kino (DV video editor – www.kinodv.org)

- on the distribution side:

Miro (internet TV and video player incl. BitTorrent support – www.getmiro.com), VLC (media player and streaming server – www.videolan.org), Songbird (media player and Mozilla based Browser – getsongbird.com), Plumi (Video CMS – blog.plumi.org), MediaWiki (Wikipedia’s Wikisoftware – www.mediawiki.org; for Wiki style video editing see: sourceforge.net/projects/kaltura), WordPress (blogging software – wordpress.org), Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora (patent/royalty free audio and video encoding – www.xiph.org), Croquet Consortium (creation and deployment of collaborative multi-user online applications and metaverses – www.croquetproject.org).

Next to semi-open/closed platforms like YouTube – does not support Creative Commons licences (creativecommons.org) – there are CC licence friendly platforms like blip.tv (blip.tv) and the incredible non-profit Internet Archive (www.archive.org). Other sites like Ning (www.ning.com) let users create their own social networks including pre-built micro video sharing sites à la YouTube, free to use, CC licence friendly.

In the end not technology but the quality of the actual story that a virtual story park is centred around will make a project work. More helpful than any rules and how-tos for story development are simple questions – they always work! (Rules are too specific – questions are open, universal and lead to new questions…) So here a couple of questions for online storytellers and remix video producers:

Who is my/our audience? Who is/are my leading character(s)? What does he/she/they want? What forces are opposed to our hero’s goal? In the end, will our heroine get what she wants? What’s the story in one sentence? What’s the story in three sentences?

Note: possibly these question might seem “too simple” and not appear to be useful – in that case come back once you’ve started developing your project! Being able to answer those simple questions will give you a good foundation for developing a working, complex story – if answered well those are in fact rather hard questions! For more questions read Linda Seger’s classic “Making A Good Script Great”, for the eye-opening, mythological approach to storytelling read “The Writer’s Journey” by Christopher Vogler.

The next step

Now before proceeding please click to confirm:

Commercial Break To be Continued… The End

two flash video conversions (320×240 and 640×480) have been added to the vivaldi rock page on the internet archive – the new 320×240 640×480 flash conversion is now also the one on the video’s blip.tv page.

*** still for an optimal viewing experience downloading of the medium resolution or even better the high resolution version is recommended! *** (or who would want to go to an art gallery and only get to see cheap photocopies of the paintings…?!) also try to adjust your sound (settings) accordingly before watching… thank you! ***

vivaldi rock (2008, 4:13, visual music video)

sketches

when working on a video like vivaldi rock i make a lot of tests – here are some of my digital sketches: test renders and design tests made during the production. they appear in chronological order (left to right, top to bottom) and give a bit of an idea of how the project evolved from the creator’s point of view – not everything might be perfect here, but it could be interesting to see what kind of ideas made it into the final animation and what was left out…

note that the final design for the visuals is of course heavily inspired by existing (2d graphic) design from the 60′s and 70′s of the last century – vivaldi rock is among other things a personal homage to a somewhat demanding yet fascinating colour combination that those who grew up in the 1970′s might never (be able to) forget…

click to see larger versions – file names = descriptions… (you can click the images once more on their individual pages to see them in full size!)

]]> http://indiworks.wordpress.com/2008/06/18/vivaldi-rock-new-flash-video-and-sketches/feed/ 0 vsworks vr_tests_01_early_design_green_orange_visual vr_tests_02_early_design_blue_visual vr_tests_03_early_design_green_orange_red_visual_i vr_tests_04_early_design_green_orange_red_visual_ii vr_tests_05_early_desing_green_visual vr_tests_06_final_design_green_visual vr_tests_07_neonlook_green_visual vr_tests_08_softlook_green_visual vr_tests_09_hardlook_toon_green_visual vr_tests_10_hardlook_plus_green_visual vr_tests_11_twelve_monkeys_visuals vr_tests_12_large_neon_look_two_visuals vr_tests_13_spotlight_two_visuals vr_tests_14_toon_floor_horizon_green_visual vr_tests_15_making_of_light_fx vr_tests_16_light_fx vr_tests_17_dark_blue_background_net vr_tests_18_light_blue_background_net vr_tests_19_glossy_toon_look vr_tests_20_glossy_soft_toon_look_i vr_tests_21_glossy_soft_toon_look_ii vr_tests_22_reflecting_materials vr_tests_23_glossy_golden_toon_look_i vr_tests_24_glossy_golden_toon_look_ii vr_tests_25_rainbow_fx vr_tests_26_render_mistake_art vr_tests_27_painted_look_still_in_development_i vr_tests_28_painted_look_still_in_development_ii vr_tests_29_painted_look_still_in_development_ii vr_tests_30_visuals_ring_halo_sphere_background http://indiworks.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/vivaldi-rock-stills-gallery/ http://indiworks.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/vivaldi-rock-stills-gallery/#comments Mon, 16 Jun 2008 18:29:43 +0000 vsworks http://indiworks.wordpress.com/?p=151 ]]> visit the vivaldi rock page on the internet archive for all permanent download links (as in previous blog post)

as you might notice there is something missing from the series of images above… what about the ending…? watch the video to find out!

]]> http://indiworks.wordpress.com/2008/06/16/vivaldi-rock-stills-gallery/feed/ 0 vsworks vivaldi_rock_0187 vivaldi_rock_0216 vivaldi_rock_0498 vivaldi_rock_0583 vivaldi_rock_1361 vivaldi_rock_2213 vivaldi_rock_2591 vivaldi_rock_3072 vivaldi_rock_3754 vivaldi_rock_3805 vivaldi_rock_4151 vivaldi_rock_4376 http://indiworks.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/vivaldi-rock/ http://indiworks.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/vivaldi-rock/#comments Sun, 15 Jun 2008 22:44:59 +0000 vsworks http://indiworks.wordpress.com/?p=148 ]]>