Great videos

Regards
James

Ya se pueden ver los videos ganadores del concurso anti-DRM en la página oficial Free Culture, enlace en el título de la noticia. Via: http://despuesdegoogle.com/2006/10/19/free-culture-da-a-conocer-a-los-videos-ganadores-de-su-concurso-anti-drm/...

The first rule of education, and even effective communication in general is to speak in terms your audience can understand. You Tube/ flash is something that is widely adoped, and ‘just works’ for most people, most of the time. Expecting this, or any other site dedicated to persuasion and education to not use these tools out of some misguided ideological principle is… well… not very bright.

Their target audience doesn’t understand the value of OGG or other open standards, and are not already adherents of open source thinking. They may be curious, even open to the idea, but if they can’t see the shiny videos without spending an hour or more installing software they’ve never heard of, most are going to leave without ever understanding what you are all about.

Put simply, you don’t put up barriers to people that want to know more about what you have to teach. They are here, so they are at least curious. You don’t make it HARDER for them to begin to understand the issue. This isn’t about moral superiority, or purity – it’s about teaching people to see the value of open culture, and if Flash and You tube are the best ways to get people to think about the issue, then you use them to start the conversation. As noted above, they have made sure to provide ‘ideologically safe’ links for those who already have moral or religious objections to flash, but they are smart enough to know that if that’s the only way to see them, the people that need to see them won’t.

To put it in terms that might be easier to identify with, think of yourself wanting to attend a lecture series to see what it was all about. How would you react if they stopped you at the door and told you you weren;t dressed correctly… that you had to wear white cargo shorts, a green ringer tshirt and a red tie – otherwise you just couldn’t come in. And if you do make it through the door, the lecture will be conducted completely in late Classical Greek and Middle English because the subject is better discussed in those dialects. How likely would you be to stay and try to learn about it? Now imagine what you would think if the lecturers were puzzled about why more people didn’t understand the principles they were espousing.

That said, we tried in every case to get an unecrypted/unembedded version of the file posted somewhere. Look for links to Archive.org, QuickTime, or Revver, which all offer relatively less-restricted versions of the videos. We\’re also in the process of converting the videos to Ogg Theora, the free video format.

Thanks for taking a look!

Fred