I appreciated John Ippolito’s discussion of Creative Commons licenses in his “Hacking Copyright For Fun and Profit” lecture. When content can be shared so easily over the internet, it’s important for creators to be aware of their options.

The first time I came across a Creative Commons license was alongside videos created by The Lonely Island. “Ka-blamo!” and the group’s other original songs and videos were all uploaded with an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license, giving anyone permission to share or remix their media as long as they credited The Lonely Island and posted the results with the same license. Their story is especially relevant with regards to Ippolito’s opening comparison of “cold-blooded, slow-moving leviathans” with “warm-blooded, fast-moving” small scale producers who represent the future. Just before The Lonely Island posted this older video to Youtube on December 23, 2005 (Crushing realization: I’m getting older. At least Youtube is too.), they had premiered their second “Digital Short” on Saturday Night Live.

The short in question, “Lazy Sunday,” is credited with both revitalizing SNL and bringing national attention to Youtube and the concept of the viral video, but at the time NBC reacted to seeing their proprietary content shared online by insisting on its removal. They eventually caught up to the idea of sharing content online with Hulu; they just wanted to make sure they got the ad sales from it. At this point, the idea of networks being uncomfortable with having content shared online seems laughable.

I also was intrigued by Ippolito’s description of The Pool, a site dedicated to sharing ideas and finding collaborators. Unfortunately, the site doesn’t seem to have been updated much recently, but the concept reminds me of “open collaborative production company” hitRECord. As a production company with the star power of Joseph Gordon-Levitt behind it, hitRECord has more of a direct means of monetizing the content produced by its collaborators, but I’m sure other sites similar in concept to The Pool have sprung up since Ippolito’s lecture.