WednesdayNotes

transmissionnotes

transmissionreport

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_0. INTROZ_
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_Location: Forte_

I was deployed by APC to Rome to gather information on the Transmission meeting. These media activists are up to something and my job is to find out what exactly they are trying to do. The background information provided by HQ was rather vague, but one thing is sure: they deal in live pictures.

*20 year old squat*, was a fortress (early 19th century, French Catholics created it to defend the Pope's country). It belongs to the city council. More than 20 years ago local people started to make Mayday in the park, and after few years they decided to enter and squat. Local people squatted first, punk scene was the first, during the years it changed, but there are still some people living around from the Ancestors. Divided in 3 areas:

a. The Underground - Comics Expo
b. Here - Workshop places and offices (natural gardening, music, gym, hacklab, etc.)
c. Upstairs - Living quarters

The Fortress is surrounded by green places with a tour.

The MediaLab we use started in 1994 when people started to create a network here from the ancient L'Avana BBS (part of the counternetwork Cybernet). *That is how cyberpunk was born in Italy.* The actual MediaLab was set up 1-2 years ago. We are standing on the shoulder of giants.

For Workshops there are three places: MediaLab, Tent, Pub (latter with projector).

_Local distro server_

192.168.100.134 anonymous without password
Document what you uploaded Source/Date/Country/Subject for file name and a txt file with the same name!

_Programme_

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_1. SUBJECTS_
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Introduction of individuals taking part in Transmission.

*Selene* from Rampart and LARC, London. Also IMC UK & Reel2Reel, Conscious Fashion.

*MJ* aka Myoungjoon Kim from Korea is working for a local alternative media center called Mediact (http://mediact.org) whose main agenda is to support public access and independent filmmaking, and main activities are providing facilities, trainings, research, and consultation for media activism. His original background is working in Labor News Production which produce lots of documentaries and educational videos on labor movement and also provide video production training for the workers. And also he is still a board member of Jinbo Net since its beginning. His primary role based on Mediact now is not in the production area but research, organizing, consulting, etc.

*Chihu & Kuman (?)* two organisations that share the same office. One: site providing political analysis and Chihu is responsible for the video section. Kuman's org provides server and mail services for activist organisations, and also doing advocacy work in the area. He is the web programmer of the project (as such he is the only techie of the Korean delegation).

*Adam* (adam@xs4all.nl) seems to be one of the movers and shakers of the scene, although this conclusion is based on mere preliminary investigations. The following pages will have to be investigated in order to clarify: his personal web page (www.xs4all.nl/~adam) and his reason for joining Transmission, the FLOSS Documentation Project (ttp://www.flossmanuals.net). 404

*Agnese* (frenesi@kein.org) is one of the chief organisers, a non-techie person. She is into video distribution and telestreets and she has been doing videomaking with candidaTV www.candidatv.tv and writing and more.... CandidaTV (fd. 1999).

*Andy2* Catalist tech collective in Australia since 1998, wrote the Active CMS. A programmer. Oceania indy portal with Anna and *. *Video CMS for Engage Media.*

*Anna* EngageMedia setting up with Andy and Andrew an online distro.

*Ben* (ben@riseup.net) is a media activist from London. I know he has been organising screenings in the Rampart Social Centre before he started his current project: to build open-access video booths as a medium of participatory media. He brings +Reel2Reel 2+ and +IMC UK VIDEO DVD newsreal showcase+, and he seems to edit at least the latter one. Background information:http://www.transmission.cc/?q=wiki/VideoBooths *Ben* from Rampart London. Reel2Reel, UK IMC. Participatory media models using new techs such as bluetooth.

*Bryan* of _WITNESS_ (Fnd. 1992 by Peter Gabriel) from NYC. Encouraging alt.media groups to incorporate video into their advocacy since 1992 in like 60 countries. Many-to-many model: a website where people can change contents - but there are questions related to the human rights topic that are problematic.
. It's a human rights organization based in the US, but working globally with other human rights groups on the ground helping them to use video technology for their advocacy purposes. Currently they're in the midst of trying to put together a space where anyone with internet access can upload human right related media. The working title is the "Video Hub." As you can imagine, due to the subject matter, numerous issues have been raised, technical as well as legal and ethical. We're looking forward to meeting you all. Some very interesting projects and questions have been presented already! Background information: http://www.witness.org/technology

*Blank* from Portland Indymedia. Keywords: FLOSS & P2P.

*Dee-Dee Halleck* 1961 - first work in media: how X make their movies? 1988 250 students intro to communication - required everyone to use computers to write their homeworks. Paper Tiger, Deep Dish - packages for people to distribute, also mobilising a satellite channel, because 4% of channels have to be non-profit - this is Free Speech TV. War in Iraq: +Shocking and awful+. Archive.org digitised 280 of their earlier programmes. A new series: +Waves of Change+. It's quite hard times in America.

*Fabian* is 15 years part of an Argentinian video collective. Apart from making docus they are fighting for the rights of communications for all, They work with a Pirate TV with air TV channel. Raided by the government several times, now they are working to reinstall the air channel in Buenos Aires with more transmission power. In the 90s the topic was the advance of neoliberalism. They were militant but they made a strong self-criticism. Now they think it is more important to work with other groups than vanguardly. They are promoting self-managed TV and they are based strongly in the social movements. They did the documentary on the self-managed ceramics factory (that i saw in Budapest). They are working on a new subjectivity. AgoraTV is an internet TV channell.

*Jan* from Berlin, V2V distro system with free codecs.

*Gerabende(?)* Engage Tactical Media - political media lab operation. Facilitator as a technical producer. Playing with new tools to make hybrids. Since 1995 he also supports online radios. IMC founded and halted. The Balley in Amsterdam is a partner for live broadcasting through the Internet with FLOSS.

*Jeremiah Foo* Big media background. Music producer at first. Concerts every week, 150 in all. Sony CBS - to make people famous. Then he joined the press - where he realised it's not really transparent. Then he started his own video projects - National Geographic etc. There is a political newspaper based in Malaysia (?). Asia247.tv - now they have a production studio. They broadcast/podcast almost every day. How can we bring your news to our Asia? Recently China banned everything from Taiwan.

*Marcelle* DSL Broadcast.

*Simon Haefe* (binsh@sonance.net) Artist network in Austria - installations and public interventions. Publishing in museums, developing archive, making money for artists. How to get rich with digital media? Kenya: "independent" TV channel. Sonance.net

*Simon2* from London. Mute - print and website. WebTV news is his main point of interest here.

*S* Rainbow gathering to rainbow gathering and squat-to-squat, gathering underground movies.

*Mick* legal social centre Manchester - presenting vide for re-transmission. 'Tis a website. Clearer Channel was launched in the summer (?). EU newsreel was launched as a

*Holmes* from USA, Massachuses. Distro distro got funding and...

*Rama* (rama@xicnet.com, http://rama.xicnet.com/) is a member/developer/collaborator of riereta.net, hackitectura.net, fadaiat.net, al-jwarizmi.sf.net, r23.cc, burnstation.org, telenoika.net, platoniq.net.

*Zoe* from London - occasional academic researcher (see www.newgreenorder.info) now working in independent film, focused critically on International Financial Institutions. http://www.ifiwatchnet.org is a civil society networking site which has a pilot video portal tied in - http://www.ifiwatch.tv. Here with financial help from an 'action research' study of independent media networks, http://alt-media-res.clearerchannel.org/public/index.php?title=Main_Page

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_2. OBJECTS (PROJECTS)_
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Witness.org
Brian
Peter Gabriel started witness in 1992, it’s known as his pet project, sort of evolved though.
Work with locally based ngos, carefully vetted, know who people are, 1-2 week training, provide equipment and tech trainmng. Most important part of relationship is after, developing advocacy goals and how best to use video. Not just getting testimony but who is best audience to make change with the footage? Try to target specific audiences with each video. Model has worked to date. Go deep rather than wide. Lots more groups they’d like to work with, but lack capacity, want to get more video out there.
Police abuse video shot by abuser, so question of balancing potential good of distributing it and protecting the people filmed, also who is shooter… can you always have informed consent? Struggling with those ideas, and proposing building a video hub to collect user videos and provide human rights context for a video that otherwise just floats around, uncontextualised. ‘naked squat video’ rumours spread that it was a Chinese woman being abused in Malaysia, which created ethnic tension, need good information to go with this material, encourage community to form around d these issues, harness collective intelligence of internet to come in and deconstruct these situations. Video of demo in Belarus, people walking in street, didn’t look like much, it took some people from Belarus to note that this was actually big news, people shouting ‘shame on the police’ in streets there…. Don’t want to hurt anyone doing what we do…

Mick, there is some good practice of video activists getting permission to film things that seem ok now, but this could change in a few years. This culture not nec translating to new generation of video activists.. some stuff online lately that makes no sense to be there, with faces etc.

Bryan
Could develop a protocol. Conference in manila, Vietnamese journos there that ‘shouldn’t’ have been , got blogged as being there.

Simon Vienna
A lot of bloggers not aware of the power of what they do. Popular but not responsible. Style

Bryan
Issue is so big that not sure where to go with online video, not got final platform etc.

Holmes
Human rights video bubbling up all over the place, why not witness be the org that deals with this, safe and important?

Bryan, witness don't have to have the video, but want to provide the service,

if you upload to youtube, they’d roll over immediately if challenged, witness could be the responsible ones….

***

Asia 24/7

Jeremiah

Asia 24/7 began with video of police abuse which they posted online. Keywords conform to I-tunes. Daily programme called asia o900, news every morning if they can, highlighting events in asia. Other programmes encouraging people to report from the ground in election times when reporting from elections is banned in Singapore, videos from opposition rallies in Singapore, lot of eyeballs and positive comments from Singapore. Jumla in front and Wordpress behind, simple to use, easy to podcast. Aim to use simple tools and teach others to use it. Made a new site in dehi mizzima Burmese news agency in India set up in 11 hours, aim to support contacts all over asia. Upload button on main page. Can convert into other formats once uploaded, try to make it idiot proof.
Two databases, simple to migrate, allows maintenance of some front ends when others are shuit down. Poliutically… blogspot.com was unbanned for three days in Pakistan over press freedom days. Jumla limitation that all fioles have to be in one folder. Hope for help with this. Do a lot of workshops on how to shoot video. In penang, Malaysia, Bangkok, aceh……
Programme called compressor automatically converts file to m4v. … in house developers, share info with others who share platforms.
Question, where I weakest link. Hardest part is not technical but psychological, ‘I can’t do video’.. tell yourself enough, you can. Tech specs too are hard to explain. But write manuals for people. People in India doing well now. 47 videos online there.

Rama Argentine/Spain _23.cc_, [http:/r23.cc] - streaming platform/interface/entrance door to
GISS [http://giss.hackitectura.net/], open and public stream-ring, consisting of multiple servers hooked to each other sharing bandwidth and other resources. real-time geo-mapping visualization.

http://r23.cc/interface/
Streaming network with real time map. Distribution of server load. Audio and video. Around 3.000 listeners at the same time. There's also an archive.

_BurnStation_ Rama http://burnstation.org/ "Burnstation is a free music distribution system. It lets you navigate through free media contents (only music for the moment), listen to them and select your favorites to burn a CD for takeaway!_Burn Station_ [http://burnstation.org] free music distribution system. Associated with platoniq.net. Developing a *Video Content Management System*.
Soon it will have support for videos, texts and even software.

This project is an idea by platoniq.net and the software development started in april 2004 by rama and platoniq, and still goes on.."

_GISS_
Rama
http://giss.hackitectura.net/
GISS is an empathic network of humans, machines, flows and free code.

It springs from spatial, communicative and conceptual resources
provided by the al-jwarizmi (cache) project,
empowering the strange connection between neural and digital no-matter.

GISS works with social networks, free software developers and
multi-thread human-based sytems of content builders to support the construction
of the free-global-layer of online communication.

_ÁgoraTV_

fabian, Argentine. Social and political docus. For example about occupied factories that are managed by the workers themselves. A massive experience of open initiative. They have a slot for a payed cable channel. The Internet came second. 1993-1997 was television. For example on Women's Day they had a whole day's programme about women's issues. They had some sort of resistance of working with the Internet because of its limitations. In the third word the rate of people who are connected is very low. The people who there are interested in watching these is even less. Organisations that were interested could not always acces these contents. Open-air television hasn't got these limitations, only transmission power. They built themselves their own transmitters to get around this. That brought tension on the side of the law by the action of doing this with the social movements.

Have a slot for cable channel. Streaming, tv on internet was second option. Tv experience from 93-97.
Now for 4 or 5 years been doing periodical tv transmissions from different neighbourhoods, eg 8th march, women's day, content related to the struggle for women's rights.
Resistance to working with internet due to limitations in third world, few people connected. The use of the internet also is limited to other people than those they want to have access to the material
tension when the law pays atttention to independent media
lots of attention to the debate on whether there is a right to communication
the only way to work is legally, promoting the agenda of free communication-
and discussing the legitimacy of the practice
there is a law that allows pre-existing community channels
as a factory can be considered legally occupied if the workers took it for production
last 24th march was the 30th anniversary of military coup

offering support to workers against the capitalist system and the state in general

So it is very important that people can produce their own contents. Education is the way to make this happen. ÅgoraTV provides this. They have a manifesto.

some documentation shows what is required to produce effective media, a section of links,

They are trying to reclaim their historical memory. They are trying to recover lost documentation from the dictatorship times, esp. concerning disappeared people. Now they are basically an archive. No broadcasting, it is not possible to work territorially. Rama adds that he would like to see some independent footage coming out of Argentina but it doesn't have to be in this form. They are not activists but a political affinity group which used these tools. Holmes asks how much does it cost to build and buy a transmitter? It could be confiscated, some groups buy new ones every few months... 2-3,000 dollars per transmitter, and that is tripled as a cost in argentina since the economic crash of 2001-2. The second or third channels could use the resources of the first channel. Channels on rights, struggle, popular culture. The practice of production is material made as a tv programme that flows through diverse formats tv, internet, used by assemblies of workers. There is no production there is no medium without production. If someone said we could set up a TV channel, we'd say no, we'd prefer to avoid that level of technology and just spread contents. So the relation between production and technological support must be balanced or we risk technological fetishisation.

_ZaleaTV_
http://www.zalea.org/
Marcelle from Paris.

Independent TV founded years ago and live since about a year. He is developing software to gather the material and archive it. Features: for a live TV show it streams and archives and encodes to different formats for different purposes. CMS is SPIP. The most popular CMS in France. In France the DSL line comes with TV compatibility through which it is possible to stream television (triple-play: telephony, cable tv and broadband internet). All that the provider has to do is to stream an MPEG2 to the company and it does the multicasting for all clients. This software is in development stage.

_V2V_
http://v2v.cc
Jan, P2P, Berlin

High demands video distro without much archive with FLOSS software and open formats. The uploads are put in an RSS feed. The CMS is Drupal that is taking the info from the V2V backend with a drupal module written by himself. The backend can consist of several computers or systems and there can also be several frontends (but actually now there is only one - this self-developed Drupal module). It seems it is possible to install a Drupal site and draw your own (custom) content from the site. Another option is to plug into Democracy Player. All in all, to get the v2v feed on your site (with nice animated images), install the v2v.module on your drupal site, enable it, that's it. optionally enable the v2v block to get the latest videos in your sidebar.

_Cut-n-paste Crossmedia_
Gerbrand

3 projects, not all to do with video. Artists collective in Netherlands, radio documentary festival in Amsterdam, did project giving fest participants little audio present. Had a counter, people could come and leave their mobile number, had an Internet server call all the numbers 20 times during the 3 days, people would answer the phone and hear a little poem, story or soundscape. Well appreciated so decided to set up 211 (emergency number) project....?

Another project is the phone art exhibition: "Playmobile". You get art onto your phone every day! Mostly video.

Project in West Mids, UK with voluteer youth groups, getting them interested in political decision making. Written new Drupal module for sms. Sends individual text messages to one or all members in a group and can push the text from the site to the phone, say you text to the site 'events'. You get a listing of upcoming events. Ditto with 'news', etc. Are others interested to see how this could work in other contexts?

_NGO-in-a-Box: Audio Video Edition_
http://audiovideo.ngoinabox.org/
And

The Audio and Video edition of NGO-in-a-Box is a toolkit that lowers the entry level for NGOs, non-profits and media activists wanting to use audio and video to effect change. It is a collection of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) tools, documentation and tutorials that introduces you to the world of FOSS and the low-cost technology that is transforming the balance of forces in the realm of media production.

Traditionally audio and video production and distribution have been cost prohibitive for most people, particularly for those in transition or developing countries. New technologies are changing that. We've put together a kit that lowers the entry level for NGOs and individuals wanting to use audio and video, introduces you to the world of FOSS as well as low-cost technology and its possibilities for transforming the balance of forces in the realm of media production.

These are handed out tomorrow and can be tried right then.

_MJKIM_
MJ Kim, Korea

No exact project like the ones described. Maybe strange, because korea most developed country with broadband very ordinary for koreans to see video on net, so no development of projects like the rest of ours. Maybe because the more importan thing is that what should be media strategy including, what should be the impact?

Chamseasan (?) and Jimbonet. Closely related organisations. There are the major articles written by reporters but also many articles written by outside writers with video services collected in various versions and directories, e.g. when workers are beaten by police, it is immediately edited and placed online. Shamsesan works with labournet and association of independent film media makers. they show dramas here too. Can upload video to ftp server of shamsesan and search for videos of other countries including others than the projects presented here. Film critics discuss programmmes here, also about media activism. These are the major sections of shamsesan.

Jinbonet is a place where people come from progressive news and perspectives. We think it is important that though we have good access to internet, to have a space in broadcasting system because then people can record programmes and organise screenings in local areas. Now big struggle over FTAA in Korea between US and Korea.

People can download and share videos on this using shamsesan. There are different levels of sharing, we can talk about this. Developed different types of activism to open space in broadcasting area space on public access, cable and satellite channels from last year, changed to be kind of activist channel. Airing worker struggles, biweekly current affairs from labour movement, media education programme, local activist programmes. Finaly pushed broadcasting authority to allow creation of accessible nationwide channel for activist programmes to be seen by everyone.

The question now is how to get people to watch them! It is all legal broadcasting, not like telestreet. There's nothing like that in Korea. How can we establish local points for training people to produce videos? Infrastructrure strategies.

q. Do you provide screening packs with resources like posters etc. to encourage people to retransmit content in cinemas? Publicity could be something for a future session. Various promotion tactics though internet, also important is happening in film policy. Pushing film council to establish local theatre for independent film makers.

_TeleStreets_
http://www.telestreets.it/
Annalisa

A model of distribution using spaces of frequency that are not occupied because of technical reasons. Global war and memory war are in focus. We found how to set up antennas and to create and utilise other tools. We have an aggregation module on the right where people can directly download individual videos. Trying to experiment convergence between mobile videomaking, mobiles and urban environments.

An experiment in Rotterdam (at a library during the Satellite of Love): the production moment to collapse with the viewing moment. Used Mambo CMS for SMS. Tried to get together a split screen stream from various locations. Tnteresting because people reache a contemporary vision of different spaces of the city. People can talk about space where they actually are, and view the video at the same time in a collective way. There were radical political agitations around and it was interesting to see how people react and try to make sense of what is happening out in the square.

_Mute_
http://metamute.org/
Simon from London

Software and site and print mag. Pasing around some issues. There is a strong editorial group. Community management of content by using FLOSS CMSs. Implementing participatory models. I agree that Drupal can solve some common problems. We set up a separate BitTorrent tracker that could plug into Drupal. The CivicCRM distribution of Drupal is helpful because it has a Contact Management System. It's a well-founded programme which has some big USA NGOs behind it. CivicCRM came out of the Dean Campaign, a Democratic presidential candidate's campaign. It's a fast-moving target. It is especially suited to organise volunteers cheaply and effectively. The print mag Mute has its latest issue on Precariousness, that is highly recommended.

_al-jwarizmi_
http://hackitectura.net/aljwarizmi/
Rama

"It is an ongoing development for distributed competence live streaming, based on Pure Data (aka PD)
a real-time visual programming environment for audio and graphics processing.

al-jwarizmi mixes live audiovisual signals produced by a geographically disseminated swarm of operators with dynamic content from databases and stream it outto the internet. PD???? modularity will provide advanced levels of web interactivity and unexpected possibilities in recombining political & programing & media skills. New tools for social cybernetics.

A new generation prototype for real-time communication/creation over free networks based on horizontal relations between agents taking part in it."

_Democracy Player_
http://www.getdemocracy.com/
Holmes

Internet TV platform. TV-like experience through a video aggregator programme. Channel guide collects available channels which can be added with a single click. Videos can be DVD quality. Works like RSS. Metadata in RSS field is displayed at the botton of the clip in HTML. The aim is to create a programme that a wide range of people can use very simply as their own TV. The next version gives much more control to producers over their relationship to their subscribers. There is an HTML snippet that one can just copy-paste into their website. The input side accepts uploads, torrents and links. Supported codecs are the ones that VLC supports, but on the Mac side it's Quicktime compatible at the moment, althought it will be VLC as well. A lot of people download it, now the content side needs a push. Audiences are ready.

Rss aggregator, downloader and video player all in one. Tv like experience on desktop. Often difficult to get onto actual tvs due to corporate and state control. Easier way to democratise media. Free, open source, good for windows mac and linux.

Rss 2.0 feeds, selection of videos. Thumbnails to download. Green play button appears once video is ready to play. Has integrated bittorrent client. Downloads to machine, not just stream. Link to make donation, maybe at some point to buy download, integrated republishing, can share with friends if you like it. One way is to e-mail link. Video bomb button, like del.ic.ious but for video. Front page of that based on what gets most clicks. Aim to have tag options while watching.

Easy to use, simple space. Anyone with a channel can offer download of democracy player with channels set up. Aim to give publishers more control over relations with audience.

Broadcast machine publishing feed, indytorrents, drag and drop and permission changes to install in site, easier than wordpress. Uses php.

Q if your video is online at archive.org, can you create torrent using url?

3 ways, link to file somewhere, upload file to server, or seed a bittorrent. Can use broadcast machine to make a perfect rss feed.

Which formats supported?
Anything that vlc can play, for pc. For mac, qt.

some techie discussion, missed...

At level of code, always gonna be free. Funding from Freeing Media interests, free and open source software. Sustainability model more on wide user base and donations and foundation donations, maybe subscriptions from large publishers.
Term democracy abused, also term bomb, why are you using this term? What does it mean?
Tools have democratising effect on medium. Popyularising things people like, rather than have money behind them. Funny when the arguments about it get going 'democracy sucks' etc

How different from fireant?
Free and open source. Simple and easy to use. Less buttons and more coherent.
why do they say that?
Cross platform. Mac and windows versions similar.

200,000 downloads so far. 30, or 40 k this month. Next step is to get people putting out popular video to use democracy player.-

_IndyTorrents_
http://indytorrents.org/
Blank

Crossplatform tracker. We wanted to make the site as compatible as possible. We keep one seed (=1 copy) from each file as well to keep the torrents alive.

Couple of years ago Portland got active video collective, hundreds of hours, shown around town, got expensive to copy videos, started online video bittorrent with azureus, cross platform, free and oss, can use trackers.. not really good. Running on 133 mhz box, crashed a lot, looking for different ways for video to be encoded, functional,
Improvised own tracker, interface not so visually appealing as democracy player, ok cos aim to get activist video online and then fed out again using rss feeds. Give people login accounts, make torrent in azureas.
Question: how does a seed work?
You have a video, run it through azureas. It points to the file as a link, upload this and then the tracker points to the file on your hard drive. A million people could down load video and it would mean you offer one 1/1 millionth of the file.

What if someone shuts a computer before finished?
Sometimes that just happens, but ensure you leave at least one seed,

Does that mean that indytorrents keeps a copy of everything itself?
Kind of, yes.
Lost in techie talk.................

started using azurea (free open source, multilanguage, multiplatrform.
trackers from azurea suck, not really good, crashing all the time,
in 6 months got 1 mill. downloads.
what we got out of that (out of what in fact?)
find new ways in which video can be encoded, functional, work in many media players,
very clearly on a mac and windows, and linux afterwards
interface of indytorrents is not so (advanced?) as democracy player's
pick up the video from an RSS feed and publish it wherever,

_can_ integrate anything, but _do_ we integrate things?
make a torrent from azeurus,
find, upload it, and gets posted to the tracker, and anyone on the world connected can get/view it.

we have a video on hdd, make a torrent file, run it through a program
takes the link, uploads it, gets stucked on the tracker, and points to the file on hdd,
you can have 1Mill people downloading a video.
ben: does it mean indytorrents (what)?

_EngageMedia_
http://engagemedia.org/
Anna & Andy

Volunteer based private association. "EngageMedia is a website and a network for distributing social justice and environmental video from South East Asia, Australia and the Pacific. It is a space for critical documentary, fiction, artistic and experimental works that challenge the one-way communication model of traditional media. EngageMedia is currently in development and preparing for a public beta release."

*Developing Plone to be a video CMS.* Users/Admins/Groups/Profiles/Comments/Publish Form (only for video, their own creation)/TinyMCE/Tagging/Categories/Delicious support. There is no limitation to the file size but it goes through HTTP so can't retry.

-Andy
Public site, seditious intent, showcasing material, against anti-terror laws. Extending plone to be video cms, publishing software which people can reuse. More functionality internally than on public site. Users, admins, group spaces with own profiles.. customized with difft genres, links. Publishing video in site automatically creates bittorrent.
Can only publish video into certain folder,
Rss2 syndication, taxonomies, automatically produce feeds of the taxonomies. can import feed into I-tunes and it download video info. Big files are not good with plone. Plone j applet may be good. If network drops out it could keep going and not have to start again.

_
_CandidaTV_
http://www.candida.tv/
Agnese
In cooperation with the Telestreet Network. Started from a POP language and they are moving to a more documentary style these days. They were in the Forte but when they started they moved out and tried to make a self-managed project. It is not so easy to make ends meet with this project. "Candida TV was born from the melting of different realities: underground cinema, video production, rave parties, street theaters, independent radios, underground bulletin board systems and counterculture pop-magazines in the last seven years in Rome. Candida is a core of 12 people, fusing the experiences of self-managed squatted community centers and technical knowledge in the field of cinema and video production." (http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributors/candidatext.html)

-It was working as open to everyone to upload, started 2001, when tech not yet so popular, .. ppen publishing on one side, critical resources on other. If you have human resources to do this
 tv, fiction people use the material. 2003-4 there was a kind of synergy with pirate tv networks, lots of film makers were uploading material to server and then had resources to . interesting model for sustainability of these networks. In coming days Candida, production project born 1999 to infiltrate mainstream tv, 2002, telestreets network born, taking hierarchical media in their own hands
 making it more horizontal, been producing lots of short films that are on ngv, moving towards more documentary style, coming from more pop, tv style. Not sure why. Gonna show new stuff on Friday or Thursday nights. Small coop, legal body, aim to be sustainable. Moved out of forte prenestino to try a new way of relating with market, commercial aspects. Thinking every day of ending this experiment because hard to have an income from this, used to living in exchange economy, gift economy, not sure about what to give, what sell etc
.. idea to create new space for self sustained independent media. Rest on website-

_Deep Dish TV_
http://www.archive.org/details/deepdishtv
Dee-Dee Halleck
Paper Tiger TV was created in 1991. A lot of channels wanted to miniDV copies (this was before VHS). 1996 they started to air papertiger and other sources through their brand new Deep Dish TV. The TVs are saving the programmes from the satellite now. Thousands of producers sent in segments which were aired unaltered. Gulf Crisis TV Project (on the first Gulf War) - played by more than 400 TVs. In Seattle they set up a press room, and added a website as an afterthought - which became Indymedia. The response was overwhelming. They did programmes like GreenScreen on environment and another one in prisons. Finished a Fallujah and an Iraq video. They are selling DVDs for material cost. Also working with radio station who use the audio material. Viewer sponsporship: there is a tradition in USA that users send money to stations. Deep Dish TV is on air for free and production costs are covered by fund drives. Last one gathered 400.000 USD (?).

Shocking and Awful, their latest compilation incorporates videos by more than 100 sources. Dee-Dee doesn't care much about licenses. About the net neutrality scandal she thinks the bad things will happen anyway.

-Paper tiger born 1991, making programmes critiquing media. Eg dynasty, tv guide. All done and broadcast live. Public access stations saw these as good use of public access programmes. Did hand painted backgrounds instead of plants. Had been hand copying tapes for stations, later got into satellite for ease of distribution and make more space available in their offices. Thought people would reuse tapes to record off satellites but in Tucson Arizona there's a cupboard hoarding them all. Thousands of producers send in segments which are used whole, co-ordinating producers put shows together. 195 Green Scene, 1991 Gulf War Crisis project, 400 stations played it. When Seattle happened, wanted to make a programme on that, set up centre for people to work together added a website as an afterthought expecting a few vistors but it bred indymedia. Idea first was physical site with good connections, studios etc, but were completely.

Series on Fallujah:

Getting more into dvd distro, 6,000 copies of Shocking and Awful at $15 for 3 dvd set. Made radio version of excerpts. Radio stations play that and use disks for own fundraising. How to get viewer sponsorhip? Sustainability.. Pacifica Radio has five formally affiliated stations that exist on donations. Freespeech TV channel on satellite, with donations. The satellite you have to rent. Series on prisons. Dics sold on air by Freespeech TV, made 400,000 dollars in sales to people wa nting to support the initiatives. This is a solution that is financially sustainable but not neo-liberal. Next series on community media round the world, showcasing work of others. Hope to have many producers help with producing the series "Waves of Change" on media of all kinds, could be paper, puppet show, photo project..

anna:
What licenses do you use? Creative commons?

License???? All for free. Initially people agreed that work should be used and any profits used to make more material that promotes peace.

Arundhati Roy, people who’ve witnessed violence etc in next series…

Question on bill abolishing net neutrality

Paper Tiger TV was created in 1981. A lot of channels wanted to miniDV copies (this was before VHS). 1996 they started to air papertiger and other sources through their brand new Deep Dish TV. The TVs are saving the programmes from the satellite now. Thousands of producers sent in segments which were aired unaltered. Gulf Crisis TV Project (on the first Gulf War) - played by more than 400 TVs. In Seattle they set up a press room, and added
[15:28] maxigas: a website as an afterthought - which became Indymedia. The response was overwhelming. They did programmes like GreenScreen on environment and another one in prisons. Finished a Fallujah and an Iraq video. They are selling DVDs for material cost. Also working with radio station who use the audio material. Viewer sponsporship: there is a tradition in USA that users send money to stations. Deep Dish TV is on air for free and production costs
[15:28] maxigas: are covered by fund drives. Last one gathered 400.000 USD (?).
[15:30] maxigas: Shocking and Awful, their latest compilation incorporates videos by more than 100 sources. Dee-Dee doesn't care much about licenses. About the net neutrality scandal she thinks the bad things will happen anyway.

Anna, engagemedia
Public association, hope to be funded for basic wages later. History in imc, accessnews, undercurrents, beyond tv etc. things much easier now than then. Streaming show on pirate tv, undercurrents. Problems with streaming to v limited audience using real media….
Started this project because saw gap for activist media content in region, wanted to foster cross border collaboration in region, oz can be v introverted, not indymedia because more of an archive, wanting to connect educators, screeners, film makers etc, allowing people to create and distro own media,. Also allow community to filter the media. Community tv in oz doesn’t get digital licenses, so as everyone gets set top boxes, community tv is losing audience. So broadband.
Using plone, open source cms. Question of which system to use rather than building own. Wanted video functionality on top. Chose plone ovber drupal cos a plone head got involved early, and believed python had more possibilities to develop. V secure, large developer community out there to supportg it, v accessible, conforms to world standards, good international and localization, interface translated inyto 60 difft languages, lots of possibilities to develop. Oxfam, highgtr end corps, lots use it. Lots of products available. For it. Creates human friendly urls unlike some other cms. Like being able to create collaborative workspaces. Various site members with different focuses can have difft spaces, wikis, private and public spaces. Important because indpt production v decentralized, not having to work together as much as in past so aim to recerewat spaces on line for collabopratgion. Wanting to contriobute back to community with software that makiinmg. Decided to use pl,one to develop video functionality, at video, just developing it, another group doing similar, been going to plone devt conferences and working together.
Project aims
Distribution, training, networking, help distrro important media, regional network of producers

_New Global Vision_
http://ngvision.org
Simon & Agnese
A side-project of Italy Indymedia founded in 2001. It was difficult at the time to find distro channels for great amounts of video. One of the largest tech problems now. Collected some 100 artists and 500 videos. Large community. They are reaching their tech limits. Does this approach still has any value at this time anyway? It's a traditional archive with anonymous ftp and editors selecting by hand. One of its main advantages was for pirate televisions that had to air content continually and with the help of the site they could get their content fast. "L'archivio contiene 576 video, per totali 63.006 Gb."

-Tools to distro materials that otherwise don’t get out, finding resources for this. Collects materials form 100 artists, 5 or 600 videos on there. Price of building this is that reaching tech limits now. Present here to find new directions, does this sort of approach have meaning, value as instrument for activists or how must it evolve?-

_How to get rich with digicontent?_

*

_Asia247.tv_
Jeremiah Foo
Every morning a video podcast and also free anonymous upload of video. WordPress and Jumla? - very simple to use and easy to podcast. More and more affiliates. With WordPress it is possible to run several frontends running from the same database, so if an Asian government blocks your DNS or IP than the others can still work with the same content. Flying around to make workshops on how to give content. Bangkok, Thailand, Malaysia, etc. To give them the tools so that they can give it to the site and the site can broadcast it into everyone. They review videos by hand.

There has been a famous case of a squatter girl being abused by a policeman and filmed by another using mobile phone which got on the Internet. That was a big motivation to push these possibilities in Asia.

_Witness Video Hub initiative_
http://witness.org/technology
Bryan
"WITNESS is in the process of developing a participatory website - the Video Hub, where anyone with human rights related footage can upload video that can be used to create change. Using technologies such as cell phones and other mobile devices, web-based video upload and content distribution, online community building, advocacy and organizational tools, the Video Hub will provide new opportunities to feed the populist shift toward user-generated content with media in the service of global human rights advocacy. Users will be able to create groups of community members with similar interests or concerns for issues that incorporate videos, online forums, event organizing and the ability to create campaigns and petitions so that video is not only seen, but also acted upon. Serving concerned citizens, activists, journalists, researchers, and advocates worldwide, our current plan is not to act as gatekeepers of content, but to allow community review to foster a sense of shared responsibility and accountability. WITNESS plans for a public premiere in 2007."

Three main problems has been raised:
a. *Censorship based on Human Rights* - blogging and the spread of free information is a problem. Education and proper content management is very important here.
b. *Metainformation* - contextualising content.
c. *Distribution* - how to gather information in a meaningful way.

Maybe there is no sense that building yet another content aggregator? Why are they not focusing on *?

_Clearer Channel_
http://clearerchannel.org/

BeyondTV, Mick & Anna - a source for video activist screenings. Different encodings. Some useful feauters in the engine but it is not a CMS at all. Need to improve it. There's an RSS feed. It is necessary to migrate into another system - how to convert the database and make the transition transparent?

_VideoBooths_
http://www.transmission.cc/wiki/VideoBooths

Participatory media without power - at least we will know what people are thinking... There's a similar project which OneWorldTV did in connection with the G8 summit (proof-of-concept). The experience was that it is too expensive and and technically challenging for people to use and no one actually wathed a lot of them. Another similar project is Talkaoke. "Talkaoke is the streamed, spontaneous talk show where anyone can take a seat and air their views around the doughnut of chat." (http://talkaoke.com/)
The spread of mobile phones and their life cycles means that their distribution is much more even than those of computers.

_IFIwatch.tv_
http://www.ifiwatchnet.org/
http://www.ifiwatch.tv/

Inspired to counter plans "global development gateway" - the World Bank's dream of dominating 'knowledge' of development, environment etc on the internet. as a counter-site, we planned 'real world bank' of alternative, grassroots perspectives, including texts, videos and so on. After broad consultation on existing uses of electronic networks against the international financial institutions, ifiwatchnet was created to link online ifiwatchers. APC Action Apps based, currently run from ITEM in Uruguay. Technical development is slow/stopped at present, and search facilities etc are inadequate at the moment. Have high aspirations to be central portal for online media independent and critical of IFIs, feeding and aggregating issue-based RSS feeds, maybe Plone or Drupal will be the new CMS for a hived off video section....? Looking for help and allies in this.

Friends of the Earth International http://www.foei.org is currently developing a 'community testimonies' site using Plone, looking for allies in this process.

There is also a standalone site called * http://www.RaisedVoices.net * whose creator is now linking up with Pambazuka News from Africa, online newsletter moving on to develop participatory video podcasts etc. also looking for allies.

_WITNESS Video Hub_
http://www.witness.org/technology

"WITNESS is in the process of developing a participatory website - the Video Hub, where anyone with human rights related footage can upload video that can be used to create change. Using technologies such as cell phones and other mobile devices, web-based video upload and content distribution, online community building, advocacy and organizational tools, the Video Hub will provide new opportunities to feed the populist shift toward user-generated content with media in the service of global human rights advocacy. Users will be able to create groups of community members with similar interests or concerns for issues that incorporate videos, online forums, event organizing and the ability to create campaigns and petitions so that video is not only seen, but also acted upon. Serving concerned citizens, activists, journalists, researchers, and advocates worldwide, our current plan is not to act as gatekeepers of content, but to allow community review to foster a sense of shared responsibility and accountability. WITNESS plans for a public premiere in 2007."

_Reel2Reel_
http://real2reel.co.nr/

"Real2Reel is a small group of video artists making short and occasionally amusing films about counter-cultural activities, social struggles and environmental concerns, all with a strong grassroots direct action bias."

_IMC UK Video Collective_
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/static/video.html

"IMC UK VIDEO can be thought of as a loose informal network of groups and individuals who use video as a tool for social change. There is no single 'IMC Video' group as such although sometimes a group will form around a specific collaborative project related to a specific event or issue. Recent examples of collaboration include 'Indefensible' a film about the 2003 DSEi arms fare and also the G8 indymedia video compilation. More often, IMC UK VIDEO is simply a resource, a way of tapping into a diverse range of skills, experiences and interests within the field of progressive video."

_OktoTV_

_Pirate TV_
http://www.aspisys.com/pricelist.htm

UTV-100TX 132 euros 100mw. More info here: http://www.transmission.cc/wiki/Notes