The really awful video of David Hasselhoff being drunk and filmed by his daughter has been viewed at least 1.7 Million times already. It’s been aired on many TV networks too. I really despair at American news when instead of serious news, all outlets including CNN devote more and more time to Anna-Nicole, Britney, Paris, Prince William and now the Hoff.
This is the video:
But the interesting thing for me are all the parodies that are on YouTube such as this one:
So far there have also been about 200 video responses to the video.
The dozens of Irish piss-take videos around during the election show too that parody is alive and well in Ireland. Parody and satire seem to be a handy way of forking out into deeper more original creativity. The whole “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” comes to mind. First comes the derivatives of other work and then comes totally original pieces. Hell, Billy Shakespeare’s work got a lot of inspiration from other older stories. PoliticalThicko is getting a lot of attention for his videos but he is far from alone on that front. Bertie Ahern on Dragon’s Den was superb too.
I wish Labour and the other parties would release the raw footage they use to make their videos. It’d be great too to see RTE also release a lot of their own content online for free and to be reused. Neil Grogan has written to RTE asking them to release the political debates (if they bloody happen).
I am writing this email to ask you follow America’s CNN in releasing Irish Election broadcasts under a permissive license, like Creative Commons. This would allow people to reproduce the content freely, and give RTE the credit it deserves. Like Democracy, Culture wants to be free and open to the people. This could serve as a trial to Creative Commons licensing other RTE produced programs.
A great idea. I support it and it’d be great for all other political websites and organisations to ask the same of RTE. As Neil said, they can class this as a trial and maybe consider moving more original content online after that. Not in the god awful realvideo format either. RTE, like the Beeb, should get themselves a YouTube channel as well as a raw footage archive. Fergus Cassidy has also highlighted the CNN endeavour.
Roll on the parodies and roll on original art.
This is something I have been planning to write about for a while now. I hope I won’t have to now.
As an example; the footage of Vincent Browne and Bertie shown on the 6 O’Clock news is only part of the available video record of that day- there were edits, camera changes and so on.
But I think it would be interesting to have access to the reactions of the crowd, to shots of FF activists trying to approach VB to take his mic away and so on. Those are powerful images and by releasing them for sharing or recutting (not on YouTube in all likelihood given its terms of licencing but maybe on VideoEgg which has the advantage of integration with Bebo) by citizens, RTE would turn what are currently just editing floor sweepings into valuable contributions to the public debate. What more vital task for the national broadcaster than to let the nation talk to itself?
I’d follow this up with anyone who’d like to put together a (brief) proposal to put to RTE.
or the fact that in the first version from RTE, PJ is seen saying “fuck off” to Browne but this does not appear in later versions.
An interesting idea but I’m sure RTE will want to exercise control over how its footage is represented. I’d say the chances of them agreeing to it are zero.
“An interesting idea but I’m sure RTE will want to exercise control over how its footage is represented”
That’s the argument really. I accept they have a right not to hand their footage over to someone else to make money from. But for non-commercial use, of non-commrecial snippets of footage, what is there to be lost from allowing it to be incorporated into the national discourse?
Sounds like the kind of thing a public service broadcaster ought to be thinking it would love to get into.
[…] Perhaps they have still got time to listen to Neil Groagan’s idea and make it available over the internet for, erm, youtubing. […]
From RTE’s point of view, the footage might be used for non-commercial purposes but it will almost certainly be used for political purposes.
One of the hardest problems that I didn’t properly anticipate with trying to make stuff of a video nature done is getting silence or at least a decent audio background. People will accept things being off with the visual but dear God if the fan is roaring in the background it is very annoying.
[…] Following yesterday’s RTE.ie web debate comes the news that there will be a television debate between Fianna Fáil leader Bertie Ahern and Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny on Prime Time on 17 May next. Given that RTÉ is a Public Service Broadcaster, a non-profit making organisation owned by the Irish people, and Ireland’s cross-media leader, it has seemed to many Irish bloggers (eg Fergus, Niall, Damien, Irish Election) that RTÉ should follow the US example and make the video of this forthcoming Prime Time debate available online without restrictions, to promote and foster the widest possible dissemination of and discussion about, that debate. […]
[…] Unbeknownst to me, with my quick thinking on the positive developments regarding CBS releasing democratic debates under a permissive license in the United States has caused quite a few Irish bloggers to echo my call on RTE’s stance on releasing the Irish Election 2007 debates. If you agree we should be allowed to download, remix and share the debates while giving RTE credit for production, please: […]
[…] releasing democratic debates under a permissive license in the United States has caused quite a few Irish bloggers to echo my call on RTE’s stance on releasing the Irish Election 2007 debates. If you […]
Hey Damien, I’d be grateful if you could update the link to me to: http://neil.grogan.ie/2007/05/irish-elections-creative-commons.html
Cheers,
Neil