I was thinking recently about the incredible potential behind the Creative Commons, and how it is nowhere near being realized. Some people get it – ccMixter for instance. But for some reason the same doesn’t happen with video or text. People are publishing both under CC licenses, but nothing is really being remixed yet. I’m waiting for people to realize the potential behind such services as blip.tv which has loads of videos licensed under CC, and allows downloads of the source file. From that, incredible things can be made.
One thing I would love to see, but for a number of reasons do not expect to, is CC licensed concert footage. There are already a very large number of artists who allow recordings of live shows to be freely traded on the internet (note, not under CC licenses in most cases). The logic behind moves like this is pretty simple: bands make more money touring than they do on CDs. If they allow recordings to be freely tradeable online, they can reach people they never would have otherwise, build a bigger fan base, and get more gigs. If people in the audience were allowed to film shows, with the condition that they had to share them online, videos could be made of every show, from several angles, using a high quality audio recording (like those already available) for the soundtrack. Just think of what we could be doing.