On the way, actually . . .

Thanks! I agree completely. Any way we could talk you and Matt into whipping up a story or two? We need some Maryland contagion in there.

Scott

Great contest!

Forgive the reductio. But I can’t see how a submission of a 60 second story in this competition isn’t as good a form of “career-building” or “exhibition” as you could presently expect from any publication of a story in this form. Perhaps there will be a groundswell of interest in the form such that a market would exist for a bitpass, etc. system. For now though, I’d rather see 60 second stories flowing around the internet unimpeded by market forces. And frankly, I think there is a connection between not creativity in general, but more specifically between encouraging the adoption and distribution of new narrative forms on the internet, and choosing alternatives to the current copyright regime.

Having said that, if you’ll write one, I’d be happy to post a link to your story on the 60 second story site, with a note that it was not entered in the competition due to your objection to relinquishing copyright. That way, your work could be exhibited along with the others, though you would not win the chocolate. Have you created one, or are your objections purely theoretical?

fortunato, all right! More contagion.

Another Pedant, I didn’t think Scott’s reply was really that inappropriate, given your original questions. If you’d now like to have a serious discussion, let’s.

If I offer to take you to lunch and buy you a sandwich, I’m not enforcing a sandwich on you. You can simply not go to lunch with me. This contest does not “enforce” a license on anyone. People can choose to enter or not. If they don’t want to enter, they can still create 60-second stories and show them off somewhere else.

Many contests require that entries licensed in some way; usually it’s in a restrictive way that gives the company hosting the content rights to things. This contest requires a license that makes work available to the public, a license that I think is good for many things, including one-minute videos taken on webcams of people telling stories.

If you dislike the CC licenses, discuss. But if you think that Scott setting the rules and terms of his contest in the way he believes is right (and my agreeing to judge a contest that has rules and conditions that I like) is somehow outrageous, I’m not sure what more I can say to that.

We have an entry in the contest at http://bamboo.contagiousmedia.org/quiz/index.html , a first attempt, take a peek too

Scott, your snide but expected conflation of rights, major presses, and DRM is a reductio ad absurdum. You know full well that there are actually many ways to manage “interesting little stories,” everything from bitpass to online exhibitions. It’s not the matter of the money I would object to, but rather your requirement that participation in this competition with no reward, whether it be monetary, exhibition, or career-building, should have the right to enforce your own agenda on copyright politics.

The main idea here is to encourage people to create interesting little stories that they want to encourage other people to share, email, burn, whatever. We don’t particularly want to get involved agonizing over DRM. The idea is to spread interesting stories, not lock them down.

I can see why we might want more stories in our lives, or better stories, or more interesting stories, etc.