Online multimedia production has for a few years now come with the guidance to ‘chunk’ content: instead of producing linear content, as you would for a space in a linear broadcast schedule, you split your content into specific chunks of material that each tackles a different aspect of the issue or story being covered. Interfaces like these show the idea in practice best:
The concept is particularly well explained by Mindy McAdams (on text), and Andy Dickinson (on video, below): Continue reading
Whether you need an image for your blog post, a soundtrack to your video or that YouTube clip for your documentary, if you’re dealing with multimedia it’s likely you’ll end up using – or wanting to use – someone else’s work as part of your own.
Here are some basic tips on finding and using multimedia across the web in a way that won’t (hopefully) land you in hot water.
One of the mistakes that has repeatedly landed journalists and their employers in trouble is confusion over the term “public domain“.
Public domain has two possible meanings. In copyright terms, public domain refers to work whose copyright has expired, meaning that anyone can use it without having to ask the copyright holder. Disney – a fierce lobbyist itself for extending copyright – has used ‘public domain’ material as the basis for most of its cartoons, from the work of the Grimm Brothers to a host of other fairy tales, myths and legends.
But sometimes you will hear journalists talk about something being “in the public domain“, in other words ‘public’. For instance, when the Irish Daily Mail published photos of an air traffic controller from her website, they defended the decision on the grounds that the image was “in the public domain”.
But this is not the same.
For example, pretty much every piece of media, almost by definition, is “in the public domain”. Newspapers and magazines sit on the newsstands; television and radio reports are broadcast on huge city centre screens and speakers.
But if you take that content and reproduce it in its entirety without permission, you are breaking copyright law.
If you need any persuading about this, read this post about a copyright scam whereby images are pushed to the top of Google Images search results pages, and then bloggers sued for using them without permission.
It seems odd that media organisations so used to protecting their own, very public, content, should think that another person’s photo, or video, or report, should be fair game because it is “in the public domain”. But they do.
If you want public domain (in the sense of ‘copyright expired’) content, there are some useful sources. The Public Domain Review, for example, publishes a range of public domain work and has this guide to finding them. And Angela Grant writes here about finding public domain video, among other things (note that Angela refers to US law, not that of other countries).
But never assume something is public domain because it is “in public”.
One point to make: while an image, story, or composition may be out of copyright, its performance, re-design or re-telling may not.
Just ask Disney.
If you’re dealing with content that’s been published on a platform like Flickr or YouTube, you may be able to find out the copyright status of that content relatively easily.
Both allow users to easily establish copyright through the Creative Commons licence. You can either look for that licence in the relevant part of the page hosting the content.
On YouTube it is under the video:
Where to find a YouTube video’s licensing information – image from YouTube.
On Flickr this is on the right hand side under License:
Look for an image’s licensing information on Flickr on the right hand column.
Make sure you click on that licence to find out what terms it requires.
Creative Commons, for example, has a number of elements:
If you’re unsure of where your work fits against those criteria (for example, whether it’s considered as “commercial”), then approach the copyright holder for clarity. Remember that the CC licence is only a default position, and can be negotiated. Also, if you cannot get any response and decide to publish anyway, your attempts to contact the copyright holder will be important if there are any legal proceedings.
If you want others to publish their content under a CC licence, it helps if you publish at least some of your own work under a CC licence too. Indeed, if it contains other CC material, their licences may require you to.
Flickr and YouTube aren’t the only sites that use Creative Commons licences, of course. To search for media under a CC licence (including on those sites), use the search facility on the Creative Commons site and select the engine you want to search through.
If you’re running a hyperlocal site, or any site that needs images of places, check out Geograph, which hosts Creative Commons-licensed images of locations around the UK.
There are also specialist sites for sharing music under CC, such as Freesound.
Even if the media you are interested in using does not use a CC licence, of course, you can still approach the copyright holder for permission to use it.
Another mistake that some people make is to believe that simply linking to the source, or naming the photographer/source, is enough to avoid copyright issues.
This is only the case if the licence for the material says so.
Copyright has two elements: moral rights, and economic rights.
The moral right is the right to be identified as the author of a piece of work. This is the attribution which is in pretty much every copyright licence, Creative Commons or otherwise.
But it’s not the right that most people sue over.
The economic right is the right to right to “allow or prevent the copying of their work or the performance of their work in public” (IPO). This translates into the ability to earn money from a piece of work. And this is what people largely sue over.
Attributing a photo only covers the moral right. It does not mean you won’t be sued.
If, then, you have used an image, video or audio without the permission of the rights holder (granted through a Creative Commons licence or directly to you through correspondence) then you are still probably breaking copyright law.
If the media is hosted on a platform like YouTube, you may be able to embed it on a webpage without seeking permission at all: if the creator* has enabled embedding then they would have little argument in suing for breach of copyright because:
*note: this does not apply to video created by other people and uploaded by someone other than the copyright holder.
UPDATE: Interestingly on this note, in March 2014 Getty Images made it possible to embed 35 million of its images for non-commercial use:
“In essence, anyone will be able to visit Getty Images’ library of content, select an image and copy an embed HTML code to use that image on their own websites. Getty Images will serve the image in a embedded player – very much like YouTube currently does with its videos – which will include the full copyright information and a link back to the image’s dedicated licensing page on the Getty Images website.”
Of course, it’s one thing to talk about the strict legal position, and another to talk about what actually happens. Journalists regularly publish content that breaks the law – but make a judgement about the likelihood of ending up in court over that. For example, I can say that the Queen is corrupt (a defamatory statement) and be almost certain that the Queen is not going to sue me (because she has a history of not doing so).
Media lawyers are not just there to advise publishers on their strict legal position, but on the balance of risk involved, and how to reduce those risks. While you cannot always avoid risks, you can avoid them in simple ways:
‘Royalty free’ is a vague term which is often confused with, simply, ‘free’. It most often refers to media which is paid for once and can then be used multiple times in different contexts.
For example, you might pay for a CD of ‘royalty free’ music or sound effects which can be used across multiple video projects – saving you the hassle of acquiring permissions every time for different music.
Or you might buy a CD of royalty free images (clip art, for example) that you can use across various design projects.
If you’re studying in a school of media, or working in a large media organisation, they will probably have some royalty free media for students or employees to use – so ask around to find out what’s available.
But don’t use it for the sake of it: the quality can vary. In addition, many other media projects may have relied on the same libraries, so you can lose distinctiveness.
You should also be aware that the licences of even so-called ‘royalty free’ material can be restrictive: the Wikipedia entry on royalty free music notes that “the royalty-free music license at SmartSound states “You must obtain a “mechanical” license for replication of quantities in excess of 10,000 units.” (Read the licence here)
Thankfully for those who want more diversity, the internet has made new types of royalty free media – and new pricing – possible, as a wider range of photographers and other media creators can now sell their work through online marketplaces.
Pond5 has sound effects, photos, video, illustrations, music and even After Effects projects from $2 up – as well as occasional free material. iStockphoto covers most of those, and adds Flash files too – again at often very cheap prices. Quality, however, does cost more.
Stock.XCHNG deserves special mention, boasting that it is the world’s “leading free stock photo site” and hosting thousands of royalty free images. Even if the image is ‘free’, however, it’s only free under the terms of the licence – so always check them.
You can find many more sources by searching for articles like this on the ‘best places to get free images’.
On the audio front, there are sites like Audiosocket, which allow you to browse and licence independent music for your film (if you use Vimeo you can also add this through their music store).
If you know of other sources or issues to consider in finding material for multimedia, I’d love to know.
UPDATE: Here’s a useful flow chart on copyright via Mau Gris – although note that this is based on US law, which is more forgiving on images used for satirical purposes.
Can I Use that Picture? by The Visual Communication Guy via Visually & Lifehacker – click for full size
For more on these issues, and for related tools and links, see my bookmarks at http://delicious.com/paulb/creativecommons
Image by gaelx
Whether you need an image for your blog post, a soundtrack to your video or that YouTube clip for your documentary, if you’re dealing with multimedia it’s likely you’ll end up using – or wanting to use – someone else’s work as part of your own.
Here are some basic tips on finding and using multimedia across the web in a way that won’t (hopefully) land you in hot water. Continue reading
One of the problems in teaching online journalism is that what you teach today may be out of date by the time the student graduates.
This is not just a technological problem (current services stop running; new ones emerge that you haven’t taught; new versions of languages and software are released) but also a problem of medium: genres such as audio slideshows, mapping, mashups, infographics and liveblogging have yet to settle down into an established ‘formula’.
In short, I don’t believe it’s wise to simply ‘teach online journalism’. You have to combine basic principles as they are now with an understanding of how to continue to learn the medium as it develops.
This year I set MA Online Journalism students at Birmingham City University an assignment which attempts to do this.
It’s called ‘Communities of Practice’ (the brief is here). The results are in, and they are very encouraging. Here’s what emerged:
Written by Wilbert Baan
Today is the day of the US elections. I don’t think we ever had a live event on the web that will get so much live coverage. This means incredible amounts of information will be published over all kind of services and social networks. Websites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, WordPress, Blogger and many more.
Most popular web services have programmable interfaces. These interfaces allow developers to extract information out of the system. This creates a whole new genre of storytelling: storytelling with public databases. You can aggregate the information you need and sort it the way you want.
To prove the concept I made three small mock-ups. They all use search.twitter.com to see how people voted.
When I made the first the first animation Erik Borra replied by developing the idea into something that stores the data retrieved from Twitter in a database. I made a new interface that shows a graph based on what people say they voted on Twitter. And the result is a Twitter Poll.
These three examples are not representative data, it is extracted from Twitter. But it shows you how much personal and valuable information is in the public database. All you have to do is ask yourself what you want to tell to your readers and if this information is available.
I voted
This animation gets the latest twitter message where someone says they voted on McCain or Obama. It automatically refreshes. Continue reading
This season, after years of loyalty to the BBC/Channel 4 fantasy football competition, I’ve switched to The Guardian’s. Their game takes advantage of the reams of player data now available to newspapers – not just goals scored, clean sheets and assists, but also clearances, interceptions, tackles, shots on target, and so on, making for a very different challenge indeed.
The move mirrors that made by The Telegraph a year ago when they introduced a Flash element to their match reports that allowed you to look at an incredible range of match statistics. As I wrote at the time: it’s like having your own ProZone.
What’s all this got to do with the future of news? This: data. It’s one of the few advantages that news organisations have, and they should be doing more with it. What the Guardian fantasy football and the Telegraph demonstrate is the flexibility of that data.
And if we can do it in sport, why aren’t we doing it more elsewhere? Schools tables, pollution records, crime data, geotagged information, and election results are just a few that spring to mind – can you add some more?
For a good example of a particularly creative use of data (again with a sport twist), see Channel 4’s alternative Olympics medals table, which matches medals results against various other country stats, such as human rights record.
Oh, and by the way, if you want to join my fantasy football friends’ league, search for Game 39 – or just post a comment below…
CNN have a fancy new tool which allows you to see the “history, context and background to a developing story”. BackStory presents previous stories in a slideshow format with links to the full articles.
I’m not sure if this is a ‘Previous Stories’ link box for the broadband age that brings new life to a story, or a waste of resources that might have been better spent elsewhere. The timeline could work well, but doesn’t seem particularly usable in the Anthrax example. What do you think?
Rachel Clark, senior producer, tells more on CNN’s Behind the Scenes blog. (via Journalism.co.uk)
Vuvox is to Flash what WordPress is to Dreamweaver. Vuvox is, effectively, a content management system for multimedia content – an easy way to create Flash interactives without having to know Flash.
I first explored it a few months ago, but still haven’t had the time to really see what it can do. But here’s some things:
Vuvox also works with RSS feeds, Flickr, Buzznet and Picasa, so you can create dynamically updated content.
One problem: the resulting movie is hosted by Vuvox (although you can embed it). If you want to get the movie to host yourself you’ll have to use an .swf ripper, which is probably breaking the terms and conditions of Vuvox.
Anyway, over to you – what uses can you think of?
Remember when newspaper editors thought it was impressive to have a virtual version of their newspaper, turning pages and all? Remember how no one read them?
Well it seems the same mistakes are being made all over again by Arabic daily newspaper An-Nahar.
The newspaper now features a Flash version of itself – complete with a virtual desk littered with virtual pencil, magnifying glass and, er, CD.
It has to be one of the most elaborate, confusing and pointless pieces of newspaper design I’ve ever seen. Continue reading
Eric Ulken has taken “all the online job descriptions on JournalismJobs.com from this year, omitted the non-technical words (like “editor”, “seeks” and “self-starter”) and built a tagcloud out of the rest”. This is the result:
Eric Ulken | Technical skills in journalism jobs
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