Rhea Myers

Where Are The Joneses?

200706171314
(Image CC-BY-SA www.wherearethejoneses.com/)

Details

http://www.wherearethejoneses.com/

• A Free comedy series created and distributed online.

• Scripted on forums, a wiki and a blog in a participatory, collaborative way.

• Produced by Baby Cow (Steve Coogan).

• Cast are professional actors.

• Filmed to broadcast quality.

• Distributed via YouTube

• 12 Weeks of daily five minute segments add up to twelve 35 minute episodes.

• License is Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 (BY-SA 3), pure copyleft.

• Pure copyleft is an explicit part of the value of the project.

• NC would break this.

• Music from Loca Records and others.

• Concept by Dave Bausola at Imagination.

• Sponsored by Ford as a promotion for them.

• Features a Ford car.

Notes

• From a gift economy point of view, you contribute a joke and you get back a TV series.

• From a rights point of view, this is Freedom Defined free / Stallman free, although the rights of the actors and any trademarks will affect this as usual.

• This is the Free Culture project equivalent of IBM paying for a Free Software product that runs on their hardware, they lose no money on it because they’d have to pay for it anyway, it helps sales of their hardware, and they may even gain value from outside involvement.

• To relate this to existing models, it’s a sitcom with a sponsor remade as Free Culture to take advantage of the realities of the Internet rather than trying to fight them.

• Product placement and sponsorship are standard, this isn’t anywhere near as bad as the average Hollywood blockbuster or broadcast TV comedy, and there are no ad breaks.

Dave and I have been discussing this model of media production since November 2005.

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