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Ever wonder where Brave New Films fits in the big picture of new media? You’re here, so you already know what BNF is about (justice), what it makes (online movies), and how it works (video activism: the Web version of grassroots campaigns). But have you ever tried to wrap your mind around the idea that BNF is part of the same new media ecology as Flickr, Wikipedia, Craigslist, Twitter and the open source computer operating system GNU/Linux?
That’s not just some random list of Web sites. They’re all part of a sharing economy; a space that plays by different rules than the marketplace; a messy, labyrinthine networked society where like-minded people can band together and have a kingdom of their own. This place is the commons, and David Bollier tells its story in his new book Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own.
What’s so cool about the book is how it puts together so many disparate things happening on Web 2.0. Here’s an example:
One of the more interesting frontiers in user-driven innovation is tapping the audience for investment capital. SellaBand (“You are the record company”) is a Web site that invites bands to recruit five thousand “Believers” to invest $10 apiece in their favorite bands; upon reaching the $50,000 mark, a band can make a professional recording, which is then posted on the SellaBand site for free downloads. Bands and fans can split advertising revenues with SellaBand. Robert Greenwald, the activist documentary filmmaker, used e-mail solicitations, social networks, and the blogosphere to ask ordinary citizens to help finance his 2006 film Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers.
If you connect the dots between what BNF did to Kellogg Brown and Root … and Firedoglake did for the Libby trial… and DailyKos did for Ned Lamont… and macaca on YouTube did to George Allen… there’s no mistaking that a new species of citizenship is being born. “It is not just a ‘nice thing,’” David writes. “It is a powerful force for change.”
If you watch this clip, you’ll get a sense of what this digital commons idea is all about. You’ll also find out why it’s smart for companies to give stuff away for free. It turns out that the old give-away-the-razor-so-people-will-buy-the-blade business model worked not just for Gillette, but also for IBM. And (as the book explains) for The Grateful Dead, too. Home-made fan tapes were the razors; concert tickets and t-shirts were the blades.
Tagged as: brave new films, marty kaplan, david bollier, viral spiral
Martin Kaplan, research professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, holds the Norman Lear Chair in Entertainment, Media and Society.
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