You’ve seen it already, but enjoy (again!):

I’m thrilled to be able to announce today that MediaCommons has pulled together a distinguished and dynamic group of scholars who will be serving as founding members of our editorial board. These folks will be helping us to determine the network’s structure and editorial policies, as well as working to develop exciting new publishing projects. These founding members are:

Tim Anderson, Denison University
Richard Edwards, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Radhika Gajjala, Bowling Green State University
Chris Keathley, Middlebury College
Kari Kraus, Zotero Project: Center for History and New Media
Tara McPherson, University of Southern California
Jason Mittell, Middlebury College
Lisa Nakamura, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Clancy Ratliff, East Carolina University
Judd Ruggill, University of Arizona
Chuck Tryon, Fayetteville State University

There will likely be a few further additions to the board; we’ll of course announce them as they’re made. In the meantime, please welcome the new board members — particularly as they begin blogging here in the coming days…

First, this week’s IMR curator roster:
Monday = Jeffrey Sconce (Northwestern University)
Tuesday = Walter Metz (Montana State University)
Wednesday = Amelie Hastie (University of California, Santa Cruz)
Thursday = Arvind Rajagopal (New York University)
Friday = Jennifer Holt (University of California, Santa Barbara)

While the filter model we’ve converted IMR to has made it much easier for curator’s to access digitized versions of materials to comment on – and in the case of Jyotsna Kapur’s contribution is something you really might only be able to find on-line – there remains some question as to the efficacy of relying on third-party hosting sites like Youtube, especially for materials uploaded by our curators (rather than “found”), given Youtube’s penchant for cowing to corporate threats and yanking down anything that potentially challenges copyright and fair-use laws. Clearly, Viacom’s latest demands are a clear example of this. MediaCommons is adamant about the rights of scholars to quote from media materials as part of our critical analytical and pedagogical practices, but nonetheless, as my esteemed colleague Jeremy Butler points out, we might be facing a serious conflict of interests. While discussing the possibility of using a clip from “My Name is Earl” for an upcoming IMR curatorial effort, Butler expressed the following concerns (reprinted below with his permission):

I can see why you don’t want to get into the business of hosting video and I applaud this statement: ‘An important element of MediaCommons is that we’re asserting our “fair use” right as educators to quote from the media.’

But to upload a media “quotation” from something such as My Name Is Earl to YouTube is quite different from uploading it to MediaCommons. Specifically, I would have to violate YouTube’s terms of service to do so. Even though it is widely ignored, its ToS clearly states:

“In connection with User Submissions, you affirm, represent, and/or warrant that: (i) you own or have the necessary licenses, rights, consents, and permissions to use and authorize YouTube to use all patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other proprietary rights in and to any and all User Submissions to enable inclusion and use of the User Submissions in the manner contemplated by the Website and these Terms of Service; and (ii) you have the written consent, release, and/or permission of each and every identifiable individual person in the User Submission to use the name or likeness of each and every such identifiable individual person to enable inclusion and use of the User Submissions in the manner contemplated by the Website and these Terms of Service.”

In similar fashion, Google Video’s ToS says:

“You hold and will continue to hold the necessary rights, including but not limited to all copyrights, trademark rights and rights of publicity in and to Your Authorized Content and Your Brand Features to enter into this Agreement and to grant the rights granted herein;

I would presume Vimeo and Veoh have similar ToS statements. Consequently, uploading My Name Is Earl to any of these ( commercial ) sites would have to be done under fraudulent conditions. It’s particularly difficult to make a fair use claim when you’re putting something on a commercial site that potentially earns someone money. E.g ., would Google have plunked down all those stock options for YouTube if its popularity–fueled by clips violating copyright law–hadn’t been so immense?”

While we feel the filter model is the best way to get scholars involved in critical conversations rather than technological terrors, we also recognize that this is a choice of some consequence and with real repercussions for our community, so as always, we want to air these concerns publicly and get your input.

For the past couple of months, we have been re-conceptualizing how In Media Res works in order to make it easier for participants to upload materials onto the site and in order to reduce the backend labor involved in customizing each clip. This has resulted in a temporary slow down of content on the site, but all that is about to change!

We have converted In Media Res from a scholarly clip archive to a scholarly filter. This means that instead of building our own free-standing video library (something that requires substantial server power and support on our end, and a fair amount of technical know-how on yours) we’re setting up a curatorial frame around video taken from third-party sites (like YouTube, Google Video etc.).

Today’s post by Tara McPherson on a sly parody of MPAA anti-piracy films

As curators, this makes all video on the web fair game, be it excerpts from television or film, movie trailers, music videos, archival clips, web sitcoms or other various popular home-brewed forms like remixes and mash-ups. All of these video hosting sites make it extremely easy to embed clips on our website — it’s something you can do in just seconds (as simple as cutting and pasting a bit of text).

Focusing on web video does not however mean that we must rely entirely on the content that is available online. We can — and should — furnish our own materials when desired and upload them to these same third-party sites (and from there onto the MediaCommons site).

In part, these changes emerged out of on-line conversations we had in November and December over how to make In Media Res more user-friendly. Those conversations also raised concern over relying on video content from sites that habitually cow to copyright pressures; especially as MediaCommons seeks to strongly assert our fair use rights as scholars to circulate copyrighted materials for pedagogical and critical scholarly purposes. We hope these conversations will continue as we transition to the filter model. In the meantime, we have set up accounts with Youtube, Veoh and other third-party hosting sites that curators can use to upload materials. While this is not a solution to the copyright quagmire, at the very least, it reinforces our commitment to fair usage of copyrightable materials by providing curators with an official umbrella to operate under when uploading materials. We will also continue to burn back-ups of all IMR pieces in case the original video files are removed from the third-party sites.

With renovations now complete, we are embarking on an ambitious push to make In Media Res a daily stop for media scholars by having new curatorial efforts every Monday thru Friday by a different scholar each day. As always, these short features are intended to spark conversation on the site about contemporary and historical media practices and the future of media studies scholarship as a whole. Scholars committed to curating at least once between February 1 and May 11 for IMR include:

Hector Amaya, Tim Anderson, Mark Andrejevic, Michela Ardizzoni, Miranda Banks, Doug Battema, Ron Becker, Marnie Binfield, Aniko Bodroghkozy, Megan Boler, Patrick Burkart, Jeremy Butler, Paula Chakravrartty, John Downing, Gary Edgerton, Cynthia Fuchs, Joy Fuqua, Faye Ginsburg, David Golumbia, Joshua Green, Hollis Griffin, Mary Beth Haralovich, Amelie Hastie, Tim Havens, Jennifer Holt, Vicky Johnson, Vamsee Juluri, Jyotsna Kapur, Kelly Kessler, Derek Kompare, Marwan Kraidy, Shanti Kumar, David Lavery, Dan Leopard, Elana Levine, Amanda Lotz, Moya Luckett, Madhavi Mallapragada, Dan Marcus, Vicki Mayer, Anna McCarthy, Allison McCracken, Alan McKee, Tara McPherson, Walter Metz, Toby Miller, Susan Murray, Laurie Ouellette, Brian Ott, Jane Park, Roberta Pearson, Alisa Perren, Dana Polan, Arvind Rajagopal, Jeff Sconce, Katherine Sender, Sharon Shahaf, Shawn Shimpach, Louisa Stein, Serra Tinic, Chuck Tryon, Michele White, Karin Wilkins, Joe Wlodorz

An exact schedule is forthcoming and weekly schedules will be promoted on the site and through various listservs.

Enjoy!