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2021:Submissions/A Gift to the Commons: Public Value Broadcasters

From Wikimania


Speakers

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Ellen Haas, ZDF Bernd Fiedler, WMDE

Abstract

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In times of a global pandemic, access to digital content is more important than ever. Public broadcasters are now also taking on this task, licensing material on such a large scale under an open Creative Commons license for the first time in Germany. We want to work with you to find and disseminate examples. For example, ZDF's high-quality animations are viewed ~1.5 million times monthly and are translated, adapted and remixed by the community. And there's more.

The Wikimedia movement is driven by the mission to make the sum of all knowledge freely available to everyone. A lot of the journalistic work worldwide, including reporting and fact-checking, is publicly funded. This work should therefore be available for the public to use, share and remix.

The public broadcaster ZDF offers in the media library www.terrax-cc.zdf.de a weekly growing offer of currently 150 (in September there will be correspondingly more) explanatory clips (CC BY 4.0.) under its brand Terra X on various topics. All clips are uploaded by ZDF and integrated, translated and remixed into suitable articles by volunteers. (so far, there are 15 million accesses altogether)

Effort We use already produced and broadcast footage from documentaries or TV reports. One challenge is rights clearance. We have to convince the authors of our vision of "free education for all" - on the other hand, all material has to be cleared as cc-ready by our legal department. Many films use foreign material, e.g., from archives. These passages cannot be used for CC. All videos are re-edited, updated and re-dubbed.

Experiences We get a very positive response from the public. On the Wikipedia platform, we reach more than one million views per month. Teachers at various educational institutions see great potential for using the clips.

Expectations Due to the pandemic acceleration of digitization in schools, the demand for rights-free and educationally relevant moving image material has increased even further. With CC licenses, ZDF has found a good way to release selected content within a protected legal framework.

Ends We are trying to win over additional departments at ZDF for the project. This would allow us to offer a greater variety of topics. CC rights can already be negotiated through contractual adjustments in new productions. Activists and broadcasters worldwide can benefit from the experiences shared in the session. In a time of crisis, we can learn together.

I'm planning to attend this session live!

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