Hi Everyone, In the past we've received requests from many community members to implement the functionality to embed links to video hosted on third party sites (eg Youtube, BlipTV Vimeo etc). Now that WikiEducator is hosted independently by the OER Foundation, we have more flexibility and autonomy to take a community decision concerning on third party video.
- Do WikiEducators want the ability to embed links to video clips? - What is the best way for us to take this decision? - Should we have a trial period to see how this works? We need and invite your feedback -- so please post your replies to this list. We will consider all feedback posted over the next two weeks, before deciding on the next steps. Apology for the long email -- but I provide some discussion points below. Third party video is not a simple matter when it comes to the values and meaning of freedom as interpreted by our community values. *Discussion* Embedding video is not a simple question of turning a switch to enable links to third party hosted video. Technically speaking, this is relatively easy to achieve. However, there are many issues associated with digital video and our core values of the WikiEducator project which we need to consider, most notably the essential freedoms. WE subscribe to the free cultural works definition and WE need to find a solution which aligns with what we believe as a community OER project. I've been sound boarding a few ideas with colleagues and friends and would appreciate your input and feedback on a few baseline requirements and suggestions. - *Licensing.* We must be able to identify and search for appropriately licensed video content. This is to ensure that video content we embed adheres to the requirements of the definition of free cultural works. In practice this means we can only use video hosting sites which clearly tag their video content with the relevant copyright license as well as corresponding search functionality to identify resources which are appropriately licensed (eg. CC-0, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, GFDL and the public domain declaration), Therefore, Youtube (for example) would not meet this requirement as their existing conditions of service would not enable the implementation of license tagging. Currently WIkiEducator users would not be able to differentiate openly licensed videos from all rights reserved content. However, BlipTV allows users to choose from a number of *Creative Commons* licenses to apply to their work, and videos are searchable by license. This would enable WIkiEducators to use the Creative Commons search (http://search.creativecommons.org/) facility to easily identify appropriately licensed video on BlipTV. - *Open file formats. *This is a requirement to ensure that our content is stored and accessible in formats which can be edited using free/open source software. In addition this means that source files should be available for download. No WikiEducator should be forced to purchase a license for non-free software in order to remix and create a derivative work from our site. Most video sites (with the exception, for instance, of the Wikimedia Commons) encode video for web delivery using the Flash Video Format (flv) which is a proprietary file format. BlipTV provide a service for their registered users who also have an account with the Internet Archive (http://blip.tv/prefs/archiveorg/ ). In short this facility enables archiving of downloadable video files including the open file format (ogg Theora). Therefore, WikiEducator users who upload video files to BlipTV could register for the Internet Archive service making it easier for educators to download video in the formats of their choice for remix purposes. However, this feature would not solve the problem of open file formats for the video uploaded by BlipTV users who do not register for the Internet Archive service. Fortunately BlipTV provides the functionality to download the video files, even though these are generally supplied in the flv (proprietary file format). The open source FFmpeg project ( http://www.ffmpeg.org/) provides tools to convert flv files into open file formats. Therefore, all WikiEducator would have access to free software tools for remixing source video, thus meeting the requirements of the free cultural works definition. Therefore the BlipTV hosting site would provide a service which aligns with our values. There are also Mediawiki wiki extensions available for embedding BlipTV video on WikiEducator pages. Pending a positive assessment of the stability and security of the BlipTV extensions for WikiEducator -- Would the community consider moving forward with providing capability for embedding BlipTV video on the WikiEducator site along the lines suggested above? Thoughts? Cheers Wayne -- Wayne Mackintosh, Ph.D. Director, International Centre for Open Education, Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand. Board of Directors, OER Foundation. Founder and Community Council Member, Wikieducator, www.wikieducator.org Mobile +64 21 2436 380 User Page: http://wikieducator.org/User:Mackiwg Skype: WGMNZ1 Twitter: OERFoundation, Mackiwg -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to wikieducator@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to wikieducator-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com
