非官方發佈資料 Unofficial Release
Art without Boundary 藝術無垠
sept, 2008
For many years, albeit some of our members did work as freelance, we've drawn pictures, taken photos and video just for fun. Creative industry was not a promising industry to young people for its unreliable return of income. Equipments for foto or movie taking were also expensive and complicated. Both the dark room technique and video production process was too professional for ordinary people. Let alone movie taking, playing back the wheels of film was a real nightmare to novice. We had little chance to share them with other people. The great leap-forward of digital technology has empowered everybody simple, practical, affordable and user friendly equipments for creating his own picture or video in a much easier way. Even a cell phone has a built-in video camera capable of taking video as good as the obsolete but expensive super-eight cine camera for amateur artists. Every body now become a witness as well as a reporter of the great issue at the great moment. Moreover, with the internet, all people in the world can now be your audience seeing what you've seen and hearing what you've heard. We believe that the nature and real life are the essence of art which will bring inspiration to the artist and vigor to his work in the process of creation. All these pictures or video clips created by our colleagues are now released to the pubic free of charge under our "UM Free Art License".
These are only part of our portfolio. We keep working on our archives and releasing them to the public from time to time. As what we believe in sharig, they are not just some kind of artwork but may serve as documentation of the development of our world in the last few decades. Just click, view and enjoy.
However, some of the artworks may contain the sound or image of identifiable person or entity. They may not be suitable for making unauthorized derivatives. To avoid abuse or obsession, we show the clips using streaming technology. Please do not circumvent the protection against unauthorized download and respect the person or entity involved. Regarding still pictures, please observe the general ethical rules and relevant ordinances too. As all we know. Discretion and sense of responsibility are the foundation of freedom. Any delinquent behavior will only give way to the rent seeker to take advantages from the restriction of healthy spreading of art and knowledge. For this reason, instead of "creative common license", we release our works to the public under our own "UM Free Art License", which contains the clause restricting the abuse of the sound or image of third party in the artwork if there is any. To illustrate our concern, just look at a common scenery picture of a city and you may easily identify a good deal of copyrighted trade marks or brand names occupying the skyline. On the one hand, some of these copyright owners occupy the public space deliberately and even invade our private reign with overwhelming promotional articles, while on the other hand they blame other people infringe their intellectual property for frivolous reasons. As an insider of creative industry, we have had a lot of such direct experiences as well as indirect informations about the frivolous claim from frivolous litigators representing these mean and harsh copyright owners. Their radical behavior has driven our world back to the older ages featured by privileged people owning the privilege to enjoy the benefit of art and knowledge. The scenerio of Digital divide is a solid evidence.
Just like software industry, art work as an intellectual property is different to physical product. Once it is created, there is almost no marginal cost accrued for the distribution and reproduction of the product. Our practical experience tells us that only direct service can generate reliable income. There may exist a very few prestiged vendors in the market possessing monopoly power over their competitors and customers. However, as a humble service provider in the creative industry, we are not benefited from the revised copyright ordinance under the current legal framework. We rather provide "free demonstration service" to the public than paying the media for gaining the popularity or wasting time and money to claim damages for the infringement of our works. In fact, it seems that our legislators do not know exactly how ip producers make their money in the real world.
To sum up, analogous to the SaaS (Software as a Service), we advocate "AaaS" (Artwork as a Service). And, we believe in sharing.
