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• 1 2015-08-16T15:49:54-07:00 Critical Commons 5 plain 2015-11-15T00:44:04-08:00 Scalar’s decoupling of the Vectors model of deep collaboration between author and designer intensified the need for scholars to be able to work directly with media artifacts as evidence. While Scalar aimed to lower technical and design barriers for electronic publishing, scholars working with copyrighted media continued to face significant legal barriers in the form of “copyright confusion” (Hobbs, 2006) and lack of institutional support for fair use. In order to set the stage for understanding the motivation behind Critical Commons, imagine that literary scholars were compelled to seek permission every time they quoted from a work of literature and that the largest internet service providers deployed filters that search for - and automatically delete - any web page that includes an unlicensed quotation from a published source. It is not difficult to envision the impact such restrictions would have on the field of literary studies; the analyses that would never be undertaken, the self-censorship and doubt that would haunt the field. Until very recently, this was the prevailing state of affairs for those who study media and popular culture. Even short excerpts from commercial sources, used to make a point or illustrate an example, are still routinely expunged from media sharing sites, sometimes accompanied by threats of litigation. At the very moment when electronic publishing emerged as a transformative presence in media-related scholarship, reactionary challenges arose with equal vehemence.
  
  Roughly concurrent with the formation of the ANVC, the media archive Critical Commons was conceived and designed by Anderson and Loyer and in 2008 it received support from the MacArthur Foundation’s Digital Media and Learning initiative. Critical Commons is a non-traditional “archive” that is uniquely committed to access, preservation, and dissemination of copyrighted media under the protections of fair use. Virtually all of the media hosted and distributed by Critical Commons is contributed by an international community of scholars, educators, and media makers, many of whom have experienced media takedowns or legal threats when using commercial media sharing services. After six years online, with over 5000 media files in circulation, Critical Commons has never taken down a single piece of media in response to a copyright challenge. The ability to exercise fair use in the quotation of media sources is crucial to contemporary media and cultural studies, and Critical Commons may well be the only public archive dedicated specifically to supporting this type of fair use.
  
  Like Scalar, the basic architecture and functionality of Critical Commons represents an instance of critical making through software development. The principle of transformation, which has been central to recent interpretations of fair use, is hard-coded into the workflow of users who upload media to the site. Unlike commercial media sharing venues, the basic “service” offered by Critical Commons is predicated on users possessing a working knowledge of the core principles of fair use and contextual transformation. Once a media file is uploaded, it does not become available for viewing or embedding until it has been linked to a text commentary. For some users, this requirement doubtless constitutes a source of frustration or a workflow bottleneck, but it is essential to the site’s most basic reason for existence. By integrating critical transformation into the workflow of the site, Critical Commons aims to elevate media uploading to an essential part of the curatorial and critical process.