While we have being talking a lot about copyright and creative commons this week it reminded me of this production company which is unlike others.

*Image via flickr.

It’s called hitRECord and was founded by actor and director Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Collaboration and sharing is the backbone of the organisation but this involves using other people’s work to rework/remix/edit in whatever way. What is incredible is that there is a community of thousands of people who are uploading their work (songs, illustrations, video clips) and giving it up for people to use. It isn’t breaking copyright because they have given permission for their work to be used but it does contrast from the other parts of society who are desperately trying to ‘save’ their work. This system involves a lot of trust in the people who are on these sites.

One of their projects was a book called tiny stories (volume 3) and there were over 20,000 thousand contributors. If you re-upload someone’s work that you have edited you give credit to that person and any other people who they have credited to keep track. It’s giving the responsibility to them to make the system work which i think doesn’t happen that much since people are afraid of people abusing the system.

*Image sourced from flickr  from Michael Galpert titled HitRECord.org SXSW Spring Spectacular.