Developer discussion for Creative Commons technology and tools

["John-Paul Arp" <jp AT ci-fi.org>]

Hi,

I am new to this group. I just found out about ccHost from Prof.
Lessig's blog. I have been playing around with it, and it seems really
great! I am first stages of starting a open technology / open content
co-operative in my home town (Fredericton New Brunswick Canada), and I
plan to use ccHost to allow local artists and journalists to host
cc-licensed content. I am also a computer science masters student that
runs a free / open source software club, and I would really like to
contribute to this project (ccHost).

What I would like to ask you all about, is integrating my (and other)
local ccHost site, with the a centralized site ccMixter, such that:
-all music content on my local sight is mirrored on ccMixter, and
-all content on ccMixter that is tagged as originating from my home
town is archived locally.

Here I am assuming that ccMixter intends to be a ccHost music hub. But
if not, I was thinking  there could be (for example) a Canada ccHost
site, a New Brunswick ccHost site, and a Fredericton ccHost site that
form a hierarchy, and automatically and logically synergize content.

I think this kind of integration would provide the following benefits:

1. The main benefit would be that it provides a means for establishing
a local character and community roots to the Creative Commons
movement.
2. Conversely, hosting content produced locally on ccMixter would give
it a wider audience.
3. Data redundancy: if ccMixter was to suffer some tragedy, our
community would retain its culture. Conversely if my home town were to
suffer some tragedy, then, at least part of our culture would be
preserved at ccMixter or archive.org).

I think this could be accomplished by:
1. Using a unique tag that signifies that the file originated from a locality.
2. Having the local site subscribe to a feed from ccMixter and add
locally labeled content that is not already in our database.
3. Having ccMixter subscribe to my local site, such that it receives
all our music files.

One problem I can see with this, is that remixes produced elsewhere
would maintain our local tag, and it would be good to distinguish
between music that was produced locally, from music that was made
elsewhere, but with samples that were produced locally.

Perhaps, there could be another field, besides the tag, that indicates
the originating ccHost site(s).

Note that though the application I am talking about is integrating a
local hub with a centralized hub, this could be equally useful for
integrating genre hubs (for example) with a central node.

I hope you find these proposals interesting. As I mentioned, if there
was interest in pursuing this kind of integration, I would be
interested in helping out with the development.

Regards,
John-Paul