permaculture

["Nicholas Roberts" <nicholas@themediasociety.org>]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Nicholas Roberts <nicholas@themediasociety.org>
Date: Mon, Dec 1, 2008 at 4:38 PM
Subject: Permaculture.TV - Pilot Shutdown
To: permacultue discussion list <
pil-pc-oceania@lists.permacultureinternational.org>, pil members list <
pil-members@lists.permacultureinternational.org>, Kevin Danaher <
kevin@globalexchange.org>, Kevin Bayuk <kevin@uas.coop>


hi all

I am ending this phase of Permaculture.TV and I have radically reduced the
videos listed on Permaculture.TV website and removed most of the videos from
the video-on-demand play list and the auto-pilot

I have left the videos that I have explicit permission to use - although i
have been caught out a number of times by getting permission from someone in
a video and then being denied by the producer of the video ..

there are lots of permission requests waiting on responses, and I had
planned on working back through the videos on the site and checking the site
off

note, this was meant to be a non-profit educational media cooperative. I was
trying to work out how to balance the fact that the value of the videos was
being mostly captured by YouTube and Google, that folks are getting a lot of
video free over the internet - via YouTube or more likely getting DVD's by
full-on piracy downloads

I was trying to balance the realities of the corporate domination of media
(including the internet), the needs of content creators, the subjects of
documentaries and public viewers

people should understand that this was basically a public experiment - the
site is a bit over 3 weeks old - and i have tried to be completely open
about it - it grew organically and is messy and without design - actually
like most of the media projects I've worked on - including multi-million
dollar corporate news projects (I spent a few years at News Corp)

I think I have proved that there is a demand for an organised, large-scale
permaculture rich-media website.. and in my view that should be a
permaculture media cooperative..

certainly the single biggest problem with the permaculture movement - and I
would extend that to the global justice movement, and the possibility for
economic democracy  - is its fragmentation and inability to cooperate..

previous to this project I was in Sweden at the European Social Forum.. and
movement of movements is a polite way to describe a fragmented mess

from what I can see, the local grass-roots community organisations such as
local permaculture groups, community gardens etc... the radical left
anarchist groups .. . the continental European socialist unions, and the
Latin American socialist nations are the exception...

the other place that socialism or cooperation exists is within the
corporation, and that kind of cooperation is not free, it is forced, and is
closer to fascism than democracy

but what we need, if we are to achieve economic democracy and sustainability
is a New Sustainability Paradigm, that goes beyond Localisation, Peak Oil,
Green Capitalism, permaculture as-is....

for instance, why dont we have multi-national cooperatives ? global
cooperatives ?

I guess folks are too used to working in corporations where cooperation is
forced, or being manipulated by public relations in order to do anything
collectively... we just dont cooperate very well anymore... and I certainly
dont have the skills or patience or budget to spend organising a community
project such as this.. especially when I am being accused of stealing
content - and spending most of my time getting permissions for video that
already exists online

the site has been only running for a 3 weeks and on average WAS serving an
average of 7000 videos a day

video stats

   - Today *5,265*
   - This Week *34,846*
   - This Month* 50,343*

visitor stats

   - 466 unique vistors
   - 711 visits
   - 214 cities

Top Countries

   - Australia 290 visits
   - Unites States 201 visits
   - Spain 60 visits
   - Canada 42 vists
   - UK 24 visits
   - Portugal 9
   - Chile 8
   - South Africa 8
   - Brazil 7
   - Ireland 6

Budget: 0
Spent: 250 AUD
Donations: 200
Owe: 450

please send me leads to any videos, as I will be taking another shot at this
in 2009... I've spent all of 2008 on science and sustainability, World
Social Forum and now this, and I need to protect myself from the coming
climate war

for those that complained about me stealing their videos and ruining their
livelihoods, no doubt your business will improve now that I have stopped
being such a parasite

for the many, many public viewers who gave me positive feedback, watch this
space : www.permaculture.tv ... you will hear from me, or perhaps someone
else in 2009

have a nice economic and ecological holiday crisis season

and remember, keep growing those veggies and no doubt Obama will fix it

-- 
Nicholas Roberts
[im] skype:niccolor

http://www.Permaculture.TV