The Al Jazeera Network has released video footage under the ‘Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution’ license as part of its creative commons repository. According to the conditions of the license you are allowed to copy, distribute and adapt the work as long as the work is attributed as specified by the licensor but does not reflect that they endorse your use of the work.

The repository currently only has footage of the War in Gaza. Al Jazeera asserts that they are the first news broadcaster to release video footage under the ‘Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution’. According to a Herald Tribune article Al Jazeera are trying to break into the American market by using the Internet as medium. By allowing anybody to take their footage including rivals to copy, mix, and distribute it they are creating a platform for themselves to achieve this goal. Bloggers will be able to show video without worrying about copyright licenses prohibiting it.

Al Jazeera are counting on others to distribute their news reports and the success of the repository depends on other people distributing their work. They are are attracting uniquely qualified minds on a global scale in order to partake in solving a problem; distribute their video footage. This certainly has elements of crowdsourcing and has benefits for Al Jazeera like creating a presence to draw viewers to their channel, and more importantly, in this case, a different perspective of the War in Gaza. This also has benefits for the uniquely qualified minds as they will have access to high quality video footage to copy, mix and distribute.

I certainly hope Al Jazeera expands their repository to other topics and news stories that they broadcast to reach a wider audience.I have seen many videos been pulled off video sharing sites with the broadcasters resisting video sharing. Al Jazeer’s approach of embracing their audience could lead the way for a new era in broadcasting.  Other broadcasters will surely be watching to see if this project becomes a success. The question remains, will it be to late for them to play catch up? Below is a news report available in the repository.