ourmedia

March 23, 2005 3:27 AM

Welcome to Ourmedia.orgWe provide free storage and free bandwidth for your videos, audio files, photos, text or software. Forever. No catches.
posted by lacus (27 comments total)

somebody had to post it ...
posted by lacus at 3:29 AM on March 23, 2005

No one had to post it, but I'm pretty glad someone did.

This is pretty nice. I was going to make some snarky comment about "yeah, forever until they run out of dollars", but apparently the Internet Archive is supplying the space and the bandwidth, and I feel pretty good about their longevity. Then I was going to say that they force you to use a Creative Commons license, but they don't even do that, either. This is amazingly flexible.
posted by Plutor at 3:36 AM on March 23, 2005

If this is for real, and it looks to be, it really rocks. Cheers, lacus!
posted by The Salaryman at 5:22 AM on March 23, 2005

oh boy
posted by NinjaPirate at 5:46 AM on March 23, 2005

....so, seriously, what's the catch? eyes site suspiciously.
posted by dabitch at 5:48 AM on March 23, 2005

Read the FAQ. Seems to be legit, and altruistic, and very, very cool.
posted by Optamystic at 5:52 AM on March 23, 2005

Top work Agent lacus. This looks seriously useful and cool. The fact that it pushes all my aesthetic buttons as well is a pretty big bonus to.

Best of web.
posted by Hartster at 7:00 AM on March 23, 2005

From their Contributors FAQ:

All works are accepted in full, or removed if they violate the Rules.

From the Rules page:

You agree that the material you are publishing on Ourmedia... is not pornographic... or defamatory. We reserve the right to remove material that we determine in our sole discretion violates these Site Rules. We also reserve the right to terminate the membership of anyone who violates these rules.


Hmmmmmmmmmmmm.....

I like this whole idea, but I'm not sure I like someone telling me what I can and can't store. What if I'm a fine art photographer specializing in nudes? Or what if I'm a photographer trying to push the boundaries of what is considered 'fine art' by bringing elements of hard core porn into the work? Are the people that run this site going to be the arbiters of what is art and what is not? Who determines where the line is between art and porn? And what happenes to all my stuff if 'they' decide they don't like my 'art' and terminate my membership?

This is kinda shaky, if they claim they are doing this for the sake of creativity, but then they reserve the right to determine what is and what is not 'creative'. I mean, I understand the need to keep this from becoming a den of barely legal teen lust, but it's something I'd want to hear more detail about before I go from 80% excited to full on OH YEAH!!!
posted by spicynuts at 8:04 AM on March 23, 2005

I like this whole idea, but I'm not sure I like someone telling me what I can and can't store. What if I'm a fine art photographer specializing in nudes?

I've got a solution - don't use their site. For the rest of us, this is awesome.
posted by blendor at 8:08 AM on March 23, 2005

...but I'm not sure I like someone telling me what I can and can't store.

But you're not JUST storing. You're also publishing; not just in some index that no one will ever find, but on a site that's designed for other people to go looking at. I think they're totally justified. Better they kick you off then get shut down altogether for hosting kiddie porn.

Thanks lacus! This is great!!!
posted by solotoro at 8:17 AM on March 23, 2005

I've got a solution - don't use their site. For the rest of us, this is awesome.

Hey, I'm thinking it's pretty awesome too, HOWEVER, their mission statement says:

Ourmedia's goal is to expose, advance and preserve digital creativity at the grassroots level.


What if I'm Robert Mapplethorpe? Shouldn't I have the right to use this service, which is clearly unrivaled, and get to expose, advance and preserve my digital creativity?

I don't think "don't use their site" is a very simple answer here. If I'm going to be storing 20 Gigs of my art, I wanna know where the line is and what kind of rules I can expect.

If this is, you know, Ofoto.com, I can understand. But the site claims to be specifically focused on digital ART.
posted by spicynuts at 8:29 AM on March 23, 2005

spicynuts, upload your nudes and let's see. I'm sure they'd let the files stay.
posted by mathowie at 8:37 AM on March 23, 2005

be careful what thou asketh for.
posted by spicynuts at 8:43 AM on March 23, 2005

Shouldn't I have the right to use this service

Do you have the right to use any service you haven't paid for?
posted by madman at 9:01 AM on March 23, 2005

I'm entirely distrustful of it, simply because it'll be a central store of data, which is great until there's some kind of funding problem and the whole thing has to be dismantled. The fact that the Internet Archive is stable is irrelevant; Ourmedia will require a ton of cash on its own, and while it's very sweet for all the investors to keep pouring money in, eventually it will have to shut if it doesn't at least break even.

What would have been far cooler, in my view, would be a sort of front end / metadata aggregator to a distributed network of digital media. Ourmedia's solution is akin to people signing up to Compuserve or AOL and joining its embedded communities, all stored in a little walled garden; it doesn't use the Internet to its fullest, and I think in a couple of years we'll have moved on to something much better.
posted by bwerdmuller at 9:25 AM on March 23, 2005

I'm one of many who is a bit concerned about the Yahoo! acquisition of Flickr. This looks like it could be a very decent alternative.

But is it meant to be used in the same way? Can I store my photos and video clips with ourmedia even if they aren't necessarily polished artworks or finished pieces?

Also: Is it just me or does near every photograph one tries to look at return the message: Please be patient -- it should appear soon at this media page . . .

Seems there are several bugs yet to be worked out, but this looks very promising.
posted by aladfar at 9:52 AM on March 23, 2005

spicynuts: "You agree that the material you are publishing on Ourmedia... is not pornographic... or defamatory. We reserve the right to remove material that we determine in our sole discretion violates these Site Rules. We also reserve the right to terminate the membership of anyone who violates these rules."

Mmm, thank you spicynuts. I was hoping for a catch, and this appears to be as close as we can get. I wonder if we could pressure them into doing a better job with delineating their point of view, and possibly coming up with some method of arbitration to reverse the removal of grey-area material. We should start bombarding the site with tasteful nudes and Cremaster Cycle-esque weirdness to try to force the issue.
posted by Plutor at 9:55 AM on March 23, 2005

We should start bombarding the site with tasteful nudes and Cremaster Cycle-esque weirdness to try to force the issue.

What a great service. Let's see how fast we can break it. Ah, the internet. :)
posted by Arch Stanton at 10:21 AM on March 23, 2005

Metafilter: What a great service. Let's see how fast we can break it.
posted by Plutor at 10:35 AM on March 23, 2005

Seems this could survive because it's not a money-maker. Last year saw great demand for open source projects from Linux, Mozilla. There was also a smattering of popular free, hardly-even-ad-based services, mostly around blogging and RSS. Ourmedia could find some sponsorship from a tech company looking for a PR halo effect.

On the net, every great business idea from 1995 is a great charity idea in 2005.
posted by NickDouglas at 11:16 AM on March 23, 2005

This is a pretty cool idea. Without the heavyweights behind it, I wouldn't hold out much hope for its lifespan but they lend the project great credibility.

I'll look forward to playing around with this later on.
posted by fenriq at 11:16 AM on March 23, 2005

As long as there are no pictures of spicy nuts on Ourmedia I'm happy.
posted by anthill at 11:34 AM on March 23, 2005

They need to iron out their registration process. The page keeps telling me I'm using an invalid email address, which I'm not, and that my password is incorrect, which it isn't, or that the username is not valid, which is bollocks.
posted by rocketman at 12:57 PM on March 23, 2005

They need to iron out their registration process.

Yeah, no kidding. I got the same error messages, but it will still register you. Just check your email (if you still want to). Same thing goes when you try to change their autogenerated password for your account:

Your e-mail address and archive.org password are incorrect. You will not be allowed to upload media until you have entered valid information.

I'm sure there's lot of other little details to iron out. But cool so far ...
posted by mrgrimm at 2:47 PM on March 23, 2005

Not a good sign, however.
posted by mrgrimm at 2:49 PM on March 23, 2005

Your e-mail address and archive.org password are incorrect. You will not be allowed to upload media until you have entered valid information.

This problem is not really a bug. If you look at the "How to register" page, you'll see that you need to also register for an archive.org account, then enter your archive.org password into your ourmedia.org profile. These error messages should then disappear.

The "How to register" page doesn't seem to be linked to from the ourmedia registration form, though this information is in the email you receive upon registering for an ourmedia.org account.
posted by mkdg at 5:28 PM on March 23, 2005

These (associated ) heavyweights are barking up the wrong tree.
posted by troutfishing at 11:05 PM on March 24, 2005