News roundup: Virgin vs Creative Commons, Wikipedia, iTunes, Amazon, P2P art & Scorsese

Virgin Mobile Australia pulled over 100 Creative Commons images off Flickr to use in an advertising campaign without contacting and asking the photographers or subjects. One teenage subject found a photo of herself on a bus-stop, and has now been advised to sue both Virgin and the Creative Commons Corporation. A thread on Flickr sees her discover that she was 'face ripped'... "hey that's me, no joke.. I think I'm being insulted". Virgin argues that the attribution-only license puts them firmly within their rights, the photographer, however, didn't understand the implications of the license. Netribution also uses Creative Commons attribution images from Flickr on our front page but we ensure that there are no recognisable people in the shot, and, well, we're not a multi-zillion dollar company. CC founder Laurence Lessig retorts here.

'Truth in Numbers: The Wikipedia Story' is currently in production, and will be the first feature doc to explore the Wikipedia phenomena. True to wiki-culture, it's being produced collaboratively, and anyone can contribute. The production is also crowdsourcing the budget, with $50 or more getting the funder a DVD and their name in the credits, and over $50,000 raised to date. (from Cinematech).

Meanwhile, also on the wiki front, New Zealand police have invited the public to rewrite one of the key policing laws online on a wiki as it goes out for debate in one of the earliest genuine examples of so called politics 2.0. 

"The video cassette always had more value than the VCR that you shoved it into. Apple has been able to turn that model on its head." Edgar Bronfman Jr. Warner MusicTo help promote the release of the Darjeeling Limited, Fox Searchlight and director Wes Anderson are releasing a short film, Hotel Chevalier, for free on iTunes. Staring Natalie Portman, the film is 'a kind of prequel' to the feature, shot in 2005 before the script for Darjeeling was written.

Amazon has taken iTunes' lead to launch a music download store without DRM copy protection. Over 2 million tracks are available, including works from Universal and EMI. Warner Records (the fourth of the big quartet being Sony BMG), long hostile to DRM, has softened its tone in recent weeks. Warner's Edgar Bronfman Jr told investors that one problem for his industry is that consumers are more loyal to the iPod than to any particular artist. That means the industry's content must play on an Apple device - so either must use Apple's FairPlay (which means on sale through iTunes) or be DRM-free MP3s. "Never before in the history of content has the hardware been more valuable than the software," Bronfman said. "You think about the VCR or the video cassette -- the video cassette always had more value than the VCR that you shoved it into. Apple has been able to turn that model on its head." 

Anders Weberg, the Swedish video artist who releases his work on P2P networks, deleting the originals, has just released a new 45 minute  experimental non-linear film on filesharing networks, Transient (right). His first film Filter apparently "is still shared and seeded today one year later and that's amazing to think about. On 15/9 this year, exactly on the day that the first one was released I uploaded a second film" he told Netribution. The film and all the files used creating it were deleted the same day.

Halo 3 has shown its blockbuster movie teeth, raking in $170m in the first 24 hours on sale, equivalent to around 2.5 million units. 

A stunt performer has died on the set of the new Batman film in Surrey. Surrey Police and Health Safety Executive are investigating after a car hit a tree on Batman: The Dark Night.  

Martin Scorsese is to make a documentary on the life of George Harrison, according to Variety. The film will look at his spiritual journey, his music and film producing.   

Finally, showing films on your phone is sooo last week. Texas Instruments have developed a new phone with a built in video projector.  If you thought that guy on the bus using their phone to play full volume grime was annoying, just wait till they start projecting Crazy Frog The Movie.