I dreamed that Downhill Battle had started some kind of free culture television station, that was striking fear into the hearts of evildoers everywhere. They had gotten some kind of TV studio through grants, and they were building it up into a juggernaut. And it was changing everything… all of those people who watch TV but don’t go to free culture websites, who don’t listen to podcasts, etc., it was reaching them all. Which was like the entire nation. I’m not sure how they got the show into people’s homes, maybe they partnered up with TiVo or MythTV/Torrentocracy or something. The shows were just people, people who were tired of being passive, and it was so beautiful that I wanted to cry.
Skyfaller.space
Nelson Pavlosky's homepage
Something similar exists: Free Speech TV.
It’s not so much about “free culture per se,” although rarely it is, but it’s generally about leftist activism. They’re a touch radical for my tastes, but show some interesting stuff. One of my favorites was probably a documentary about women who built a van that ran off kitchen grease and drove it across the U.S; can’t remember the name. Another standout is Raymundo, which actually dealt with free culture issues: it was about an Argentine leftist independment filmmaker and how he used film to express the people of the time and confront oppression.
WorldLink TV is also good. They’re less radical and more diverse and international. They show a daily English-language news program compiled from Middle Eastern broadcasters called Mosaic which is re-posted on archive.org. It’s really interesting. One free culture-related film I’ve seen on there was Patently a Problem, an Australian film about biotech patents.
They both broadcast on satellite. I’ve thought before it might be interesting to push to have them included on the campus and/or local cable carriers.
We’ll build it, with American steel.
There’s a cool article about Downhill Battle in the current issue of MoJo. I have it in my room if you haven’t read it already.
Dreams exist to remind us of what is, what isn’t, and what can be. Your call on where this falls.