The band Nine Inch Nails, a noted example of a major artist using Creative Commons licenses for their latest music, recently witnessed the awesome results of opening up their materials to their fans. Last year, for their Light Up The Sky tour, the group could not create their own concert video, so they decided to release over 400 gb of high quality footage to the public. What came next was astounding, but not surprising. Fans, given this creative freedom, edited the videos, created their own works, screened their productions, and put together extremely well done packages. What may be the most notable was released last month: Another Version of the Truth: The Gift created by a group called This One Is On Us. This 1080p 5.1 film, which took over a year and many collaborators to create, features the entire concert and has been released in a bunch of different formats—big and small.

Rob Sheridan, art director for the band, had this to say:

This is yet another example of a devoted fanbase and a policy of openness combining to fill in blanks left by old media barriers. The entire NIN camp is absolutely thrilled that treating our fans with respect and nurturing their creativity has led to such an overwhelming outpour of incredible content, and that we now have such a high quality souvenir from our most ambitious tour ever.

This isn’t the first time Nine Inch Nails has supported openness and has essentially departed from old media methods. Their concerts have “open camera” policies, where fans can film and upload videos without fear of legal repercussions. This too has led to fans splicing and editing amateur clips to form full length concert videos—a feat that, at this scale, is pretty much unprecedented.

Photo by kevitra on flickr