In the very same open source philosophy that led to Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor releasing his latest album, Ghosts, on bittorrent with a Creative Commons license, Trent has now teamed up with Web 2.0 favorite YouTube to host a film festival surrounding the new album.

Trent explains the film festival here:

The concept is for you to take whatever tracks you feel inspired by from Ghosts and create what you feel should accompany them visually. You will be able to see all of the submissions, and a team of us (including me) will be sorting through them and setting aside ones we feel are exceptional. Eventually (within a couple of months?) we will present a virtual "film festival" with me and some special guests presenting selections of your work.

This is yet another instance of Nine Inch Nails encouraging the open source mentality when it comes to Trent's music.

YouTube has, since its inception, been a place that people put videos that often used the music of others as background music.  YouTube has been fighting a constant battle against its own users, since the record labels responsible for putting out the music users embed in their videos have threatened to sue YouTube on a number of occasions.  YouTube contributors must agree that they own ALL of the content of their video, including any music used. 

The idea of a musician encouraging, rather than suing, people for putting videos on YouTube that use his music in the background truly shows how far things have come in just a few short years.  Openness is increasing.

Though somewhat unrelated, it's also pretty cool that the new Ghosts album is on top of the last.fm charts.