iCommons.org - .: iCommons.org Resources :.

resources .: BISA Copyright Review

2009-6-09T18:55:29Z

The BISA Copyright Review was a project funded by the Ford Foundation, with the task of outlining the intersection of copyright and public interest in Brazil, India and South Africa, respectively.

Representatives from three organisations: The African Commons Project in South Africa, The Alternative Law Forum in India, and The Center for Technology and Society (CTS/FGV), part of the Fundação Getulio Vargas Law School in Brazil, collaborated on this comparative study to tell the stories of copyright from within their countries.

As Lawrence Liangs explains in the Foreward:
"Brazil, India and South Africa are complicated countries, which defy any neat and easy definitions such as developed, and developing, global North and South. All three countries are marked by a sharp distinction between the constitutional elite who enjoy all the privileges of a global knowledge economy, and a constitutional underclass who are left out of the imagination of the information economy...Progressive scholarship and activism in the realm of copyright has largely been informed by developments in the U.S., where a First Amendment approach has dominated the debate...the experience of Brazil, South Africa and India has shown that alongside a commitment to individual rights, there is a deep commitment to the idea of collective rights."

resources .: iSummit 2008 Planning Workshop - Presentation by Japanese team

2008-1-29T18:19:09Z

At the Summit planning workshop, the team from Sapporo City, Digital Garage and CCJP gave a presentation on the Summit venue, the city of Sapporo, and some of the other practical and logistic considerations for the Summit. This is the audio version of the presentation, you can see the slides here

resources .: iSummit 2008 Planning Workshop - Summit Design Discussion

2008-1-29T18:19:06Z

On Day 1 of the Summit Planning Workshop, all the participants were asked to design their dream summit venue, using toothpicks, sweets, straws and other materials. This audio clip is of the feedback session afterwards, when each group explained their designs and why they chose to do what they did.

You can read more about this session here, on the iCommons blog, or watch the video of the session here, on the video Fumi shot.

Note: The sound on this clip isn't uniformly good, so the blog and video will help give you a better idea of what happened...

resources .: iSummit 2008 Planning Workshop - Taxonomy discussion

2008-1-29T18:19:03Z

During the planning workshop for the iSummit 2008, the taxonomy of the summit was a subject of great debate. How to organise the Summit, how to arrange the themes and subjects, and where and how these subjects will be discussed were all up for discussion. This audio is a recoding of the feedback session after this discussion.

For more information about this discussion, have a look here, on the iCommons wiki, where we are continuing these discussions.

resources .: iSummit 2008 Planning Workshop - Practical issues

2008-1-29T18:19:01Z

During the Summit planning workshop, delegates discussed how to overcome some of the practical issues facing the organisers. Documenting the summit, making it sustainable, how to run the facilitation and how to involve the community were all discussed. The issue of community was debated for longer, with quite heated points made on all sides - although at the end of the discussion we were able to see eye-to-eye, of not agree completely.

resources .: iSummit 2008 Planning Workshop - S.W.O.T analyses

2008-1-29T18:18:57Z

One of the tasks we had to tackle at the Summit planning workshop was an evaluation of the relative strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (S.W.O.T) that we were facing with regards to the various areas of discussion (ie: PR and marketing, travel and diversity, documenting the summit, facilitation at the summit, the community, making the summit sustainable, and venue for the summit)

resources .: iCommons Annual '07

2007-6-28T17:57:51Z

For this year's Summit, iCommons decided to create an Annual, a
collection of some of the best and most interesting writing around the
Commons. Writers were commissioned from all areas of the Commons and
stories that had originally appeared on the iCommons site were updated.
The annual was designed by Johannesburg design company Infiltrate
Media, and the finished annual was distributed at the Summit in
Dubrovnik, Croatia. For those who were unable to attend the Summit, or
anyone who would like to download, remix, share and distribute these
stories, we have archived them here as PDFs. They're licensed under a
CC BY-SA 3.0 license, so feel free to get creative and spread them
around.

Click here to read the articles.

resources .: iSummit '08 programme structure

2008-2-27T21:32:31Z

Submissions for programme session proposals at the iSummit '08 opened on 1 March. This PDF document shows the suggested basic structure for every day of the iSummit, by displaying the times for keynote addresses, general sessions/panels, and 'labs', which are a new addition to the Summit programme.

A lab is a space dedicated to a specific theme, project or medium, which are overarching tracks that will run during the iSummit programme.

Please note that the structure is malleable and may be changed as submissions dictate. If you have suggestions and requests for changes to this structure, please send them to james 'at' icommons 'dot' org

Download the document and refer to this programme key:
- Sessions: Time that is dedicated to submissions. The sessions are run in sequences called 'labs' that are discipline specific.
- Programmable Space: A space that you can book for any ad hoc meetings that arise.
- Keynotes: One person talking to many people for no longer than 20 minutes.
- Free Culture House: A space where people can hang out, hold informal meetings and listen to good music by DJs.

resources .: Who Are We, and Where Do We Come From?

2007-7-12T17:33:30Z

Bringing people together is a great way to generate discussions, and one of the most interesting, and ongoing areas of discussion to come out of the iCommons Summit is that of diversity. Issues around representation - who gets to come to the Summit, and why, and more importantly, who doesn't and why not often carry on for long after the Summit ends, and often start up again just before the start of a new Summit every year.
It's really important that we have these discussions. Without them, we may well lose sight of who we are and what we're doing. But it's also important that when we have these discussion, we have the right facts.

So, in order to help us understand who we are and where we come from, and to help us figure out where we should be going, and where we should be coming from, we've managed to aggregate information from the last 3 Summits. It's fascinating stuff!

Summit05
Location: Boston, USA
Number of Attendees: 92
Countries Represented: 37
Google Map Link

Summit06
Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Number of Attendees: 236
Countries Represented: 44
Google Map Link

Summit07
Location: Dubrovnik, Croatia
Number of Attendees: 453
Countries Represented: 58
Google Map Link

resources .: Jamie King: iSummit '08 keynote address

2008-9-12T16:01:23Z

No License for these Territories

As innovative and forward-looking as the Commons is, the real world is still one step ahead. As comprehensively as open content is documented, there are territories of sharing that have yet to be pinned down by lawmakers of any description and it is here where the cutting edge of the Commons has yet to be felt. Who's going to get there first?

See the slides from this presentation, here.

resources .: iSummit Interviews on dotSUB

2007-7-09T10:47:49Z

Check out these iSummit interviews from dotSUB, that have been captioned.

Heather Ford, iCommons Executive Director talks about CC and film in South Africa

iCommons on Film: Samuli Torssonen, the producer of Star Wreck, talks about a recent trip to the Cannes Film festival.

John Buckman from Magnatune and Bookmooch talks about why the industry should use CC licensing.

resources .: Rishab Ghosh: iSummit '08 Keynote Address

2008-9-15T17:56:42Z

Collaborative Creativity: How innovation together has stood the test of time

Innovation as a product of an ivory tower of individual ownership is not so much a thing of the past as an obsolescence. Many minds sharing freely solve problems faster.

See the slides from this presentation, here.

resources .: CD Insert - Creative Commons License Agreements

2007-12-05T18:15:07Z

This archive contains 6 Creative Commons license agreement cd-inserts along with the template file I used. The template file is a GIMP XCF file. The finished license agreement files are in PNG format.

I hope that people find it useful.

resources .: The iSummit 2008 in Sapporo: presentation by CC Japan

2008-1-28T15:58:53Z

At the iSummit 2008 planning workshop held in Johannesburg on 17 and 18 January, Yuko Noguchi presented 'The iSummit 2008 in Sapporo', which outlined the practical conditions and consequences of having the iSummit in Japan, and identified issues which need to be addressed during our planning event.

For feedback on problem-solving and brainstorming that took place at the event, read the workshop page on the iCommons wiki, for full notes and report-backs.

resources .: Unlocking the Potential through Creative Commons

2007-8-30T23:09:39Z

In November 2007 the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCi) hosted the CCau Industry Forum, a research-focused industry engagement event. The event was organised by the CCi Creative Commons Clinic and Creative Commons and Open Content Licensing research projects in response to the Australian Government's 2005 Digital Content Action Agenda. It was designed to follow up the Action Agendas recommendation that industry engage with work occurring in the area of alternative approaches to intellectual property licensing, such as Creative Commons.

Focusing on the government, education and the creative industries sectors, the Forum aimed to evaluate understanding of and attitudes towards copyright, open content licensing (OCL) and the Creative Commons initiative within Australia. With the rapid growth of digital technologies over the last decade has led to a revolution in the creation and dissemination of knowledge a revolution that has created unprecedented challenges for copyright law. The all rights reserved model of traditional copyright law, with its complex legal concepts and requirement for permission for even the most common and non-controversial of uses, does not fit well with an environment which both enables and requires reproduction and communication on an unprecedented scale. From a legal perspective, one of the most significant responses to these changes has been the development of new OCL systems designed to open up access to and use of protected material. These OCL models preserve the creators intellectual property rights whilst giving permission in advance for the content to be used more broadly than would be permitted under default copyright law.

The Unlocking the Potential Through Creative Commons report evaluates and responds to the outcomes of this Forum and presents a strategy for continued research into Creative Commons in Australia. Full copies of the report can be downloaded at http://creativecommons.org.au/unlockingthepotential and may be used and distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia licence.

resources .: The iSummit 2008 in Sapporo: presentation by CC Japan (pdf format)

2008-2-08T23:58:36Z

resources .: Free High School Science Texts and the Case for Continuous Learning

2007-11-16T22:23:39Z

A collaborative, participatory framework for teaching and learning, where teachers and learners take on the role of active researchers in the instruction process, was an important theme that drove discussions, informal talks over coffee, and several of the presentations at the 2007 OpenLearn conference in Milton Keynes, UK.

The presentation of the Free High School Science Texts (FHSST) project likewise created some buzz. The presentation by Cynthia Jimes of ISKME told the story of how FHSST built open content from the bottom up, and grew into a project that has inspired the South African Ministry of Education to consider a more broad-scale initiative to create open textbooks for all grade levels in South Africa.

resources .: iSummit 07 presentations

2007-7-09T16:58:07Z

For all of you who weren't able to attend the keynote sessions or some of the other interesting presentations that were held in the main hall, you'll be pleased to know that we have managed to get a hold of some of them. So if you would like study or share these presentations, please feel free to download them here, from the cultural database.

Click below to download:

Business Models-ppt/odp

Open Source Culture- ppt/odp

The future of open education-ppt/odp

Global Lives Project-pdf

SJ Klein - The future of open education-ppt/odp

Ekalavyas Secret Library -Tales from the I-Commons (pirated copy)-ppt/odp

Star Wreck - In the Pirkining-ppt/odp

Jon Phillips Building Communities Isummit 2007

Please check back for more presentations.

resources .: The African Digital Commons - A Participant's Guide

2008-1-14T16:09:39Z

Download the guide below:

FRENCH, .doc

FRENCH, .PDF

ENGLISH, .doc

ENGLISH, .PDF

One of the goals of the Commons-sense Project is to conduct research that helps equip African activists and decision-makers with the information they need to develop cutting-edge, relevant intellectual property policies and practices.

We decided to begin with a map - a map that hopefully presents a broad picture of how far we've already come in Africa towards the goal of achieving a "digital information commons", as well as providing some sense of how to grow it further. We have tried to chart the international, regional and national policies, players and movements that to some extent dictate the scope of the commons in Africa, and at the same time to outline some of the creative responses from people on the ground working towards the expansion of the commons in some way.

Because we wanted to get as extensive a picture as possible of who is already involved in digital commons activities throughout the continent, we decided to try to get people in Africa to represent themselves in the Guide . The technology we used was an online "wiki" which anyone, anywhere in the world could edit, amend, build on and improve. This Guide , then, is the offline version of a living "wiki" built by the people living and working on these issues in Africa.

We are hoping that the offline publishing of this Guide can become an annual event, where we take stock of how far we've come, how issues, policies and laws have changed, which new projects have begun, and what the impact has been on the ground and on the net - in terms of the growth of the African Digital Commons.

In time, we're hoping that the Guide will be used in classrooms and offices, by policy-makers and activists, educators and students, to raise awareness around the value of the commons to African innovation, education and creativity.

One last word of thanks must go to our colleagues at the LINK Centre for their support and advice, to Wits University Copyright Librarian Denise Nicholson for innumerable leads and contacts, to A2LM in Southern Africa project leader Achal Prabhala for editorial support, to the IDRC - especially Heloise Emdon and Steve Song - for their ongoing encouragement, and finally to the hard-working builders of the African Digital Commons who, in the face of many challenges, continue to inspire with their vision of a continent that is turning the corner in many ways.

resources .: Rebecca MacKinnon: iSummit '08 Keynote Address

2008-9-15T17:49:14Z

Free Culture and Free Speech: Why strong and vibrant free culture communities are important for freedom of expression

In the democracies of today freedom of expression is often taken for granted when it is particularly fragile. It is a right that needs to be continually exercised, because if it isn't, the space that society provides for it shrinks until the next time someone exercises that right. The communities that subscribe to the ethos of the Commons are important actors in the creation of the space for free.

See the slides from this presentation, here.