Icommons.org

How to get Creative Commons, Free Culture and Open Source enthusiasts together for a night of commons conversation, night-long networking, inspiring ideas, melodic music and a drink or two - start your own Creative Commons Salon (ccSalon).

Salons hark back to 17th and 18th century France, where learned people gathered together, to engage in conversations and reading to increase their knowledge of the world, especially in literature and philosophy. This model has been replicated in a more modern and urban setting by Eric Steuer and Jon Phillips, in San Francisco.

ccSalon events takes place every second Wednesday of the month, and focus on creating networks for artists and developers who are interested in the theme of Creative Commons licenses, standards and technology. While the event has been hosted in San Francisco, Steuer and Phillips’ vision is to have ccSalons spread to other cities all over the (more…)

Harvard Free Culture opened its innovative art show, ‘Sharing is Daring’ on 27 April. The exhibition featured artwork; from photography, to video, graphics and multimedia, released under Creative Commons licenses.

According to Harvard Free Culture’s Elizabeth Stark, the event went “extremely well”.

“We had a video installation in a side room and then most of the works in the main gallery, complete with a cellphone hip hop live video performance,” she said.

The show served as a way of making the creations of up-and-coming artists more freely available to the public to reuse, remix and reshape the original work, thus encouraging a freer culture of collaboration and innovation.
‘We seek to present a platform for these artists to be exposed to the greater art scene and to promote greater acceptance of Creative Commons work. Furthermore, we hope to transform values that (more…)

UNESCO’s World Book and Copyright Day was celebrated yesterday, 23 April. According to the UNESCO website; ‘by celebrating this Day throughout the world, UNESCO seeks to promote reading, publishing and the protection of intellectual property through copyright.’

In his annual message on the occasion of the World Book and Copyright day, the Director-General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, highlighted the need to encourage diversity of languages in publishing, stating that the book should ‘be regarded more than ever before as a vehicle of vitality and language recognition.’

Alek Tarkowski, project leader of Creative Commons Poland, too believes that translations of books would allow for greater diversity. He said, ‘There’s a lot of important knowledge and experience to be shared between different places and parts of the (more…)

This morning’s plenary session at the Yale A2K conference discussed the economics of A2K.

I was struck by a remark made by Jamie Love during the Q & A; that economists who see Intellectual Property as working need to reconsider their theories in view of what is actually happening in many countries; people are dying because they cannot afford medicines; they cannot afford medicines because of patents.

This is an important reminder, that no matter the elegance and theoretical complexity of an explanatory theory, if it doesn’t descibe reality, a reality which includes the dusty streets of rural Africa , its not worth the power point its presented on.

How do/should we frame “access to knowledge”?

That is the question which the plenary session opening the A2K Conference discussed.

Two statements struck me during this session.

One of the statements was made by Prof Benkler, a professor at Yale Law School who said:

“Diverse Conditions demand diverse approaches”.

Trying to define “access to knowledge” begs questions of a theoretical, even philosophical nature. What is access? What is (more…)

Appropriately I am sitting in sunny Bryant Park making use of the park’s free wifi to type this post.

I say appropriately since I am on my way to the Access to Knowledge Project hosted at the Yale Law School by the Information Society Project. Access to knowledge is governed by the codes, legal and digital, that govern content. It is equally dependent on communication networks.

The idea that wifi access should be, at least in some places, as publicly available a service as a drinking fountain, is compelling. Yesterday I used the wifi network at Johannesburg International Airport, a subscription service, I just happened to have free minutes. Even with the many South African and foreign business travelers thronging the airport I didn’t see enough laptops being toted, to represent a serious free rider problem. Perhaps free wifi would be equally appropriate in Johannesburg International.

Both the free and subscription wifi networks are open communication networks, demanding adherence only to a limited set of technical protocols to let me speak and listen. Something of this elegant simplicity should inspire the emerging open knowledge architectures.

Creative Commons Sweden (ccSweden) has been entered as a finalist in the Culture category of the prestigious Stockholm Challenge.

‘It is an honour to be part of the Stockholm Challenge process and I am looking forward to meeting the other finalists at the ceremony. The competition has many finalists with many great merits so we think that being short listed is a victory in itself,’ said Mathias Klang, project leader of ccSweden.

The Stockholm Challenge considers projects from all over the world that use Information and Communication Technology to improve living conditions and lead to economic growth. Themes of the competition range from education to public administration to the environment and telemedicine. In 1997, the Challenge opened the competition to global participants, and has to date build up a database of 3,000 (more…)

A comic promoting the value of a freer public domain and explaining the maze of copyright law history and intellectual property rights?

This may be an unexpected topic, but law professors Keith Aoki, James Boyle and Jennifer Jenkins released their comic, ‘Bound by Law? Tales from the Public Domain’, a month ago, with resounding success.

According to co-author of the comic, James Boyle, the William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law at Duke Law School and member of the board of Creative Commons, there has been a ‘great response’ to the book.

‘We have had between 50,000 and 60,000 visitors to the comic website who have been reading the comic online, more than 2 million page views. And they have come from all over the world - about 30% from outside the US,’ he said.

Large batch orders of hard copies have also been bought for high schools, film schools and (more…)

The launch of Creative Commons licenses in The People’s Republic of China on 29 March, was according to Chunyan Wang, project leader of Creative Commons Mainland China (ccChina), a ‘giant success’.

With a few weeks passed since the event, Wang reflected on its success, challenges to the project and plans for the future.

The launch, which took place at the opening ceremony of an international conference on the topic, ‘Intellectual Property and Creative Commons in the Digital Age’, was held at Renmin University of China and Peking University, in Beijing. (more…)

The first day of the iCommons Summit sees a significant meeting of Creative Commons legal and project leads to discuss the issues and challenges they experience on a daily basis in their respective jurisdictions.

According to the program, the Creative Commons Policy Workshop will deal with ‘issues relating to Creative Commons license development, collecting societies, cc Version 3.0 and Creative Commons’ WIPO strategy.’

This will provide an important platform for Creative Commons Project and Legal leads from around the world to give feedback about the licensing process. Mia Garlick, General Council to Creative Commons San Francisco, is running the workshop along with Christiane Henckel von Donnersmarck, Creative Commons International Executive Director.

Garlick believes that the responses from individual experiences can point to larger issues (more…)