Creative Commons

Gothenburg.
The final speaker in this AoIR 2010 session is Bjarki Valtysson, whose interest is in the politics of access to exchange-oriented processes of mass self-communication – which build on a different arrangement of production, distribution, and consumption processes than we used to have. This is a clash between the politics of access (read/write) and the politics of permission (read-only culture), and there’s a question about how this plays out in digital public spheres.

This can be examined in the context of a number of projects. The Europeana content archive has been hampered by complex polemics regarding online accessibility, the digitisation of collections, preservation, and the storage of content; the same is true for the BBC’s Digital Archives project, for example. Against this, the Wikimedia Commons contains some 7.5 million freely available files which are available under Creative Commons or public domain licences.

Copenhagen.
The next session at COST298 begins with a paper by Eva van Passel, whose focus is on open and dynamic archives. Digitisation and digital preservation are increasingly seen as important strategies to safeguard audiovisual heritage - but the digital versions of such audiovisual materials are often almost as fragile as the original materials, due to changing standards. In Belgium, the BOM-Vlaanderen project drives some of the thinking on these issues - and it is especially interested also in incorporating user wants and needs into its process.

Singapore.
The keynote lecture this afternoon at ISEA 2008 is by Creative Commons co-founder Lawrence Lessig, speaking on the proper place of copyright. He begins in 1906, when John Philip Sousa went to Congress to rail against the recently invented record player. The new technology, he suggested, would undermine cultural participation (a kind of read-write participation) - record players were 'infernal machines' which would promote the development of a 'read-only' culture, driven by commercial agendas. (Sousa was taunted in response with the suggestion that copyright already prevented participation in a read-write culture, however - a suggestion he strongly rejected.)

Singapore.
My afternoon session at ISEA 2008 is on copyright and the Creative Commons in Asia. In the first place, this begins with the official launch of the Creative Commons licencing suite for Singaporean copyright law - the 47th such translation into a national legislative framework.

CC co-founder Lawrence Lessig is here to do the honours, and he outlines some of the basic tenets of the Creative Commons philosophy now: in particular, the need to allow for a suite of licences which could offer a more sophisticated model for licencing content beyond the 'all rights reserved' model of copyright itself. This model, of course, has been forcefully exported from the U.S. to the rest of the world - and CC offers a different approach: not a disrespect for copyright, but a different understanding of copyright licencing.

Brisbane.
The final session here at the CCi conference is billed as a copyright perspectives panel in the context of user-led content creation on Web 2.0. The panel begins with Oli Wilson from New Zealand indie band Knives at Noon and Otago University. Knives at Noon released its EP online under a Creative Commons 3.0 (BY-NC-SA) licence, free to share and remix for non-commercial purposes. The band was somewhat unhappy with the content of the EP itself, but wanted this creative material not to be wasted - they hoped that it would take on a life of its own by releasing it online as a ProTools source file (roughly following Linus Torvalds's logic in releasing the initial Linux kernel). Release in this format also allowed users to access the individual components of their tracks, not just the mixed end product - and it suited the band's creative philosophy.

Vancouver.
We're coming towards the end of the last day here at AoIR 2007, and Kirsten Foot is the first speaker in the post-lunch session, presenting a co-authored paper on link structures and engagement practices in U.S. and U.K. fair trade networks. Fair trade movements aim to develop more equitable practices in international commerce in a variety of commodities (not just coffee), and Kirsten and her colleagues examined fair trade movements' historical roots (since the end of World War II) in a previous study; in the U.K., contrary to the U.S., there are also important relationships with government bodies (and there are a number of official 'fair trade towns' in the U.K., but only one in the U.S.). U.K. movements are now having some impact even on European Union policy, in fact. In the U.S., targets of such movements are usually corporations, by comparison.

My colleague Justin Brow is next; he's been involved in the development of Sticky.net.au and is a researcher in the QUT Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation (iCi). He begins with a brief introduction to the economic role of the creative industries - some 140,000 people are working directly in the CI in Australia, but the focus of CI analysis is now shifting from the production of creative outputs themselves to creative industries' input into other industries; some 160,000 people in Australia work in creative occupations within other industries. A further 150,000 people work in managerial and administrative roles related to the CI, establishing a 'creative trident' of occupations and contributing some $21billion to Australian GDP (this is set to double in the coming years).

Cushla Kapitzke is the next speaker here at ATOM2006. She focusses on the implications of copyright law changes in the wake of the Australia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, and how they may impact on media educators. She notes the rise of a large variety of neologisms - postindustrialism, fast capitalism, the information age, the creative economy, postmodernity, neoliberalism, globalisation, and McDonaldisation - even while the U.S. remains firmly routed in the traditional assumptions of modernity in a variety of ways. Libraries, for example, are often still excellently set up, but remain largely empty as they've failed to engage with the post-modern information needs of their clients. Cushla suggest a set of epochal shifts, from ancient ceremony to the traditional library of modernity, to the new 'libr@ry' which is being explored developed in a number of configurations by various organisations.

Dresden
My next session again involves Mark Latonero, speaking on remix culture. (I missed the session's previous presentation, on the World Trade Organisation.) Mark describes the delegitimising force of traditional copyright industries, but notes the rise of alternative modes which involve the active production of content by non-traditional producers operating outside the status quo production processes, in a user-based, bottom-up, and grassroots mode. Remixing embodies a set of social practices that are indicative of digital technologies imbued with an ideology of freedom. Are remixers aiming to transcend the constraints of space and time? What are their cultural characteristics and personal identities?

Dresden
The next session is on creative commons-related issues; Mark Latonero is the first speaker. He notes that Tim Berners-Lee suggests that the whole added value of the Internet is serendipitous re-use. The creative commons represents an emerging technological and legal mechanism for this re-use, and a significant challenge to the traditional copyright industries. It is a legitimising tool for cultural technologies on the Internet. Mark adminstered a questionnaire to the winners of the recent Wired creative commons remix contest.