CC Community Blogs

EU Presidency proposes compromise on draft Directive on collective management of copyright

2013-05-22T16:37:55Z

The proposal for a Directive on collective management of copyright and related rights and multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online uses in the internal market is now awaiting first (and single) reading by the European Parliament (indicatively foreseen in November). According to the European ordinary legislative process (the Directive proposal is following the ordinary codecision procedure), the Parliament is asked for its opinion on the proposed legislation before the Council adopts it. In the framework of the inter-institutional dialogue, the Conciliation Committee of the Council of the European Union issued a compromise text (aka ‘Presidency Compromise’) aiming at reconciling the positions of the EP and of the Council.

The Compromise text was adopted in early April (to our knowledge, it has not been widely circulated but has been made available online by the Austrian Parliament). The adoption of this text at a rather early stage of the legislative procedure, suggests that a possibility of a conclusion at first reading exists. However, it does not take account of the draft reports released by the Parliamentary Committees a few weeks after. As we highlighted earlier, the opinion drafted by MEP Helga Trüpel for the CULT Committee shares some core arguments with Communia’s policy. The deadline for tabling amendments on the leading Committee’s report (JURI) is June 6th.

It is thus interesting to look more closely at the content of the Compromise text to have a better idea about what the Council would be ready to vote for at the present time of the procedure (more than the Parliament insofar as the guessing about the final parliamentary vote is very uncertain at this stage of the procedure), although new matters of discussion may arise during the amendment and ‘lobbying’ period.

Let’s focus on the main issues raised in our policy paper:

Transparency

From Communia’s perspective, the general availability of information about membership and represented repertoire is essential. The Presidency proposal considers, like the Commission, that CMOs should only be held liable for a limited obligation of information, ignoring the specific needs of a wide-range of users. As highlighted in our policy paper, users are not properly considered, whereas the categories of beneficiaries of such access to information shall be much wider than those listed in Article 18. The rearranging of the corresponding provisions (namely the removal of Art. 18.2) by the Presidency does not improve the flaws of what was originally proposed by the Commission.

It is regrettable that the Directive proposal does not properly distinguish between the needs of users and the needs of the public (as broadly stated under Article 19: ‘Disclosure of information to the public‘). As we pointed out, users have specific needs but shall also be understood widely, beyond the usual contractual parties of CMOs, so that other potential licensees, including developers or any other persons or entities needing to contract with a CMO, can rely on accurate licensing information. ‘Users’ shall also be understood by CMOs as future contractors (even if still part of the ‘public’). This being said, the Compromise text aptly suggests adding standard licensing contracts and standard applicable tariffs as a category information subject to public disclosure (Art. 19).

Open content licenses and ability of rightholders to opt-out of collective management

Although only in a (legally non-binding) Recital, the freedom of rightholders to dispose of their works is expressly stated:

Recital 9: “The rights, categories of rights or types of works and other subject matter managed by the collective management organisation should be determined by the general assembly of members, without prejudicing the right of the rightholder to make such a choice under this Directive. It is important that the rights and categories of rights are determined in a manner that maintains a balance between the freedom of rightholders to dispose of their works and other subject matter and the ability of the organisation to effectively manage the rights” (emphasis ours).

However, the choice of rightholders is bound by what is allowed under this Directive, which is … not much. Indeed, the wording of Article 5 of the proposed Directive on the rights of rightholders, notably as regards their ability to terminate the mandate for the management of their rights with a collecting society or to withdraw from a collecting society is still the same as what was proposed by the Commission. As already highlighted in our policy paper (p. 5), the Commission considers that the freedom of choice of rightholders does not concern their works – which would have allowed them to opt-out of collective management and choose alternative licensing models like open content licenses – but only relates to their ‘rights, categories of rights or types of works and other subject matter‘.

As written in the Commission’s proposal, ‘the Directive should not prejudice the possibility for rightholders to manage their rights individually, including for non-commercial uses‘ (end of Recital 9). However, it is not said how this shall concretely take place for CMO members, whose ‘opting-out’ modalities are still unclear. The strategy that collecting societies have to devise regarding open content licenses, in the face of the growing trend of non-commercial uses and of rightholders’ will to grant non-exclusive licenses on their works, is still unclarified, if not inexistent.

It is worth mentioning that the ability for CMOs members to opt for open content licenses has been recently proposed in France in a national policymaking instrument (the Lescure Report, released earlier this week: see our comments), which acknowledges the importance of allowing an harmonious legal interaction between open licenses and collective management.

Moreover, the said ‘balance’ between the free choice of rightholders for the management of their works ‘and the ability of the [collective management] organization to effectively manage the rights‘ (see Recital 9 cited above) instills the idea that CMOs may claim for the necessity for them to manage all rights for the sake of the certainty of their repertoire. The respect of this ‘balance’ may give rise to litigation between CMOs and their members, thus potentially calling for arbitration (perhaps from the EU Court of Justice which is used to decide on other kinds of ‘balances’ inside the copyright law system).

Although unchanged as regards the ability of rightholders to ‘opt-out’ from collective management, the language of Article 5 now suggests imposing on CMOs an obligation to contract with rightholders. This is most likely motivated by the concerns expressed by some (including the European Parliament) with respect to cultural diversity, to prevent collecting societies from refusing to administer rights in certain works solely on grounds of their cultural origin or limited economic value. Such obligation for CMOs is a good thing for the certainty of repertoire towards users, provided that it is complemented by an obligation to keep track of all the information about the related rights and rightholders, and by an obligation to disclose it accurately to all users and potential users (which is presently not the case as underlined above).

Furthermore, the Compromise proposes to add a reference to ‘the records kept by a collective management organisation (which) should allow for the identification and location of its members and rightholders‘ (Recital 10). If this is not to resolve the ‘orphan works’ issue, it has nonetheless the advantage of setting the responsibility of collecting societies to provide information about the identification and the location of their members.

EU policymaking on collective management of copyright has mainly focused on the need of commercial (music) services for simplified and multi-territorial licenses, which has contributed to the lack of vision on non-commercial uses. Let’s hope that the draft CULT Committee report will help the Parliament adjust its amending proposals on the Directive proposal.

European parliament starts discussing the proposed Directive on collective management of copyright

2013-05-22T14:45:03Z

The European Commission’s Proposal for a directive on collective management of copyright and related rights and multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online uses in the internal market is slowly progressing through the legislative process in Brussels. As part of this no less then five committees of the European Parliament (Legal Affairs, Culture and Education, Industry, Research and Energy, Internal Market and Consumer Protection and International Trade) are in the process of forming their opinion on the proposal.

At this stage the draft opinions written by the rapporteurs for the four non-leading committees have been published. These opinions take the form of amendments proposed to the text of the directive (sometimes these are accompanied by short justifications).

In our policy paper from January we identified two main issues with the proposed directive: The first one concerns the transparency of repertoire information that has to be provided by collective management organisations and the second concerns the relation between collective management and open content licenses. In our analysis the proposed directive fails to sufficiently address these two issues.

We are happy to see that among the four published opinions the draft opinion of the Committee on Culture and Education authored by Helga Trüpel shares the concerns voiced in our policy paper. In the introduction of the document she writes:

The Rapporteur would like to stress that rightholders should have the possibility to make their works available under an open content license of their choice, for instance under Creative Commons, without necessarily opting out from the collective management system.

Furthermore, the Rapporteur would like to give even more flexibility to rightholders in the management of the rights. CMOs should provide accurate repertory information, in particular for works falling into the Public Domain. CMOs should ensure that the information in respect of the works whose term of protection terminates is accurate and regularly updated, in order to exempt such works from licensing and avoid claims to be enforced by CMOs in that regard.

In the following we take a closer look at the relevant amendments contained in the draft opinion of the Committee on Culture and Education:

Use of open content licenses by members of collective management organisations

While recital 9 of the Commission proposal contains language (‘Finally, this Directive should not prejudice the possibilities of rightholders to manage their rights individually, including for non-commercial uses.’) that clearly indicates that the directive is intended to create more flexibility for members of collective management organisations to exercise their rights individually, the actual provisions of the Commission proposal are somewhat ambiguous in this regard. Given this our policy paper suggests:

…to modify Article 5. This provision currently gives right holders the right to authorise (and terminate such authorisation) the management of ‘rights, categories of rights or types of works and other subject matter of their choice’. By changing this language into ‘rights or categories of rights or works or types of works and other subject matter of their choice’, authors would be effectively enabled to remove some works from the collective management system. This would allow them to make these works available under an open content license of their choice…

In line with this proposal the draft opinion contains three amendements (30, 31 and 32) that, if adopted, would allow rights-holders to remove individual works from from the collective management system. That would enable them to manage these works themselves, giving them the ability to make them available under the terms of open content licenses, including those that allow for the royalty-free commercial use of the licensed works.

In addition the draft report contains an amendment (29) that introduces a new sub paragraph 2 a in Article 5 (‘Rights of rightholders’). This amendement would give members of collective management organisations the right to grant free licenses for non-commercial uses of their works:

Rightholders shall have the right to grant free licences for the non-commercial use of their works and rights. In this case, rightholders shall inform in due time the collective management organisations authorised to manage the rights of such works that such a free license has been granted.

The addition of this sub paragraph is very welcome as it allows members of collective management organisations to make use of some open content licenses (those that only allow for non-commercial uses of the licensed work) without having to remove these works from the collective management system. Having this possibility means that members of collective management organisations can enjoy the benefits of collective rights management (effective collection for royalties form large groups of commercial uses) as well as the flexibility offered by non-commercial open content licenses.

Transparency

With regards to transparency our main concern has been that the measures intended to
increase the transparency with regards to the information about collective management organisations membership and their repertoire are insufficient. Given this we are happy to see that the draft opinion of the Committee on Culture and Education contains a number of amendments that would increase the transparency of membership and repertoire information.

Amendment 34 proposes a new paragraph 5 a in Article 6 (‘Membership rules of collecting societies’) that would require collective management organisations to make membership and repertoire information publicly accessible:

Collective management organisations shall make publicly accessible the list of their members and their respective rights or category of rights or works or type of works and other subject matter which the rightholders authorise the collective management organisation to manage, provided that the protection of the personal data of rightholders is preserved.

In addition amendments 61, 62 and 65 add language to articles 18 (‘Information provided to rightholders, members, other collecting societies and users on request’) and 19 (‘Disclosure of information to the public’) of the proposed directive that reiterates the requirement to make available membership lists and information on the managed repertoire through publicly accessible and searchable interfaces. As we had mentioned in our policy paper the last addition is crucial in an environment where automated data processing is fast becoming the norm.

Finally amendment 66 addresses another issue raised in our policy paper, the accurate and timely identification of works that have fallen into the Public Domain. In our policy paper we had suggested that…

…the legislator should give incentives for CMOs to provide accurate repertory information. In particular, CMOs shall ensure that the information in respect of the works whose term of protection terminates – thus ‘falling’ into the Public Domain – is accurate and regularly updated, so that Public Domain works are duly exempted from licensing.

This suggestion is taken up by amendment 66 which proposes to introduce a new paragraph 2 a under Article 19 (‘Disclosure of information to the public’) of the proposed directive:

Collective management organisations shall ensure that, in accordance with point (ab) of paragraph 1, the information on repertoire is accurate and regularly updated. In this respect, they shall particularly ensure that the information concerning the works whose terms of protection terminate is accurate and regularly updated, and made available to the public.

Conclusion

We are happy to see that most of the issues that we had identified are addressed by the draft opinion of the Committee on Culture and Education. The amendments discussed above would significantly strengthen the directive and therefor deserve broad support. If these amendments end up in the final version, the directive would strengthen the rights of authors who are members of collective management organisations with regards to the use of open content licenses. In addition it would strengthen the position of all users of protected works by ensuring the availability of accurate information on repertoires that are represented by Europe’s collective management organisations.

Copyright policymaking and the digital public domain: a bitter-sweet wishful thinking from France

2013-05-17T07:40:36Z

The mission on culture at the digital era commissioned by the French government and supervised by Pierre Lescure, rather pompously entitled ‘Acte II de l’exception culturelle’, released its report this week in Paris: ‘Rapport sur la politique culturelle à l’ère des contenus numériques’, downloadable in two volumes on the website of the Ministry of Culture (in French).

The Lescure Report is a new step in the policymaking on creative content in the digital society in France. Following the presidential elections last year, the new government wanted to induce reflection about the future of the HADOPI system adopted by the former government, and more generally on the protection of national culture on the Internet. The ambition heralded by this mission was big, so were the expectations about the resulting report.

The Report addresses a wide range of issues (the first volume of the Report is about 480 page-long) spanning copyright exceptions, non-commercial sharing, liability of intermediaries, financing models to support culture digitization, digital libraries, online clearing of rights on photographs and copyright enforcement. Among its key proposals, the Report argues for the prolonging of the graduated response, albeit under new conditions and under the responsability of another administrative authority (the HADOPI authority would disappear), as well as a new taxing system targeting telecommunication operators meant to finance the transition of cultural industries to the digital age. Moreover, the Report concurs with conservative views on copyright enforcement and discards the proposals elaborating alternative remuneration systems for rightholders and legalizing non-commercial sharing of copyrighted content. Not surprisingly, it has been criticized for being skewed towards industrial interests and in carrying on the repressive policy against webusers (read the critical view from La Quadrature du Net on the ‘wishful thinking and real dangers’ of the Report).

Despite these flaws, the Report takes account of some core considerations on the public domain and open licenses (as reported here), which represents a positive step considering that these issues have been overlooked for a long time by copyright national (and international) policymaking. Among its 80 proposals, the Report highlights the necessity to ‘protect and valorize the digital public domain’ (pp. 38 & 447 et seq) and contains proposals in line with some of Communia’s policy recommendations:

A positive definition of the public domain

The Report proposes to insert a positive definition of the public domain in national copyright law, as recommended by the Public Domain Manifesto (cited by the report) and Communia at the international and European levels (see our Positive Agenda for the Public Domain).

Although the Report focuses on the national context, it aptly refers to the international framework and to the WIPO working agenda addressing the public domain issue. As WIPO Observer, Communia has had the opportunity to express its views during the last WIPO/CDIP meetings (see our reports here and here) and to call upon such positive definition of the public domain into lawmaking.

Towards clarification of the public domain status of works

In order to improve the visibility of public domain works, the Report argues in favor of the development of open registries of metadata and for the use of technical measures like the ‘Public Domain Mark’ developed by Creative Commons. These proposals are in line with our recommendations.

Preventing the privatisation of the public domain

The Report warns against the ‘re-appropriation phenomenon’ and the claims for new layers of rights on digitized content (like the rights claimed for the creation of databases), thus restricting the scope of the public domain. The Report expressly concurs with Communia’s recommendation stating that what is in the public domain should stay in the public domain after digitization (see our Recommendation #5 and pp. 452-453 of the Report).

Further, the Report points out the misuse of technical protection measures restricting the use of public domain content. It suggests strengthening the regulation on technical protection measures to look more closely at their interaction with works belonging to the public domain, but also with software and measures of rights management information. However, these good intentions are likely to go unheeded, as highlighted by the French organization on free software April).

Conciliating open access and valorization of public domain works

Digitization agreements between cultural heritage institutions and private enterprises should not lead to the privatization of the public domain. The Report recommends that public interest organisations reaching such private-public partnerships should promote large and open access to public domain works and restrict exclusivity provisions. Unfortunately, reality has shown that public institutions do not hesitate to enter into exclusive agreements with the private sector to the detriment of public access to the cultural public domain (see our press-release denouncing the agreement signed by the French national library BNF).

The Report invites to ‘replace the narrow vision privileging financial interests with a more complex economic and social approach’ (p. 453). More especially, it argues for the promotion of added-value services which develop on raw data and provide financial resources partly compensating digitization costs without restricted access to content. Such standpoint tends to acknowledge the economic potential of innovative services building upon open data and public domain content, which goes in the right direction.

Open licenses

The Report contains further recommendations on open licenses, which has been welcomed by Creative Commons France. More particularly, it encourages collective management organisations to devise solutions allowing for the coexistence of open licenses, notably by allowing the members of collecting societies to opt for such licenses (Recommendation #77). This is a significant point that we have raised in our comments on the upcoming EU regulation on the collective management of copyright.

Voluntary dedication of works to the public domain

The Report also argues in favor of the voluntary dedication of works to the public domain by their rightholders (Recommendation #76), a principle that we support strongly before WIPO.

… and ‘orphan works’?

The Report contains interesting measures on the obligation of publishers to commercially exploit works online (pp. 69 of the Report), thereby seeking to reduce the phenomenon of works whose rightholders cannot be identified or located (‘so called ‘orphan works’). It is nonetheless disappointing to see that the Report does not tackle the issue of ‘orphan works’ properly and mistakenly relies on the proposals pushed forward by national publishers with respect to ‘(commercially) unavailable works’ (according to a national law adopted last year on unavoidable literary works, which has been heavily criticized as disadvantaging authors). Whereas the EU adopted a Directive on ‘orphan works’, the report misses the opportunity of assessing concretely the impact of this EU regulation in national law.

——

The Report has likely taken account of some of the arguments made during the hearing process undertaken during the past months, notably those from Mélanie Dulong de Rosnay (Co-Founder and President of Communia), and Lionel Maurel (aka @calimaq, Co-Founder of the French organization SavoirsCom1, who disclosed some legal proposals to strengthen the public domain on a national level).

The question is now whether the French government will be able to arbitrate wisely amongst all the arguments put forward in the Report. The public domain being adjacent to other kinds of measures, such as those promoting graduate response solutions, this creates a strange mixture in which policymakers and citizens might have trouble seeing clear. What is the benefit for the digital public domain to be exposed in such a policymaking instrument? The future will tell.

Economics and The Wealth of the Commons Conference

2013-05-09T18:00:37Z

The Wealth of the Commons: A world beyond market & state is finally available online in its entirety.

I’ll post a review in the fullness of time, but for now I recommend reading the 73 essays in the book (mine is not the essay I’d contribute today, but think it useful anyway) not primarily as critiques of market, state, their combination, or economics — it’s very difficult to say anything new concerning these dominant institutions. Instead read the essays as meditations, explorations, and provocations for expanding the spaces in human society — across a huge range of activity — which are ruled not via exclusivity (of property or state control) but are nonetheless governed to the extent needed to prevent depredation.

The benefits of moving to commons regimes might be characterized any number of ways, e.g., reducing transaction costs, decreasing alienation and rent seeking, increasing autonomy and solidarity. Although a nobel prize in economics has been awarded for research on certain kinds of commons, my feeling is that the class is severely under-characterized and under-valued by social scientists, and thus by almost everyone else. At the extreme we might consider all of civilization and nature as commons upon which our seemingly dominant institutions are merely froth.

Another thing to keep in mind when reading the book’s diverse essays is that the commons “paradigm” is pluralistic. I wonder the extent to which reform of any institution, dominant or otherwise, away from capture and enclosure, toward the benefit and participation of all its constituents, might be characterized as commoning?

Whatever the scope of commoning, we don’t know how to do it very well. How to provision and govern resources, even knowledge, without exclusivity and control, can boggle the mind. I suspect there is tremendous room to increase the freedom and equality of all humans through learning-by-doing (and researching) more activities in a commons-orientated way. One might say our lack of knowledge about the commons is a tragedy.

…

Later this month the Economics and the Commons Conference, organized by Wealth of the Commons editors David Bollier and Silke Helfrich, with Michel Bauwens, will bring together 240 researchers, practitioners, and advocates deeply enmeshed in various commons efforts. There will be overlapping streams on nature, work, money, infrastructure, and the one I’m coordinator for, knowledge.

I agreed to coordinate the stream because I found exchanges with Bollier and Helfrich stimulating (concerning my book essay, a panel on the problematic relationship of Creative Commons and commons, and subsequently), and because I’m eager to consider knowledge commoning (e.g., free software, culture, open access, copyright reform) outside of their usual venues and endlessly repeated debates, and because I feel that knowledge commons movements have failed dismally to communicate their pertinence to each other and with the rest of the world — thus I welcome the challenge and test case to communicate the pertinence of all knowledge commons movements to other self-described commoners — and finally, to learn from them.

Here are the key themes I hope we can explore in the stream:

All commons as knowledge commons, e.g., the shared knowledge necessary to do anything in a commons-oriented way, easily forgotten once exclusivity and control take hold.
Knowledge enclosure and commoning throughout history, pre-dating copyright and patent, let alone computers.
How to think about and collaborate with contemporary knowledge commoners outside of the contractually constructed and legal reform paradigms, eg transparency and filesharing activists.
How can we characterize the value of knowledge commons in ways that can be critiqued and thus are possibly convincing? What would a knowledge commons research agenda look like?
If we accept moving the provisioning of almost all knowledge to the commons as an achievable and necessary goal, what strategies and controversies of existing knowledge commons movements (tuned to react against burgeoning enclosure and make incremental progress, while mostly accepting the dominant “intellectual property” discourse) might be reconsidered?

This may appear vastly too much material to cover in approximately 5 hours of dedicated stream sessions, but the methodology consists of brief interventions and debates, not long presentations, and the goal is provocation of new, more commons-oriented, and more cross-cutting strategies and collaborations among knowledge commoners and others, not firm conclusions.

I aim for plenty of stream documentation and followup, but to start the public conversation (the conference has not been publicized thus far due to a hard limit on attendees; now those are settled) by asking each of the “knowledge commoner” participants to recommend a resource (article, blog post, presentation, book, website…) that will inform the conversation on one or more of the themes above. Suggestions are welcome from everyone, attending or not; leave a comment or add to the wiki. Critiques of any of the above also wanted!

List of Wikimania 2013 Submissions of Interest

2013-05-04T20:02:21Z

Unlikely I’ll attend Wikimania 2013 in Hong Kong (I did last year in DC). In lieu of marking myself as an interested attendee of proposed sessions, my list of 32 particularly interesting-to-me proposals follows. I chose by opening the proposal page for each of the 331 submissions that looked interesting at first glance (about 50) and weeded out some of those.

I suspect many of these proposals might be interesting reading for anyone generally curious about possible futures of Wikipedia and related, similar, and complementary projects, but not following any of these things closely.

A “kill hollyweb” plan

2013-05-03T15:31:38Z

May 3 is the Day Against DRM (Digital Restrictions Management). Please sign the petition against DRM in the HTML5 standard. Then come back and read this post.

Recently I wrote in Why DRM in HTML5 and what to do about it:

Long term, the only way the DRM threat is going to be put to rest is for free cultural works to become culturally relevant.

I’ve complained many a time that rearguard clicktivism against bad policy is not a winning strategy — especially when such campaigns don’t also promote free-as-in-freedom software and cultural works — because as I put it one of those times:

In a world in which most software and culture are free as in freedom there would be no constituency for attacking the Internet (apart from dictatorships and militarized law enforcement of supposed democracies)

But I’m at fault too for not laying out a specific plan for making some free works culturally relevant, let alone carrying out such a plan.

OK, here’s one plan I recently mentioned offhandedly:

‘free-as-in-freedom ~netflix’

crowdfund minimum number of subscriptions needed to begin
subscriptions used to really nicely package/stream and promote free as in freedom video
start with 1 feature-length video selection each month (perhaps even quarter during a beta phase)
mix of contemporary (of which there isn’t much yet) and older public domain movies
limited, promoted releases concentrate subscription audience: focused increase of cultural relevance, one work at a time
given enough subscriptions, start funding new free videos
obviously videos would be DRM-free, in free formats, all software used free software, and all ancillary material also free-as-in-freedom

Good idea? Run with it, or if you’d like to subscribe or otherwise help create it in any way, fill out this 3 question survey. Bad idea, but still care? Let me know via the survey. Or mail ml@gondwanaland.com or contact user mlinksva on some other usual channel.

…

“Kill Hollyweb” is in part a reference to the Y Combinator Request For Startups 9: Kill Hollywood. The plan above isn’t really a Kill Hollywood plan as it isn’t about replacing movies with some other form of entertainment.

Non-auditable accounting software

2013-05-01T17:13:42Z

Software Freedom Conservancy has a plan to help all non-profit organizations (NPOs) by creating an Open Source and Free Software accounting system usable by non-technical bookkeepers, accountants, and non-profit managers. You can help us do it by donating now.

To keep their books and produce annual government filings, most NPOs rely on proprietary software, paying exorbitant licensing fees. This is fundamentally at cross purposes with their underlying missions of charity, equality, democracy, and sharing.

You can help Conservancy fix this problem by donating now. We seek to
raise $75,000 to employ a developer for one year to make substantial progress on this project.

This project has the potential to save the non-profit sector millions in licensing fees every year. Even non-profits that continue to use proprietary accounting software will benefit, since the existence of quality Open Source and Free Software for a particular task curtails predatory behavior by proprietary software companies, and creates a new standard of comparison.

But, more powerfully, this project’s realization will increase the agility and collaborative potential for the non-profit sector — a boon to funders, boards, and employees — bringing the Free Software and general NPO communities into closer collaboration and understanding.

I contributed to the above blurb (and would love to hear critiques of the broad claims therein about free software and non-profit missions), but not to my favorite part of the plan: phase 0, in which existing free software accounting software will be evaluated, with expert input from non-profit organizations currently using various packages, in order to choose a base for further development. How many funding campaigns propose to build something without any understanding of what already exists? Almost all as far as I can tell, and almost always a suboptimal move, is my hunch.

This move is in line with one way of looking at Software Freedom Conservancy’s role: to save free software projects from the suboptimality of another kind of NIH — starting an independent non-profit organization — projects (about 30 so far, git probably the best known) join Software Freedom Conservancy, which takes care of administration such as accounting and provides other services.

I’m generally impressed by Software Freedom Conservancy’s work (read the annual report, pretty and informative) and have served on its project evaluation committee (i.e., intake; applying to join Software Freedom Conservancy is a good motivator to get a lot of best practices in place) for about a year and joined its board the beginning of this year, recently announced.

Please donate to the campaign to improve free software accounting for non-profits. In a past role as non-profit manager at Creative Commons, I absolutely hated the internal non-transparency and dependency of our accountants using a proprietary accounting package tied to a particular Windows server. Doing anything about it was nowhere near the top of my list of things I would’ve or could’ve done given more time or hindsight, but I would’ve been really, really happy if someone else had fixed it, much like I was really happy that CiviCRM became a viable free software customer/donor/constituent/funder relationship management system at the right time for us to scrap a very simple in-house system and not become locked into one of the awful proprietary packages (not soon enough to avoid listening to sales pitches in which the salespeople blatantly lied about implementation costs and product capabilities). Now is the time for someone else to take care of the accounting situation — please help by donating — as I just did.

Oh, and even if you don’t care about non-profits at all, I’m pretty confident that this project will help free software accounting in general, and help is badly needed — LWN’s series on the subject last year is gripping reading. Seriously, it is ridiculous that such fundamental infrastructure for running organizations of all kinds and thus society is itself non-auditable.

Best Creative Commons infographic ever

2013-04-16T22:20:32Z

By Falkvinge on Infopolicy columnist Zacqary Adam Green (also creator of the excellent Your Face Is A Saxophone cartoon).

Already used in my presentation today at the Linux Collaboration Summit, (pdf, odp, slideshare).

Feedback on the Khatib Bongsu Park Connector

2013-04-16T04:57:56Z

Over the weekend, a few of my friends were discussing about Singapore's National Cycling Plan via email. One of our friends offered to collate our ideas and suggestions to relay to the right government agency folks.

I love our Park Connectors. I ride on the Khatib Bongsu park connector most often (sometimes connecting all the way to Woodlands Waterfront, through the Admiralty connector). I've noticed minor improvements to the Khatib Bongsu connector in the last two years. There's still room for a better/ safer experience for cyclists and pedestrians.

There was a suggestion that I should blog about my suggestions. It's fresh off my mind anyway, since my wife and I just completed an early evening 16km ride today, to the end of Simpang Kiri.

Ideally I should include actual images of the parts I've described. But I didn't really plan to give a comprehensive list until after the ride. Hope the map screenshots, with the descriptions, would help.

Well, I'd love to show the URA or NParks people first hand. Like a Ride & Review session. Wouldn't mind taking my vacation time on a weekday to meet them (wouldn't want them to work on a weekend). Ride along the path, point out actual situations. Also I'd like to be educated on why things were designed in certain ways or perhaps the constraints they faced.

Feedback on the Khatib Bongsu Park Connector

1) From the junction at Yishun Ave 1 & Yishun Ave 2, there's a stretch of asphalt that seemed worn out. The painted speed stripes seemed particularly high. It appeared as if the asphalt on parts unpainted were badly eroded (I've seen newer paved bike paths and they are definitely smoother). Going over the stripes slowly, as designed, was extremely jarring. I suspect most cyclists will choose to ride on the smoother pedestrian path. Which defeated the purpose of having the cycling path.

2) Along Yishun Ave 2, there's a side road for traffic to enter the carpark of Blocks 788/ 785. It splits the cycling path, though that's not the issue. The problem is that the sloped gradient (for a smooth transition from the path to the road, and then back on the path again) was only made for the pedestrian path. The sloped edge is for wheelchairs to easily transfer from pedestrain path to road, to make the crossing. The cyclist has to make a 90-degree turn to get to that sloped edge. Once I cross the road with my bike it's another 90-degree turn to get back to the cycling path and its a narrow turn. I consider myself quite OK on a bike but I don't feel confident making such a tight turn all the time. Cyclists don't want to get off and push the bike (be realistic!) so I noticed most cyclists go on the pedestrian path, which is more direct.

3) There's also more examples of 90-degree tight turns along Block 602. Then at the end of it (see the part marked 3.2) it's a dead-end for the bike path. You actually have to go on the pedestrian path to make the crossing to the PCN on Mandai. I find that part poorly-designed and inconvenient. I end up cycling on the pedestrian path leading to the traffic lights.

4.1) At the stretch after the canal bridge (from Block 323) to the SAFRA Clubhouse: When the path was first constructed, I remember the asphalt part was designated as the bike path. But one day, the asphalt path became re-designated as a footpath while the concrete path (with iron grills for rain runoff) became a bike path. Pedestrians and cyclists get confused. Plus, the iron grills are not ideal when riding conditions are wet.

4.2) According to the map, it looks like a continuous PCN. But in reality, that stretch is a pedestrian footpath. Not a problem sharing the path, though it is rather narrow.

5) At Yishun MRT station, the hedges have gown quite tall (near the NTUC part). Pedestrian paths intersect the bike path and the hedges tend to prevent both pedestrians and cyclists from being able to spot each other far away. I try to ring my bell but not all the time. BTW, the same limited visibility issue affects some points along the Khatib-Yishun-Sembawang MRT tracks, where the cycling paths intersect with bus-stops/ overhead bridges pathways. Instead of plantings, the concrete columns are the ones preventing a clear view of oncoming pedestrians/ cyclists.

6) Outside Yishun Emerald Green condo, ideally the bike path and pedestrian paths should be switched. I've seen condo residents coming out the gates and naturally walking on the asphalt path, with is more immediate than the concrete footpath. My point is the bike path should be made further away from the gates, not the nearest.

7) The stretch along the Canberra Sembawang PCN: the asphalt seems badly eroded. Ride is very bumpy. Cyclists often avoid it and go on the pedestrian path instead.

8) On some park connectors (like Simpang Kiri), the bicycle symbol has been painted on the left and footsteps painted on the right. I've noticed cyclists, runners and pedestrians naturally ride/ run/ walk on the left side when heading towards the same direction. And it's usually the left side. If I were to cycle back the opposite direction AND adhered to the designated cycling side, it means I'd be cycling on the right side now, going in the forward direction (or the left side to the opposite cyclist/ runner/ pedestrian). If another cyclist were to head towards me, we're headed towards each other on the same side. It's currently not clear who has right of way -- should I go left or the other move to their left? A game of 'who brakes/ moves first'. In the end, I find that most cyclists/ runners/ pedestrians ignore the marked designated paths and naturally adopt a "keep left" position. In my view, just sticking to a "keep left" principle for everyone would be clearer. Paint a "Kept Left" on the asphalt.

Alright. Finally managed to 'dump' all the observations that I think can be resolved in the near term. It's not exhaustive of course. Maybe there are budgetary or infrastructural reasons that prevent more significant improvements to be made. In any case, I hope the feedback would be of use to the authorities (NParks? URA? LTA?)

Would be great if there was a dedicated Singapore Government website on the National Cycling Plan. For now, one can refer to the 2012 Budget website (near the end of the page). Or see this post of Mr Lui Tuck Yew's (Minister for Transport) parliament speech on 7 Mar 2012, where he mentioned the National Cycling Plan and Cycling Paths.

I'm glad to see that cycling was once again part of the Budget in 2013.

I've written about how I appreciate our Park Connector Network. If there was one on the National Cycling Plan, I'd love to be part of it.

ASIDE: I can now better appreciate the usefulness of having a National Conversation framework. Previously I've not been that enthusiastic about any of the National Conversation topics. But thinking about the National Cycling Plan, I'd like to listen to the official views, their thinking behind the plans, and also be able to constructively provide feedback and ideas.

(Thanks to Siva for the idea to blog my suggestions, and for reposting at the Cycling In Singapore) blog.

Web ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com

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Part 1 - Tripping on Two Wheels: Pengarang to Desaru, and Back Again: Cycling Adventure 29 - 30 Mar 2013

2013-04-09T15:08:27Z

Total time on the bicycle: 10 hours, thereabouts.

Total distance covered: about 112km over 2 days (51km each way).

Total energy burned: pretty sure it's 1,800 calories at least (extrapolating from my own 40 km rides in Singapore).

Total energy consumed: Won't be surprised if it's more than what I burned, so I don't really want to know.

[Image credit: Kenneth Pinto, CC-BY-NC)

My first post for 2013 would be a post about my first real ride for the year. Quite apt.

This post is a recap of the 1.5 day ride.

The "Good Friday" some two weeks ago was literally great for me, as 10 of us embarked on a day-and-a-half, Out-of-Singapore cycling adventure. From Tanjung Pengelih to this resort in Desaru, and back.

We were a motley mix comprising of 20 year-olds to mid-40s, on Foldies and mountain bikes.

The day's adventure started at Changi Village. The jetty was packed, given it was a holiday. While we waited for our turn to get a boat and to clear customs, Kevin's super-sized Pugsley earned easy conversations from strangers. He's the original Aunty-Killer. "Got motor or not?" must be the most frequently asked question about his Fatbike.

[Image credit: sivasothi, CC-BY-NC-SA]

When my friends first planned for the trip, I thought Pengarang sounded familiar. Then I remembered it was in the news in late 2011 over the Malaysian government's plans to build petrochemical projects there.

On our way to Tanjung Pengelih, we saw Singapore's attempt to create more land. Our bumboat chugged past silent monster rigs, some in the process of turning sea into land. We passed stretches of massive sand banks on both sides, stable enough to support several heavy vehicles on them.

[image credit: Kevin Lim, CC-BY-NC-SA]

[image credit: Kevin Lim, CC-BY-NC-SA]

[image credit: Kenneth Pinto, CC-BY-NC]

When we reached Tanjung Pengelih, things felt slower and more idyllic. Probably the absence of human traffic at the jetty. We were the only ones clearing customs.

As we geared up to start our ride, Dinesh provided timely advice on general safety. He also prepared a set of walkie-talkies for the lead rider (him) and last Outrider (Kevin). I was quietly impressed. Talk about being professional.

Being a naturally cautious (i.e. overly pessimistic) person, I kinda surprised myself by feeling rather calm when we set off. I'm chicken-crap when it comes to new places. But this group had plenty of experienced and steady riders. Plus, I trusted my bike and that helped a lot. I'd stopped cycling for about three months, and only put in maybe 5 km worth of riding time a few days before the trip. It was enough to assure me of the ride-worthiness of my foldable bike though. Would have wanted to put in more kilometres for physical fitness (but maybe that turned out to be a blessing -- more of this in Part 2).

We rode through quiet paths with uncut grass waving on either sides; past houses at one stretch, and then hitting open roads with relatively few cars.

[image credit: Kevin Lim, CC-BY-NC-SA]

[image credit: Kevin Lim, CC-BY-NC-SA]

[image credit: sivasothi, CC-BY-NC-SA]

[image credit: Kevin Lim, CC-BY-NC-SA]

[image credit: Kevin Lim, CC-BY-NC-SA]

There's a certain zen when one rides under one's own power: hearing the hum and whirs of the bicycle, our own breathing, the wind in our faces.

This was a leisurely ride. The 20-somethings in our group had the benefit of youth. They easily kept up on their bikes. Actually the second (maybe third) oldest guy in our group used to run triathlons.

The Pengarang highways, perhaps being such long stretches, had the inevitable potholes. A few of us had bottles pop out of their bottle cages when they went through deeper potholes.

I had trepidations taking my foldie over a path with sharp chunky gravel. It was one of those "mind-over-matter" moments: tell yourself you might lose balance and you would. I had split microseconds of doubts when traversing the rough patch, but told myself to keep focused and stay balanced. And I did.

The sharp gravel probably got my front tire wall torn (see Part 3). But no puncture.

Riding in Pengarang was vastly different from cycling on Singapore's PCNs. The lack of urban noises created a different experience. In Singapore, there is no escaping the signs of urban constructs -- pedestrian paths, roads, traffic lights, street lamps. But that's just a fact. I suppose if one craved for open spaces, then a place like Pengarang would be superior to the cityscape of Singapore.

As we rode through kampungs (do they refer to their collective homes as kampungs in Pengarang?) the kids seem to be quicker to say Hello, and the adults more generous with their smiles.

Well, we didn't meet that many kids or adults, to be fair. But I've to say the drivers we passed by in Pengarang tended to wait for you to ride past before they made that turn. I sped up to make sure I didn't waste their time, but I didn't feel panicky. It was nice to wave them an acknowledgement, and seeing them wave back in return. Cars went fast on the highways, but most provided a wide berth between their cars and us.

Fact of life, I suppose: having ample space tend to create an air of generosity. It's the place that affect the vibes. Now THAT, I am envious -- of the vast land that Malaysians have.

Speaking of vibes, Siva blogged that he found it depressing in seeing large tracts of land cleared for timber, and basically left bare with no plans for development.

[Image credit: Kevin Lim (CC-BY-NC-SA]

Siva observed that traffic conditions will change and will affect some of the village detours. Meaning, the rides may become less idyllic and there will be an increase in traffic.

[Image credit: Kevin Lim (CC-BY-NC-SA]

Ah, meals.

The favourable currency exchange rates for Singapore dollar meant we ate like 'royalty' there.

Lunch, on both days, was in the town centre called ~~Pulai~~ Sungei Ringgit ("money town"?).

[Image credit: Kevin Lim (CC-BY-NC-SA]

They still have old-style hawker carts plying the town, like this beancurd seller who came by on our return leg. But her product has been modernised. She offered Hong Kong-styled beancurd pudding rather than the traditional type (much to the disappointment of one young rider in our group):

[Image credit: Kevin Lim (CC-BY-NC-SA]

The entire trip was largely problem-free. Maybe Kenneth (who opted for his Foldie rather than a MTB for this trip) would disagree. His foldie had a flat on day-one. But I thought the flat was resolved rather easily and in relative comfort. Understandably, he was frustrated with getting a puncture (seemed every ride to Pengarang he would get a flat). Still, the flat was discovered just as we set off after lunch. It would have been worse if the flat happened on an open road.

And then Kenneth discovered his spare inner tube had an inherent flat! I was glad I could help by giving one of my spare (the advantage of having similar sized tires, woo-hoo). Kevin even found a bicycle shop that sold tubes a few metres down the coffeeshop. Good to note for future rides.

Kenneth managed to fix the problem in the shade at a kopi tiam. The iced coffee was pretty good too.

[Image credit: Kevin Lim (CC-BY-NC-SA]

Several Firsts for me in this trip:

Bringing my own bicycle on a boat
Travelling out of Singapore with it
Visiting Pengarang and Desaru

My last visit to Malaysia was about 10 years ago. It was quite telling because on Day 2, when I passed a Five Ringgit note to a shopkeeper, he didn't accept the note instantly. He looked at me and said, "Ringgit". I thought I'd brought Indonesia Rupiah by mistake. But no, the note said Ringgit and I pointed that out to him. The guy did a double take, as if he'd never seen the note before. Maybe he hadn't. The note has been out of circulation for years, I was later told.

The pace the group set was comfortable. Properly prepared (e.g. individual strategies to stay hydrated; physical preparation before the trip) this was/ would have been an easy ride.

Distance-wise, each day's ride was about 10km longer than my Yishun-Woodlands Waterfront PCN rides. One big difference was the hills in the last 20 km to the resort. They weren't the Killer Slopes that I thought they would be. I've found the NTU slopes were a lot more challenging. But I suspect my relatively lack of cycling fitness, with the 3-litres of water on me, gave rise to an inflamed tendon near the knee (I'll blog about that in Part 2).

I had looked forward to this cycling trip with the ZenDogs. I wasn't disappointed, even with the sore tendons. Very glad I went. Next time, I shall have to sacrifice the welfare of my dog and get my wife to join me (if you're a dog owner with a namby-pamby dog, you'l know what I'm talking about).

[image credit: Kevin Lim, CC-BY-NC-SA]

Kevin's photoset | Kenneth's photoset | Siva's photoset

Part 1 - Tripping on Two Wheels
Part 2 - Physical Prep & Post-Mortem
Part 3 - Post-ride Bike Upgrades

Web ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com

myrightbrain.wordpress.com roughnotes.wordpress.com

Realize Document Freedom Day

2013-03-27T18:18:55Z

Open formats and open standards are excellent causes, but without free/open source software implementations and widespread adoption thereof, the causes are uphill battles, at best. So I’m appalled that the Document Freedom Day (which is today, March 27) website information and suggested actions are merely conceptual.

Let’s fix that, here’s the deal. Download, try, become an expert:

LibreOffice. If in 2013 you’re still using Microsoft Office, you’re either in an organization/industry with extreme lock-in through custom business automation or similar that is built exclusively on Microsoft tools, or you’re actively contributing to the destruction of freedom and equality in the world. If you’ve never tried LibreOffice, or if you’ve tried one of its predecessors (OpenOffice) more than a year ago, try LibreOffice (again) now. It’s excellent, including at reading and writing non-free document formats, a necessity for adoption. But most of the value in software is not inherent, rather in many people using and knowing the software. Network effects rule, and you can make a huge difference! If you can’t be bothered, make up for it with a large donation to The Document Foundation, LibreOffice’s nonprofit organization.

As the DFD website explains, document freedom isn’t just about word processor and spreadsheet documents, or even just about storage formats, but any format used to store or transmit data. Thus I put Jitsi as the second most important application to use in order to realize document freedom. It implements open standards such as XMPP and SIP to provide all of the functionality of Skype, which is completely proprietary in its formats and implementation, willing to work with oppressive governments, and increasingly castigated as bloatware or even malware by people who don’t care much about freedom. Jitsi recently released 2.0. If in the unlikely event you’ve tried it before, it’s definitely worth another look.

Probably everyone knows about Firefox, but not everyone uses it, and it does have the best support for open formats of the top browsers. Also, Firefox has progressed very nicely the last years.

Praise for Document Freedom Day

DFD has missed an opportunity to promote the realization of document freedom, but that would be good in addition to, not in place of their existing messages. Direct use of free software that implements open standards is incredibly powerful, but not the only way to make progress, and despite my mini-rant above The free software movement attaches too much political significance to personal practice. People should demand their governments and other institutions adopt open standards and free software, even if people cannot do so as individuals, just as people should generally demand adoption of good policy even if they cannot personally live wholly as if good policy were already in place.

DFD does a reasonable job of raising awareness of good policy. I strongly encourage doing a bit to realize document freedom today, but sharing a link to documentfreedom.org on your social networks helps too. Just a little bit, but what can you expect from clicktivism?

…

I expect pro-free/open clicktivism to promote the realization of freedom!

I have similar complaints about Defective By Design campaigns. Speaking of which, their No DRM in HTML5 campaign is highly pertinent to DFD!

Putatively “open” advocates and organizations sending around .docx files and such, above mini-rant applies especially to you.

April (a French free software organization) has some nice posters explaining open formats.

U.S. Register of Copyright Maria Pallante pushes for copyright reform in the U.S

2013-03-22T08:11:02Z

This post by Creative Commons’ Timothy Vollmer was originally posted on the 20th of march on the Creative Commons blog (‘Pallante’s Push for U.S. Copyright Reform‘) and is reposted here with permission from the author.

Today, U.S. Register of Copyright Maria Pallante stood before Congress to say: we need a new copyright law. Pallante’s prepared remarks (127 KB PDF) to the U.S. House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet called for “bold adjustments” to U.S. copyright law.

This is a most welcome aspiration. A strong push for copyright reform is currently occurring around the world through domestic reviews and in international fora like WIPO — coming both from those wanting increased recognition of user rights and those calling for tighter author controls. With the United States one of the leading nations advocating for stronger copyright protection through treaties such as ACTA and the TPP, the international community will be closely observing any movement in U.S. domestic law.

Seal of the United States Copyright Office / Public Domain

In addition to several meaningful reform ideas — including shortening The copyright term itself, alterations to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and making revisions to exceptions and limitations for libraries and archives — we’re happy to see that the Register is highlighting the crucial need to expand and protect the public domain. Some of the most compelling work undertaken by Creative Commons and others in the open community has to do with increasing the accessibility and value of the public domain. We hope a more positive public domain agenda can become ingrained into the foundations of U.S. copyright policy. The central question: Can the United States devise a better system for both authors and the public interest in an environment where technology and social norms are increasingly disconnected from an aging copyright law?

Pallante said, “[A]uthors do not have effective protections, good faith businesses do not have clear roadmaps, courts do not have sufficient direction, and consumers and other private citizens are increasingly frustrated.” However, there is no doubt that public copyright licenses are offering a substantial and effective counter to some of these pains — even noted by Ms. Pallante in her longer lecture at Columbia University titled The Next Great Copyright Act (337 KB PDF), “[S]ome [authors] embrace the philosophy and methodology of Creative Commons, where authors may provide advance permission to users or even divest themselves of rights.” CC licenses and public domain instruments are right now helping alleviate frustration with copyright for all — individuals, businesses, institutions, governments — who opt in to using public licenses and licensed works.

Indeed, public licenses are easy-to-use tools for communities that wish to share their creativity on more flexible terms. And when millions of motivated creators share under public copyright licenses like CC, they create great and lasting things (hello Wikipedia). Public copyright licenses shine brightly in the light of Pallante’s telling reflection: “If one needs an army of lawyers to understand the precepts of the law, then it is time for a new law.”

At the same time, the existence of open copyright licenses shouldn’t be interpreted as a substitute for robust copyright reform. Quite the contrary. The decrease in transaction costs, increase in collaboration, and massive growth of the commons of legally reusable content spurred on by existence of public licenses should drastically reinforce the need for fundamental change, and not serve as a bandage for a broken copyright system. If anything, the increase in adoption of public licenses is a bellwether for legislative reform — a signal pointing toward a larger problem in need of a durable solution.

We and the rest of the international community are looking forward to seeing what Pallante and Congress have in mind when they continue the discussion after today. In her oral testimony, Ms. Pallante said, “Copyright is about the public interest.” We hope that the public interest has a seat at the table, with room both for open content licensing and positive legislative reform. The existence of CC licenses does not limit the need for reform. Open licenses help forward-thinking people and institutions to live and thrive in the digital age now, and illuminate the roadmap for beneficial reform to come. Let us begin.

Free Bassel, with apologies but no caveats

2013-03-15T01:39:23Z

Since March 15 a year ago free software developer and colleague Bassel Khartibil has been imprisoned in Syria. The #FREEBASSEL campaign says “We will not stop campaigning for him until we see him as a free global citizen once again.”

Sign a petition on freebassel.org and participate in events (eg, one in SF) and take other action especially on March 15, Free Bassel Day.

As an American, I am somewhat uncomfortable calling for the Syrian regime to do anything, without at a minimum apologizing for the terror the American regime has for decades unleashed on the region, and continues to do so. I apologize, vow to redouble my efforts to stop my jurisdiction’s murdering and torturing ways, to obtain justice for all who bring such to light, call on all to do the same … and demand freedom for Bassel Khartibil.

As a global citizen, I demand to see Bassel Khartibil as a free global citizen once again. FREEBASSEL!

COMMUNIA policy paper on proposed Directive on collective management of copyright

2013-03-06T15:17:01Z

Today the COMMUNIA International Association presents its sixth policy paper. The paper is a reaction to the European Commission’s proposal for a directive on collective management of copyright and related rights and multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online uses in the internal market.

The COMMUNIA Association welcomes the European Commission’s efforts to modernise collective management in Europe by providing rules for multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online uses, and more generally by increasing the standards for transparency and accountability of Collective Rights Management Organizations (CMOs) operating in Europe.

Copyright management plays a central role in determining legal certainty for the digitisation of the European cultural heritage and for enabling an accessible and reusable digital Public Domain. This proposed directive intervenes at a crucial moment in the evolution of the information society and in the history of the European copyright system, where innovation and public access to knowledge should be a priority of policy-making.

The policy paper draws attention to two issues where the proposal should be improved. The first one concerns the transparency of repertoire information. We consider the proposed measures not sufficient and suggest an amendment to require that CMOs must provide this information more widely. The second issue concerns the relation between collective management and open content licenses. In our opinion, the proposed directive fails to address the existing incompatibilities between the collective management of rights and open content licensing.

The full COMMUNIA Association reaction on the Directive proposal on Collective Management of Copyright can be downloaded here. For further information about the paper please contact the COMMUNIA Association at communia DOT association AT gmail DOT com.

Texte auf der Website des Bundesjustizministeriums unter Creative Commons Lizenz

2013-03-05T12:04:24Z

Falls nicht anders gekennzeichnet, stehen Texte auf der Webseite des Bundesjustizministeriums ab jetzt unter CC-BY-ND Lizenz, können also unter den Bedingungen Namensnennung und Keine Bearbeitung vervielfältigt, verbreitet und öffentlich zugänglich gemacht werden. Dies soll die Verwendung der Texte durch Nutzerinnen und Nutzer vereinfachen. Die Bundesministerin der Justiz Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger dazu:

Offizielle Texte sind keine behördliche Gnade, sondern geschuldeter Dienst an der Öffentlichkeit. Dieser moderne Zeitgeist muss auch in der Bundesverwaltung geatmet werden. Freie Lizenzmodelle erleichtern den Zugang zu Werken und deren Verbreitung. Die Informationen des Bundesjustizministeriums werden mit Steuergeldern erstellt und sollten daher für jeden zugänglich und verfügbar sein.

Wir freuen uns über Nachahmer in anderen Ministerien und Bundesbehörden, aber auch über eine mutigere Lizenzwahl, die Änderungen zulässt!

Wir wollen netzpolitik.org weiter ausbauen. Dafür brauchen wir finanzielle Unterstützung, auch um weiterhin einen Full-RSS-Feed anbieten zu können. Investiere in digitale Bürgerrechte.

Open Letter regarding the Commission’s stakeholder dialogue on text and data mining

2013-03-01T09:25:14Z

In January Communia was invited to participate in the European Commission’s ‘Licenses for Europe‘ stakeholder dialogue. This stakeholder dialogue is one part of the Commission’s agenda to ‘modernise copyright in the digital economy‘. Communia participated in Working Group 4 on Text and Data Mining for Scientific Research Purposes.

Unfortunately the first meeting of this working group which took place on the 4th of February in Brussels did not live up to the expectations raised by the Commission’s earlier announcement. It quickly became evident that the stakeholder dialogue is based on a flawed assumption (‘more licensing will bring copyright in line with the requirements of the digital economy’) and that the process was designed to prevent a serious discussion about how to unlock the potential of scientific text and data mining.

Given this the participating organisations representing academia, researcher community and civil society (including Communia), have decided to make these concerns public in the form of an open letter to the Commissioners Barnier, Geoghegan-Quinn, Kroes and Vassiliou (re-published at the end of this post). The letter which was published today raises a number of concerns that need to be addressed before the stakeholder dialogue on text and data mining can continue.

Chief among these concerns is the belief that in order to have an open discussion about the reform, possible solutions cannot be limited to licensing. From our perspective text and data mining cannot be solved by re-licensing texts to libraries, researchers or the public. What Europe needs is clarity that text and data mining works that are lawfully available does not require permission by rights holders. A stakeholder dialogue that simply declares this position off limits can hardly be called a dialogue at all. In the case of Public Domain content, there is a risk that a focus upon licensing will lead to unlawful re-licensing of content that is out of copyright.

In addition the whole process needs to become more transparent and needs to include all stakeholders (including academics and the Commissions own Research and Innovation Directorate General, which is currently being limited to attend as an observer).

The open letter has been published in the hope of getting the Commission to change the terms under which the stakeholder dialogue is being conducted. Should this not be the case, Communia and the other organisations that have signed the letter are very likely to step away from the dialogue. As the list of supporting signatories shows this is supported by a growing number of academics who are rightfully concerned about the prospects for conducting data driven research in Europe.

Dear Commissioners Barnier, Geoghegan-Quinn, Kroes and Vassiliou,

“Licences for Europe – A Stakeholder Dialogue” Working Group 4: Text and Data Mining

We write to express our serious and deep-felt concerns in regards to Working Group 4 on text and data mining (TDM). Despite the title, it appears the research and technology communities have been presented not with a stakeholder dialogue, but a process with an already predetermined outcome –namely that additional licensing is the only solution to the problems being faced by those wishing to undertake TDM of content to which they already have lawful access. Such an outcome places European researchers and technology companies at a serious disadvantage compared to those located in the United States and Asia.

The potential of TDM technology is enormous. If encouraged, we believe TDM will within a small number of years be an everyday tool used for the discovery of knowledge, and will create significant benefits for industry, citizens and governments.McKinsey Global Institute reported in 2011[1]that effective use of ‘big data’ in the US healthcare sector could be worth more than US$300 billion a year, two-thirds of which would be in the form of a reduction in national health care expenditure of about 8%. In Europe, the same report estimated that government expenditure could be reduced by €100 billion a year. TDM has already enabled new medical discoveries through linking existing drugs with new medical applications, and uncovering previously unsuspected linkages between proteins, genes, pathways and diseases[2]. A JISC study on TDM found it could reduce “human reading time”by 80%, and could increase efficiencies in managing both small and big data by 50%[3]. However at present, European researchers and technology companies are mining the web at legal and financial risk, unlike their competitors based in the US, Japan, Israel, Taiwan and South Korea who enjoy a legal limitation and exception for such activities.

Given the life-changing potential of this technology, it is very important that the EU institutions, member state governments, researchers, citizens, publishers and the technology sector are able to discuss freely how Europe can derive the best and most extensive results from TDM technologies. We believe that all parties must agree on a shared priority, with no other preconditions – namely howto create a research environment in Europe with as few barriers as possible, in order to maximise the ability of European research to improve wealth creation and quality of life. Regrettably, the meeting on TDM on 4th February 2013 had not been designed with such a priority in mind. Instead it was made clear that additional relicensing was the only solution under consideration,with all other options deemed to be out of scope.We are of the opinion that this will only raise barriers to the adoption of this technology and make computer-based research in many instances impossible.

We believe that without assurance from the Commission that the following points will be reflected in the proceedings of Working Group 4, there is a strong likelihood that representatives of the European research and technology sectors will not be able to participate in any future meetings:

All evidence, opinions and solutions to facilitate the widest adoption of TDM are given equal weighting, and no solution is ruled to be out of scope from the outset;
All the proceedings and discussions are documented and are made publicly available;
DG Research and Innovation becomes an equal partner in Working Group 4, alongside DGs Connect, Education and Culture, and MARKT – reflecting the importance of the needs of research and the strong overlap with Horizon 2020.

The annex to this letter sets out five important areas (international competitiveness, the value of research to the EU economy, conflict with Horizon 2020, the open web, and the extension of copyright law to cover data and facts) which were raised at the meeting but were effectively dismissed as out of scope. We believe these issues are central to any evidence-based policy formation in this area and must, as outlined above be discussed and documented.
We would be grateful for your response to the issues raised in this letter at the earliest opportunity and have asked susan.reilly@kb.nl(Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche) to act as a coordinator on behalf of the signatories outlined below.

Yours sincerely,

Participants:

Sara Kelly, Executive Director, The Coalition for a Digital Economy
Jonathan Gray, Director of Policy and Ideas, The Open Knowledge Foundation
John McNaught, National Centre for Text Mining, University of Manchester
Aleks Tarkowski, Communia
Klaus-Peter Böttger, President, European Bureau of Library Information and Documentation Associations (EBLIDA)
Paul Ayris, President, The Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER)
Brian Hole, CEO, Ubiquity Press Ltd.
David Hammerstein, Trans-Atlantic Consumer Dialogue

The arguments set out in this letter are also supported by the following individuals and organisations:

Prof Dr Kurt Deketelaere, Secretary General, League of European Research Universities (LERU)
Dr Karl Dittrich, Chair, Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU)
Nicola Dandrige, CEO, Universities UK (UUK)
Prof Kirsten Drotner, Chair, Scientific Committee for the Humanities, Science Europe
Prof Richard Frackowiak, Head Department of Clinical Neurosciences University of Lausanne / Chair, Medicine Sub-Committee of Science Europe
Prof Dr Thomas Risse, Chair of the Academic Committee on Social Sciences, Science Europe
Dirk Inzé, Chair of the Scientific Committee for Life, Environmental and Geo Sciences, Science Europe
Dr. Ir. Véronique Halloin, Secretary General, Fonds de la RechercheScientifique (FNRS)
Prof Emilio Lora-Tamayo, President, National Spanish Research Council (CSIC)
Professor Rick Rylance, Chair, Research Councils UK (RCUK)
Lisbeth Söderqvist, Associated Professor, Swedish Research Council
Dr Rolf Zettl, Managing Director, Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres
Dr Wim Liebrand, Director, SURF
Prof Martyn Harrow, CEO, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)
Prof József Pálinkás, President of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
AndrasKornai, Computer and Automation Research Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Professor Sally Wyatt, eHumanities Group, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences
Dr Wilhelm Krull, Secretary General, Volkswagen Foundation
Prof Dr Jos Engelen, President of The Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)
Dr Petr Škyřík, National Cluster of Information Education, Czech Republic (NAKLIV)
Sir John Sulston, Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation (iSEI)
Dr Simon Chaplin, Wellcome Trust
Dr Tim Hubbard, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Dr Rolf Apweiler, Associate Director, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI)
Alicia López Medina ,Confederation of Open Access Repositories
Alma Swan, Director of Advocacy Programmes, SPARC Europe
Dr Victor Henning, Co-founder & CEO, Mendeley
Dr Harald Müller, Library Director, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law
Associate Professor Dr. Lucie Guibault, Institute for Information Law (IViR), University of Amsterdam
Prof Dr Mireille van Eechoud, Institute for Information Law (IViR), University of Amsterdam
Dr Stef van Gompel, Institute for Information Law (IViR), University of Amsterdam
Prof Charlotte Waelde, Chair in Intellectual Property Law, University of Exeter
Prof Lilian Edwards, E-Governance,University of Strathclyde
Prof Dr Rainer Kuhlen, Chair, European Network for Copyright in support of Education and Science
Teresa Hackett, Electronic Information for Libraries
David C Prosser PhD, Executive Director, Research Libraries UK
John Dolan, Chair of Council, Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals
Tim Padfield, Chair, Libraries and Archives Copyright Alliance
KimmoTuominen, President, Finnish Research Library Association
Kristiina Kontiainen, Finnish Library Association
Ap de Vries, CEO, Netherlands Public Library Association
Bas Savenije, President, FOBID Netherlands Library Forum
Andrew Green, CEO, LlyfrgellGenedlaetholCymru / National Library of Wales
Joy Palmer, Library and Archival Services, Mimas, University of Manchester
Ann Rossiter, Executive Director, Society of College, National and University Libraries
Michel G Wesseling, President, NVB: The Dutch Association of Information Professionals
Natalia Manola, University of Athens, Greece on behalf of OpenAIRE
Dr. Evi Sachini, Head, Strategic Planning & Development Department, National Documnetation Centre Greece (EKT)
Kevin Ashley, Director, Digital Curation Centre (DCC)

Frei lizenzierte Alternativen zu Happy Birthday

2013-02-26T09:15:47Z

gregcircanow.com/

Das Free Music Archive hatte im Dezember zum The New Birthday Song Contest aufgerufen. Am klassischen Happy Birthday besitzt Warner Music das Copyright wohl noch bis mindestens 2030, auch wenn die Verlängerung der Schutzfrist dort umstritten ist. In der EU sollte das Urheberrecht an Melodie und Text 2016 ablaufen, es sei denn es gibt eine weitere Fristverlängerung.

The Free Music Archives wollte solange nicht warten und wählte nun aus über 100 Einreichungen drei alternative Geburtstagslieder aus, die CC BY 3.0 lizenziert sind. Gewonnen hat ‘It’s Your Birthday!‘ von Monk Turner + Fascinoma. Alle anderen Einreichungen sind jedoch ebenfalls zum Downloaden verfügbar.

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Spacenight geht weiter – dank Creative Commons!

2013-02-19T10:43:33Z

Vor einem Monat machte die Nachricht die Runde, dass die beliebte Spacenight auf BR-Alpha aufgrund neuer GEMA-Gebührenstrukturen nicht mehr weiter ausgestrahlt werden soll. Viele Fans wandten sich an den Bayrischen Rundfunk und verwiesen dabei auch auf die Möglichkeiten, GEMA-lizenzierte Musik durch Creative Commons lizenzierte Musik zu ersetzen. Gerade im Bereich Chill-Out, Ambient, Trip-Hop gibt es zahlreiche gute und offen lizenzierte Musik, die sich qualitativ nicht von GEMA-lizenzierter Musik unterscheidet und denselben Zweck erfüllen kann: Spacige Bilder durch spacige Musik zu untermalen.

Mehr dazu weiß der Isarmatrose Tobias Schwarz zu berichten: Endlich frei – Der BR setzt bei der Space Night auf CC-Musik.

In einem ersten Schritt werden jetzt einzelne ältere Folgen mit CC-Musik neu vertont. Ab Herbst könnten dann bereits neue Folgen von Anfang an mit CC-Musik produziert. Dafür bemüht der BR sich auch um Bilder aus dem Weltraum in HD-Qualität. In weiteren Schritten soll besonders auch die große Fan- und Aktivist_innengemeinde von der Space Night und CC-Musik kreativ in den Produktionsprozess eingebunden werden. Einzelheiten sind aber erst noch in der Planung. Besonders überzeugt hat den BR das Engagement der Fans für ″ihre″ Sendung und das mit CC-Musik ein konstruktiver Dialog zur Rettung der Space Night beschritten wurde. Die Facebook-Gruppe ″Rettet die Space Night mit CC-Musik″ und besonders das von Marco Trovatello aufgesetzte Wiki, in dem Musiker_innen und Verlage ihre CC-Musik mit einer Nutzungserlaubnis für den BR eingetragen haben, stellten die notwendige Grundlage für den Neuanfang der Space Night mit freier Musik dar.

Der Radiojournalist und Netlabel-Experte Christian Grasse schreibt in seniem Blog Metawelle: SPACENIGHT GOES CC.

Durch dieses Engagement stehen wir nun sogar im Kontakt mit dem Produzententeam der Spacenight und ich will dem BR an dieser Stelle noch ein paar musikalische Linktipps in Form von Netlabelempfehlungen mit auf den Weg geben, damit die nächtliche Sendestrecke auch in Zukunft aus vollen Archiven schöpfen kann.

Endlich hat die Ablehnung von Creative Commons lizenzierter Musik durch die GEMA auch mal was Gutes!

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Creative Commons NonCommercial: Alles bleibt beim Alten

2013-02-15T09:34:17Z

Das Logo von Creative Commons’ NC-Lizenzmodul

Als Creative Commons vor etwas mehr als einem Jahr die Diskussion zu Version 4.0 ihrer Lizenzen eröffnete, sprach der damalige stellvertrende Geschäftsführer Mike Linksvayer von “a once-in-a-deacade-or-more opportunity”. Vor allem das Lizenzmodul, das kommerzielle Nutzung untersagt (NonCommercial, NC) stand im Fokus von Reformbestrebungen. Denn einerseits basieren viele Ideen für Creative-Commons-basierte Geschäftsmodelle wie z.B. Jamendo auf dem NC-Modul, andererseits führt das Modul zu Inkompatibilitäten – so können NC-lizenzierte Inhalte beispielsweise nicht in die Wikipedia integriert werden.

Die Vorschläge reichten von einer kompletten Abschaffung des Lizenzmoduls über ein Ausgliedern bis hin zu einer Umbenennung in “Commercial Rights Reserved” um die Bedeutung des Lizenzmoduls klarer zu kommunizieren. Vor allem der letzte Vorschlag wurde ernsthaft diskutiert bis Kat Walsh heute für Creative Commons die Entscheidung verkündete: “No Change”.

In ihrer Erklärung listet Walsh drei Gründe die für und vier Gründe die gegen eine Änderung gesprochen hätten auf. Für eine Änderung zu “Commercial Rights Reserved” sprächen demnach:

Vermeiden, dass Leute sich für das NC-Lizenzmodul entscheiden, weil sie es auf Grund des Namens falsch verstehen. Das ist sicher der wichtigste Punkt. Vor allem in Bereichen wie Bildung (z.B. bei Open Educational Resources, OER) verwenden viele diese Lizenz, weil sie glauben, sie sei speziell auf die Bedürfnisse nicht-profit-orientierter Bereiche zugeschnitten. Das Gegenteil ist aber der Fall: das NC-Modul macht eigentlich nur im kommerziellen Bereich Sinn. Genau dort kann die Bezeichnung aber wiederum eher abschrecken.

Es drückt besser aus, wie die Lizenz funktioniert.

Der neue Name würde die Möglichkeit von Creative-Commons-basierten Geschäftsmodellen deutlicher machen.

Gegen die Änderung führte Walsh Folgendes ins Treffen:

Jeder Namenswechsel der mit großem Aufwand verbunden ist, ist schwierig.

Der Namenswechsel würde möglicherweise Leute dazu bewegen, die Lizenz zu nutzen, die davor freiere Lizenzen verwendet haben.

Der Name ist schwerer zu verstehen, weil die Bezeichnung “juristischer” ist.

Die Änderung würde die Wünsche der NC-Kritiker nicht befriedigen.

Eine weitere Erläuterung, warum den Gegenargumenten der Vorzug gegeben wurde, findet sich in dem Statement nicht. Das entspricht allerdings ganz allgemein der Vorgehensweise von Creative Commons rund um die Version 4.0 ihres Lizenzbaukastens: es darf diskutiert und vorgeschlagen werden, am Ende gibt es aber wenig erläuterte Entscheidungen. Strukturierte Formen der Community-Partizipation wie zum Beispiel die unverbindlichen “Meinungsbilder” in der Wikipedia gibt es nicht.

Was die konkrete Entscheidung zur Beibehaltung der Bezeichnung “NonCommercial” betrifft, so halte ich diese für falsch. Dass mit einer Umbenennung kurzfristig Aufwände verbunden sind, ist klar. Aber längerfristig wiegen die Pro-Argumente einfach schwerer. Selbst wenn einige Leute von freieren auf eine umbenannte NC-Lizenz umsteigen sollten, der umgekehrte Effekt – Leute die in Hinkunft auf das NC-Modul verzichten – dürfte mit Sicherheit größer sein. Das lässt sich schon alleine aus der derzeitigen Beliebtheit des NC-Moduls unter Lizenzanwendern schließen. Dass “Commercial Rights Reserved” schwerer zu verstehen ist, unterstützt diese These noch: derzeit glauben viele das NC-Modul zu verstehen und setzen es deshalb ohne Not ein. Und dass eine Änderung die radikaleren NC-Kritiker nicht besänftigen würde, tut ihrer Sinnhaftigkeit erst Recht keinen Abbruch. Alles in allem: eine verpasste Gelegenheit.

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Remix “TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard”

2013-02-14T20:12:07Z

Vergangenen Freitag feierte “TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay Away From Keyboard” des dänischen Regisseur Simon Klose Premiere im Netz und auf der Berlinale. Jetzt ist eine zweite Remix-fähige Version erschienen.

Auf der Seite zum Film gibt es eine Erklärung, warum das notwendig wurde. Im “Original”-Film sind vier Minuten Material vom schwedischen Fernsehen SVT dabei. Diese akzeptierten für die Nutzung keine Creative Commons Lizenz. Nun gibt es die Remix-Version ohne diese vier Minuten Fernsehmaterial, ohne Musik, ohne Grafiken, dafür lizenziert unter der Creative Commons Nicht-Kommerziell-Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen (CC-BY-NC-SA)-Lizenz. Die Musik gibt es als Extra-Track und der Font wird dazu angeboten, damit man Grafiken in anderen Sprachen machen kann.

Simon Klose beschreibt in einem Blog-Post, warum er eine Creative Commons Lizenz gewählt hat. Sein Plädoyer: “please download, remix and share the film.”

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Open Knowledge Foundation

2013-02-13T20:01:52Z

I used to privately poke fun at the Open Knowledge Foundation for what seemed like a never-ending stream of half-baked projects (and domains, websites, lists, etc). I was wrong.

(I have also criticized OKF’s creation of a database-specific copyleft license, but recognize its existence is mostly Creative Commons’ fault, just as I criticize some of Creative Commons’ licenses but recognize that their existence is mostly due to a lack of vision on the part of free software activists.)

Some of those projects have become truly impressive (eg the Public Domain Review and CKAN, the latter being a “data portal” deployed by numerous governments in direct competition with proprietary “solutions”; hopefully my local government will eventually adopt the instance OpenOakland has set up). Some projects once deemed important seem relatively stagnant, but were way ahead of their time, if only because the non-software free/open universe painfully lags software (eg, KnowledgeForge). I haven’t kept track of most OKF projects, but whichever ones haven’t succeeded wildly don’t seem to have caused overall problems.

Also, in the past couple years, OKF has sprouted local groups around the world.

Why has the OKF succeeded, despite what seemed to me for a time chaotic behavior?

It knows what it is doing. Not necessarily in terms of having a solid plan for every project it starts, but in the more fundamental sense of knowing what it is trying to accomplish, grounded by its own definition of what open knowledge is (unsurprisingly it is derived from the Open Source Definition). I’ve been on the advisory council for that definition for most of its existence, and this year I’m its chair. I wrote a post for the OKF blog today reiterating the foundational nature of the definition and its importance to the success of OKF and the many “open” movements in various fields.

It has been a lean organization, structured to be able to easily expand and contract in terms of paid workers, allowing it to pursue on-mission projects rather than be dominated by permanent institutional fundraising.

It seems to have mostly brought already committed open activists/doers into the organization and its projects.

The network (eg local groups) seems to have grown fairly organically, rather than from a top-down vision to create an umbrella that all would ~~attach themselves to~~view with great skepticism.

OKF is far from perfect (in particular I think it is too detached from free/open source software, to the detriment of open data and reducing my confidence it will continue to say on a fully Open course — through action and recruitment — one of their more ironic practices at this moment is the Google map at the top of their local groups page [Update: already fixed, see comments]). But it is an excellent organization, at this point probably the single best connection to all things Open, irrespective of field or geography.

Check them out online, join or start a local group, and if you’re interested in the minutiae of of whether particular licenses for intended-to-be-open culture/data/education/government/research works are actually open, help me out with OKF’s OpenDefinition.org project.

CC PLAY – Das 20. Jahrhundert zum Puzzeln

2013-02-06T12:53:26Z

Vor vier Jahren hat das Bundesarchiv rund 100.000 Bilder unter einer freien Creative Commons Lizenz (CC-BY-SA) gestellt und mit der Wikipedia-Community geteilt. Marcus Bösch hat aus den Bildern ein Puzzle-Spiel gebaut: CC Play ist ein schönes interaktives MashUp geworden. Damit kann man die Archivschätze neuester deutscher Geschichte spielerisch erkunden und Hintergrundinformationen aus der Wikipedia abrufen.

“Spielerisch erfahrbar werden so weite Teile der deutschen Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Historische und nicht ganz so historische Momente: Vom Hitlerputsch 1923 bis zur Birkensafternte in Colditz 1985. Egal ob Bangemann, Wehner oder Wischnewski – alle mit dabei. Nur eben ein bisschen durcheinander.”

Das Spiel war Preisträger des WissensWert-Wettbewerbs und wurde von Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. finanziell unterstützt. Im Wikimedia-Blog findet man noch mehr Infos: CC PLAY – Das 20. Jahrhundert zum Puzzeln.

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Communia condemns the privatization of the Public Domain by the Bibliothèque nationale de France

2013-01-21T15:02:28Z

Last week the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) concluded two new agreements with private companies to digitze over 70.000 old books, 200.000 sound recordings and other documents belonging (either partially or as a whole) to the public domain. While these public private partnerships enable the digitization of these works they also contain 10-year exclusive agreements allowing the private companies carrying out the digitization to commercialize the digitized documents. During this period only a limited number of these works may be offered online by the BnF.

Photo by Scarlet Green (CC-BY)

Together with La Quadrature du Net, Framasoft, SavoirsCom1 and the Open Knowledge Foundation France COMMUNIA has issued a statement (in french) to express our profound disagreement with the terms of these partnerships that restrict digital access to an important part of Europe’s cultural heritage. The agreements that the BnF has entered into, effectively take the works being digitized out of the public domain for the next 10 years.

The value of the public domain lies in the free dissemination of knowledge and the ability for everyone to access and create new works based on previous works. Yet, instead of taking advantage of the opportunities offered by digitization, the exclusivity of these agreements will force public bodies, such as research institutions or university libraries, to purchase digital content that belongs to the common cultural heritage.

As such, these partnerships constitute a commodification of the public domain by contractual means. COMMUNIA has been critical of such arrangements from the start (see our Public Domain Manifesto) and our Policy Reccomendations 4 & 5. More interestingly these agreements are also in direct contradiction with the Public Domain Charter published by the Europeana Foundation in 2011. In this context it is interesting to note that the director of Bibliothèque nationale de France currently serves as the chairman of the Europeana Foundation’s Executive Board.

Sender Freies Neukölln diskutiert “freie Kultur von unten”

2013-01-20T10:35:01Z

Heute abend ab 20:15 veranstalten die Filmemacher (und Kneipiers) vom Sender Freies Neukölln eine Diskussion darüber, warum und wie man als Kreative/r alternative Regelsysteme praktisch einsetzen kann, Titel: “Creative Commons – freie Kultur von unten statt Urheberrecht von oben“. Wegen der Ausrichtung des SFN auf Film wird es sicherlich insbesondere um dieses Medium gehen, der übergeordnete Blick auf die politischen und wirtschaftlichen Verhältnisse in der Kultur allgemein wird aber auch nicht zu kurz kommen. Aus der Ankündigung (auch bei fb):

Was weiß man denn schon Genaues über CC-Lizenzen? Dass man Musik, Filme, Texte und anderes mehr jetzt nicht mehr klauen muss, sondern geschenkt bekommt …?! Dass die Kunstschaffenden irgendwie erlauben, dass man ihr Werk munter weiterreicht und -benutzt, und dafür nicht mal eine Mark kriegen …?! Eine neue, blöde Sprungbrettidee für alle, die noch bei keinem Konzern unterschrieben haben …?! Das Ende des Urheberrechts …?! Alles Quatsch.

Der Filmemacher Matthias Merkle, Regisseur und Produzent von mehreren abendfüllenden cc-Spielfilmen und zahllosen cc-Kurzfilmen (www.sender-fn.de), beschreibt, wie sich Kunst- und Kultur in Produktion und Konsum auch ganz anders begreifen lassen: als Ökosystem frei lizensierter Werke, deren Schöpfer Einflüsse (von anderen Schöpfern) neu komponieren, die an einem großen Gemeingut Kultur arbeiten, das als kooperatives Netz von Ideen, Gedanken, Bildern, Memen schließlich allen gehört, und in dem Ansprüche und Rechte gewahrt und gewürdigt, aber nicht verkauft werden.

Alle, die schon einmal Menschen mit richtig viel Erfahrung im Umgang mit CC-Lizenzen treffen wollten und in Berlin sind, sollten heute vielleicht den Raucherraum des Freien Neukölln, Pannierstr. 54 dem Tatort vorziehen. Morgen wird übrigens auch Tim Baumanns kollaborativer Open-Source-Film “Valkaama” in Berlin gezeigt.

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The Prosecution of Aaron: A Response to Orin Kerr

2013-01-19T00:33:16Z

Aaron Swartz committed suicide last week. He was 26, a genius and my friend. Not a really good friend, but someone I had worked with off and on for 11 years, liked a lot, had laughed with frequently, occasionally shaken my head over and deeply admired. When I first met him he looked like this.

He had co-written a basic RSS spec the year before, when he was 14. He was to go on to play a fundamental role in Creative Commons. When you now search for stuff online, using its legal status as a search prerequisite, not just a text query (Physics textbook, available to use or share, even commercially) you are doing something that Aaron’s volunteer work helped to enable. People talk of him now as some kind of Data Liberation activist, which he certainly was, but principally he was and is one of the great architects of the commons, a builder, as Dave Weinberger stresses, not just a hacker — though hacker, of course, is actually a name that programmers wear with pride. The guy who invented the World Wide Web had this to say about him. “Aaron dead. World wanderers, we have lost a wise elder. Hackers for right, we are one down. Parents all, we have lost a child. Let us weep.”

Read that sentence again. “The guy who invented the World Wide Web had this to say about him.”   I want to stress that Aaron attracted praise like this not for being cute (though he was) or funny (though he was hilarious) or idealistic (he was certainly that.) He attracted praise like this because he built things (for free) that make us all more free, and built them so well that the guy who invented the World Wide Web (and legions of others) called him a genius. This is not Paris Hilton, in other words, famous for being famous. Nor is it some loony who is famous for being outrageously transgressive. (Though Aaron was certainly willing to be transgressive.) This is someone who is renowned for acts of altruistic and brilliant creation. More in his short life, than most of us will manage in our longer ones. He helped build the commons that enables you to read this. I say these points not only in sad farewell to Aaron, but because I think they are relevant to the discussion that follows.

Aaron committed suicide partly, his family said in a statement, because of a prosecution that many — most notably Larry Lessig – have described as overzealous, unbalanced and unfair, and actions by MIT which the family described as insensitive and disproportionate. (MIT has promised to review its actions to see if they were in error.) Enter Orin Kerr. Orin is also someone I know and like. And he is a very, very good legal scholar — perhaps the foremost legal scholar in the country studying the strange things that happen when the criminal law strays into cyberspace. You can sample some of his excellent work here. Orin is also a former prosecutor himself.   The principal characteristic of his work is that it is really thoughtful and balanced. I disagree with Orin about some things, but I almost always learn from his work. In addition, though Orin’s views tend to be slightly — actually not much — more pro-prosecution than my own, he has been a vigorous and thoughtful critic of governmental overreach in computer crime and has proposed a variety of reforms that I think would make the law fairer and more just.

I say all these things for a reason. First, my views will inevitably be affected by the fact I knew and liked Aaron and that I still occasionally find myself in tears at the waste, the loss. Discount accordingly. Second, Orin has forgotten more about computer crime than I have ever known. If there are disagreements about the law, you should bear that in mind.

For all these reasons, when Orin wrote two posts about the prosecution of Aaron Swartz on the Volokh Conspiracy, I turned to them with interest. The posts are long, detailed and it is impossible to do them justice here. But if I were to sum up their arguments, they would go something like this. (These are my words, not his. Please read the originals to judge the accuracy of my characterization.)

People are really upset about Aaron Swartz’s death. Because he was famous and had a lot of powerful friends, his prosecution is getting a lot of attention. But actually, when you look at his prosecution you find that it was a.) a reasonable application of the law to the facts and b.) not an abuse of prosecutorial authority as it is normally used. Yes, Aaron may have been over-charged, (charged with more crimes and higher penalties than the prosecutors actually thought he deserved.) But prosecutors routinely over-charge as the opening step in a plea bargaining negotiation. To the extent that Aaron couldn’t live even with the possibility of the penalties that he might have received at the end of the day, then maybe he should not have been committing acts of civil disobedience in the first place. And — most importantly — if we think he was treated poorly, we should realize we are condemning the system as a whole, not just the treatment of Aaron, and we should beware of special pleading for this famous person and friend of the famous; our concern should go equally to the unknown, poor and poorly represented person.

I agree — intensely — with the last clause of that summary. Indeed, one of the puzzling things about Orin’s postings is that he expresses both explicit and implicit criticism of the people who are protesting Aaron’s treatment for being overly personalistic, focused on his particular qualities, his famous friends etc — there are repeated mentions of his friendship with Larry Lessig, for example. The implication, it seems clear, is that we should not focus on this one case, but on broader problems in our legal system. This seems to be a straw man. I see no one saying “let’s only be angry about Aaron Swartz.” Indeed, almost all of the commentaries on Aaron’s death have sought to find in it hints about what we should do better in the future; do better in data and intellectual property policies, do better in the way universities handle matters like this, do better in the way we understand “computer crimes,” apply the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and think about prosecutorial discretion. It is true, of course, that Aaron’s friends, and there are a lot of them, have also written about Aaron. But one can hardly accuse them of agitating only for their friend.

Take Larry Lessig for example. One can agree or disagree with him. But one could hardly accuse him of failing to try to change the world in general, not just for his friends. There may be someone other than Larry who has spent more time trying to influence academic and personal opinion about the cyber-problems and democratic failures that affect complete strangers. Off hand, I can’t think who that is. Presumably he is not estopped by that decades-long career of law reform from also being upset when one of his friends dies, from seeing in that death a larger pattern of injustice, or from asking that both in this specific case and in general, we should do things differently. It is also true that some of the commentators are Johnnies-come-lately to a field of computer crime in which Orin has labored for years. That can be irritating. Still, just because it took one person’s death to bring them, is no reason not to welcome their arrival, or help build upon their indignation with what they find.

I think Orin’s main point (“We should care about larger issues, not just Aaron Swartz”) is absolutely right. It is a huge problem that the well-connected and the rich have more resources and thus that the system of justice or of government gives them different results. (Aaron, in fact, had devoted much of his tragically short life to the attempt to solve this very problem. Actually, I’d have to say he had pursued it even more assiduously than Orin, not that that matters now.) Fame is also important. The people on whom the press shine a light tug at our heartstrings and their predicaments are often dealt with in isolation from the large problems around them. That is a bad thing. I don’t see anyone taking the opposing view.

I think that much of the rest of Orin’s argument is — very uncharacteristically — rather one-sided. I think that in his descriptions of the facts, the issues surrounding prosecutorial discretion, and even sometimes of the law he tends to stress evidence against Aaron and to minimize or ignore facts that might put him in a more favorable light. Finally, I think Orin’s account lacks sympathy. What I mean by sympathy is something very particular — something that the humanist discipline of the law neglects at its peril. One kind of sympathy is bad — and that is the kind Orin is writing against. We shouldn’t base prosecutorial decisions on the fact that Aaron knew smart and famous people who can wax eloquent about his virtues, or on the fact that he looked like this. That’s the bad kind of sympathy, and Orin rightly warns us against it. But prosecution is a human act, a humanist art. Most of the prosecutors I know are humbled by the awesome responsibility of wielding the power of the state. They are aware that they wield it for people and against people, with all their complexities, their weaknesses, but also their strengths, their nobility, the things they do for good, their connections to others. They have discretion and they want to wield that discretion with sympathy and judgment — for both victims and alleged perpetrators. And they want to learn from their mistakes — and there will be mistakes.

I think, in the laudable attempt to avoid the bad kind of sympathy, Orin sometimes loses the good kind. There is not much, almost nothing in fact, in Orin’s lengthy posts about the good things Aaron did. His “fame” and “connections” are touted repeatedly, but they are treated as exogenous — they come from nowhere.   We learn that Larry Lessig took Aaron to the Eldred v. Ashcroft oral argument when he was 15. There is no mention of why Larry did that. If we are to talk about prosecutorial discretion we must talk about both the positive and the negative sides of the defendant. Orin lingers on the negative acts and has nothing to say about the positive, except to dismiss them as “fame” or “connections.” But where did this little kid from Illinois get that fame? Larry doesn’t take just any 15 year old to the Supreme Court (and how many would want to go, even if he did?) Tim Berners-Lee doesn’t rhapsodize about just any 26 year old. They did it because Aaron had done stuff, for free, to help people share, communicate, innovate and build. Clearly, no amount of positive social contribution can or should immunize one from criminal punishment. But prosecutors are supposed to look at both sides of the ledger in making judgments — this is an holistic enterprise. Tim Wu in describing Aaron’s prosecution said this. “We can rightly judge a society by how it treats its eccentrics and deviant geniuses—and by that measure, we have utterly failed.” Orin might say that is focusing on Aaron’s “fame.” I think he is missing the point.

Strangely, Orin delves deep into Aaron’s life and finds details to add on the negative side of the ledger but not the positive. He takes Aaron’s aspirational writings, for example, to indicate that Aaron’s idealism might make him particularly prone to civil disobedience, so Orin suggests that we must find a punishment sufficiently harsh to deter such behavior, presumably a stronger punishment precisely because of the idealism than that applied to the average Holmesian bad man. (One shudders to think of what would happen had this theory of prosecution been applied to Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks. What would it have taken to stop them personally from breaking the law?) But you will search his posts in vain for any serious discussion of the positive side of Aaron’s life — whether in his thousands of hours of volunteer work to help build an open web, or in his role in helping to found Demand Progress, a non profit organization that “works to win progressive policy changes for ordinary people through organizing, and grassroots lobbying. In particular, we tend to focus on issues of civil liberties, civil rights, and government reform.” Reading Orin’s post, one wouldn’t know that the people who were upset by his death were upset not just because he was “famous” but precisely because Aaron had been working to make sure there was justice not only for the famous but for everyone. I would respectfully suggest that failing to show both sides of the picture is neither balanced nor a fair representation of how a prosecutor should make a decision on a proposed sentence.

If I went through Orin’s post line by line, this article would be as long as a book. But here are some key examples.

The Computer Fraud And Abuse Act: To summarize brutally, one key argument about the interpretation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is whether or not violation of mere terms of service can be enough to trigger the penalties of the Act. Many of us thinks this interpretation goes too far and at least one Appeals Court has agreed. One of the single most articulate protesters against this interpretation has been… Orin Kerr, a point he makes in his postings. You might expect that Orin would see, in at least part of Aaron’s prosecution, the habit of prosecutors of overreaching under this interpretation of a law and treating “doing something the website’s owners don’t like” as a Federal crime. (In other words, you’d expect Orin to be joining the criticisms of those who see overreach – at least in part.)    Instead, Orin focuses on the fact that Aaron could also be charged with violating “code-based” restrictions, circumventing software encoded restrictions on behavior through a hack. It is true that the prosecutors did charge Aaron with circumventing code-based restrictions, though as I read it they also relied on the theory that he was violating the terms of service.

I don’t know exactly what Aaron did. I presume Orin is in the same boat. Here is what the expert witness who was slated to testify on his side at his trial said Aaron did.

“MIT operates an extraordinarily open network. Very few campus networks offer you a routable public IP address via unauthenticated DHCP and then lack even basic controls to prevent abuse. Very few captured portals on wired networks allow registration by any visitor, nor can they be easily bypassed by just assigning yourself an IP address. In fact, in my 12 years of professional security work I have never seen a network this open.

In the spirit of the MIT ethos, the Institute runs this open, unmonitored and unrestricted network on purpose. Their head of network security admitted as much in an interview Aaron’s attorneys and I conducted in December. MIT is aware of the controls they could put in place to prevent what they consider abuse, such as downloading too many PDFs from one website or utilizing too much bandwidth, but they choose not to.

MIT also chooses not to prompt users of their wireless network with terms of use or a definition of abusive practices.

At the time of Aaron’s actions, the JSTOR website allowed an unlimited number of downloads by anybody on MIT’s 18.x Class-A network. The JSTOR application lacked even the most basic controls to prevent what they might consider abusive behavior, such as CAPTCHAs triggered on multiple downloads, requiring accounts for bulk downloads, or even the ability to pop a box and warn a repeat downloader.

Aaron did not “hack” the JSTOR website for all reasonable definitions of “hack”. Aaron wrote a handful of basic python scripts that first discovered the URLs of journal articles and then used curl to request them. Aaron did not use parameter tampering, break a CAPTCHA, or do anything more complicated than call a basic command line tool that downloads a file in the same manner as right-clicking and choosing “Save As” from your favorite browser.

Aaron did nothing to cover his tracks or hide his activity, as evidenced by his very verbose .bash_history, his uncleared browser history and lack of any encryption of the laptop he used to download these files. Changing one’s MAC address (which the government inaccurately identified as equivalent to a car’s VIN number) or putting a mailinator email address into a captured portal are not crimes. If they were, you could arrest half of the people who have ever used airport wifi.

The government provided no evidence that these downloads caused a negative effect on JSTOR or MIT, except due to silly overreactions such as turning off all of MIT’s JSTOR access due to downloads from a pretty easily identified user agent.

I cannot speak as to the criminal implications of accessing an unlocked closet on an open campus, one which was also used to store personal effects by a homeless man. I would note that trespassing charges were dropped against Aaron and were not part of the Federal case.”

Note: I am not saying that this portrayal of the facts is correct. This is one side in a criminal trial. The prosecution is the other.   I am saying that Orin’s account would have been improved had he not assumed some of the points that this account specifically contests, particularly whether Aaron’s work could have successfully been prosecuted under the idea of violating code-based limitations. To put it differently, I think Orin’s postings would have been more accurate had he said. “The facts in this case are hotly disputed. The defense argues that a prosecution for violating code-based restrictions is unreasonable and unfounded and that the prosecutor would have to rely against a theory about terms of use that I have specifically condemned in the past (and which the defense also argues is factually implausible.) The prosecution offers a very different account in which Aaron violated both terms of use and code based restrictions.” I should note that this point is relevant not only to the application of the law, but to the exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Losing your wedding ring at the beach could be prosecuted as littering, but the degree to which the facts – while technically fitting the legal definitions – do not actually seem to fit the spirit, is something most prosecutors I know would want to consider. My point is not that the result of that inquiry at trial would inevitably favor Aaron – I don’t know, and I don’t think Orin does either – it is that Orin’s account of the facts sounds more conclusory than I think the evidence warrants.

I would however heartily endorse one aspect of Orin’s discussion of the law, one that — curiously — doesn’t lead him to think that the prosecutor needed to act more judiciously.

On the fourth issue, yes, the Swartz case does point to a serious problem with the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. But that problem is not the definition of “unauthorized access,” as some people seem to believe. (That definition is a problem, but with the Nosal case from the Ninth Circuit and likely Supreme Court review in the next year or so, I think the Courts are likely to take care of it.) Rather, the problem raised by the Swartz case is one I’ve been fighting for years: Felony liability under the statute is triggered much too easily. The law needs to draw a distinction between low-level crimes and more serious crimes, and current law does so poorly.

The Theory of Punishment: Orin says this “On the second question, I think the proper level of punishment in this case would be based primarily on the principle of what lawyers call “special deterrence.” In plain English, here’s the key question: What punishment was the minimum necessary to deter Swartz from continuing to try to use unlawful means to achieve his reform goals? I don’t think I know the answer to that question, but that’s the question I would answer to determine the proper level of punishment.” He argues that Aaron’s announced ideals would lead him to violate the law again and that therefore the prosecutor would be right to ask for a sentence sufficient to stop that hypothetical continued criminal conduct.

Now maybe this is right. But I think it is a lot more revolutionary than Orin gives it credit for and a lot more contentious than his post suggests. I return to the Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks examples. (Or if you prefer, the anti-abortion activist who trespasses on Planned Parenthood in order to spray paint his slogan.) Legislatures had enacted segregation laws. If Dr. King trespasses and violates state rules mandating segregation, and announces that he considers these laws wrong and that he will encourage others to do the same in the future, do we really believe that the prosecutor should ramp up the penalty until it would amount to special deterrence? What would that take? Death? Life imprisonment? Is that then “not disproportionate”? I would have thought that one of the reasons we treat the protester who acts out of conviction (even conviction we disagree with) more leniently, is that we recognize that this is not mere profit seeking, not mere personal interest, and that in the past, such protesters have eventually changed our minds about the rightness of the actions the law prohibits. There are limits to leniency, surely. But there seem few limits on Orin’s special deterrence. Again, I think his post is more conclusory than is warranted, and again those conclusions run against Aaron.

I should note that Aaron’s manifesto, which Orin quotes, argues in part that public domain articles should be freed from behind the paywalls that protect them. After his action – though perhaps not because of it, you be the judge — JSTOR decided, to their great credit, to free their public domain articles. Is that relevant to the sentencing decision? Orin does not mention it.

PACER: As part of the case against Aaron, Orin uses his prior behavior with the PACER system to argue for a propensity for continued criminal behavior – at least that is how I read the section. “As far as I can tell, this “manifesto” was not just a casual remark or random thought. Rather, it seems to have been a set of principles Swartz believed in quite passionately. And his conduct appears to reflect that commitment. In the same year Swartz published the manifesto, he participated in the effort to download the entire contents of PACER. That led to an FBI investigation but no charges. And then the MIT/JSTOR incident followed soon after, in 2010, which led to the criminal charges in this case. If I’m right about what Swartz was trying to do, then I think some kind of criminal prosecution is appropriate in this case.”

PACER is a system that charges a fee for court documents. Carl Malamud of Public Resource argued – completely correctly in my view – that the courts should not be charging a fee – at least in the case of Federally-produced documents that are in the public domain under section 105 of the Copyright Act. During a government authorized free trial of the PACER system, Aaron downloaded approximately 20% of the court documents and donated them to Malamud’s organization. Did the people who set up the free trial expect someone to download 20% of the court documents? I do not think so. Did Aaron break the law by doing so?   Well, as Orin notes, the FBI investigated but did not prosecute. I do not think so. Again, we can argue about whether that is true – Aaron did install a PERL script on a computer — but Orin just seems to assume that he did. I would respectfully argue that one cannot responsibly do that. So can a prosecutor use what Aaron did with PACER as part of the decision to come up with a harsher sentence, because “this kind of behavior needs to be deterred in the future”? What if what he did with PACER was legal and socially beneficial? Then using that “evidence” to shore up Orin’s theory of punishment is really troubling. Aaron’s manifesto calls for civil disobedience, but it also calls for freeing public domain works – sharing those might be a violation of a term of service, and it might be a violation of a code based restriction. But it is not a copyright violation, and it could be an example of doing something that was legal, even if it irritated the powerful. A reader of Orin’s post would likely miss those complexities. Again, the tie does not go to the accused.   That’s unfortunate. And the combination of Orin’s questionable theory of punishment of those who profess civil disobedience, and his willingness to include protest behavior in the past that may well have been legal as evidence of future propensity of lawlessness is really disturbing. “Technically, last time you were demonstrating legally on public land. But that means that this time, if you actually trespass on private land, we can throw the book at you because we know you are a trouble maker. And as you are a trouble maker, we are going to have to throw that book pretty hard to deter you.”

I could go on and on with this, but I think the point has been made. Orin’s main point is that prosecutors routinely overcharge, this case is nothing special. I agree that they do, and I think it is a bad system. It works efficiently for the career criminal – even if it may look more like an assembly line than justice. But its smoothness conceals many flaws – the lack of match between behavior and charge, the psychological costs to victims when harms are plead down to offenses that were not really committed, the way that the operation of our criminal justice system goes on in private not in open court. But it also goes wrong when idealistic defendants are being prosecuted by ambitious prosecutors who at first threaten with enormous punishments and then with still more, in growing disbelief that the person is refusing to cop a plea. I mean it is just a game, right? Orin finds it puzzling that Aaron behaved as he did.

“To my mind, this is one of the puzzles about Swartz. On one hand, he was deeply committed to civil disobedience and to the moral imperative of breaking unjust laws. On the other hand, he seems to have had his soul crushed by the prospect that he would spend time in jail. This is an unusual combination. Usually the decision to engage in civil disobedience comes along with a willingness to take the punishment that the law imposes. But despite Swartz’s apparent interest in legal questions, he seems to have made his decision with a blind spot to the penalties that would actually follow. It’s a strange situation”

Contemplating Aaron’s suicide, I cannot find the words above to be a sympathetic account of his plight – sympathetic in the second sense I mentioned above. I don’t know if Orin has ever committed civil disobedience. From my own very limited experience, it is really scary, but you feel you have to do it anyway, often while you are really scared about consequences. I want to be clear. I would not have done what Aaron is alleged to have done. Those are not my methods. But I didn’t think nor do I think anyone would think beforehand – and here I most emphatically disagree with Orin – that the charges would have inevitably been brought at this level or accompanied by this level of threatened punishment.

Orin spends a fair amount of time talking about the motivations in Aaron’s life – at least those motivations that indicate a propensity to future crime. There is little about what might have made the prosecutor pursue this charge so hard. Other former prosecutors have told me of the intense political and business pressure they face to bring high profile suits against real and perceived violations of intellectual property. Former Federal Judge Nancy Gertner said

“If the U.S. attorney is going to take credit for every successful prosecution, not matter what the issues were, the U.S. attorney then winds up as ‘Bostonian of the Year’ for these prosecutions, then you know high-profile prosecutions are valued in the office,” Gertner said. “Mr. Swartz was a high-profile prosecution. Whether they are right is another question.” Gertner says this case and the suicide of a troubled young man merits attention to the rest of Ortiz’s record. “What happens with the press, you don’t talk about the cases which really reflect this kind of poor judgment. You talk only about the cases that succeed,” Gertner said. “This is the example of bad judgment I saw too often.” When asked if she was referring to the bad judgment of Carmen Ortiz, Gertner responded, “That’s right.”

Open Design – Wirtschaften mit freien Produkten

2013-01-16T13:56:05Z

Die Linzer Designerin Magdalena Reiter hat eine Broschüre über “Open Design – Wirtschaften mit freien Produkten” herausgegeben. Für diese hat sie “elf Protagonisten der offenen Szene über Urheberrecht, Netz und Anfänge einer neuen Ökonomie im Design” interviewt, um eine Brücke zwischen Open Source und Design zu bauen.

In der Broschüre (PDF) finden sich jeweils die Interviews auf englisch und deutsch. Zu den Interviewten gehören u.a. Linus Olsson (Flattr), Anna Theil (Startnext), Ronen Kadushin (Open Design), Kati Krause (Etsy), Bastian Underberg (Jovoto), aber auch unsere Co-Blogger Leonhard Dobusch und John Weitzmann, sowie Andreas Gebhard von newthinking.

Financing, distribution and production of design is increasingly subject to new, network society-based rules. Yet Open Design is not just CAD files, patterns and building plans made public, but the creation of a process that facilitates behind-the-scenes perspectives on products. The result of this opening up is that products can be thought of not as an end point but as contingent, that is, as changeable, adaptable and developable.
MAKE DESIGN OPEN centers a discussion about Open Design and features designers, projects and publications around Creative Commons. The blog is online since January 2013.

Die Broschüre steht unter der CC-BY-Lizenz.

Wir wollen netzpolitik.org weiter ausbauen. Dafür brauchen wir finanzielle Unterstützung, auch um weiterhin einen Full-RSS-Feed anbieten zu können. Investiere in digitale Bürgerrechte.

Sharing Culture – Creative Commons

2013-01-04T17:05:50Z

Dirk Herzog hat für eNtR berlin ein Video über den zehnten Geburtstag von Creative Commons in Berlin gemacht, wofür er Constanze Kurz, Leonhard Dobusch und mich interviewte:

Die Videos der Kurzvorträge am zehnten Geburtstag von Creative Commons finden sich hier.

Wir wollen netzpolitik.org weiter ausbauen. Dafür brauchen wir finanzielle Unterstützung, auch um weiterhin einen Full-RSS-Feed anbieten zu können. Investiere in digitale Bürgerrechte.

Public Domains Day

2013-01-01T23:55:23Z

Points 1-4 of my year-ago post, Which counterfactual public domain day? hold up well, but number 5 could be improved: it concerns optimal copyright term, which is a rather narrow issue, and viewed from an unhealthy side.

Instead, consider that in common language, and presumably to most people, “in the public domain” means something like “revealed to the public” or “not secret”, as the first definition currently presented by Google reflects:

pub·lic do·main
noun
public domains, plural

The state of belonging or being available to the public as a whole

Not subject to copyright

the photograph had been in the public domain for 15 years

public-domain software

Public land

a grazing permit on public domain

It’s not clear how Google’s computers selected those definitions, but they did a good job: “intellectual property” focused definitions seem to have largely crowded out the common usage in written down definitions.

The common “available to the public as a whole” understanding reflects why I have been more recently careful to stress that copyright policy is a small part of information policy and that reducing copyright restrictions (anti-sharing regulation), all the way to abolition, are in this broader context moderate reforms — more thoroughgoing reform would have to consider pro-sharing regulation (as I’ve said many times, broadly construed; choose the mechanisms that fit your ideological commitments) — requiring information revelation, eg of computer program source code.

People curating and promoting works not subject to copyrestriction, information preservationists, leakers, transparency activists, and many others provide various sorts of pro-public-domain regulation. But I especially want to recognize enforcers of copyleft regulation as benefiting (though problematically) the commonly understood public domain, and in the most important field (computation is suffusing everything, security through obscurity isn’t, etc).

…

Happy Public Domains Day. I offer a cornucopia of vague jokes, indeed.

Happy Public Domain Day

2013-01-01T18:41:41Z

On this day, 1st of January 2013, we do not only celebrate the beginning of a new year, but we also celebrate the whole variety of works, knowledge and information that, by entering the public domain, have become freely available to the world.

Given the limited term of protection granted by copyright law, a large number of works – whose authors died several decades ago – can no longer be owned by anyone and their use can no longer be constrained. They have become part of the common pool of knowledge that constitutes our cultural heritage and that can be freely used by everyone and for any purpose.

This year, in Europe, we are happy to welcome the works of:

Walter Sickert, a German painter who had an important influence on distinctively British styles of avant-garde art in the 20th century.

Grant Wood, an American painter from Iowa best known for his paintings depicting the rural American Midwest. He is best known for his painting American Gothic, an iconic image of the 20th century.

Bruno Schulz, a Polish writer and artist most famous for his collection of short stories The Street of Crocodiles (1934) which centre on a merchant family from a small town in the Galician region.

Arthur Edward Waite, a scholarly mystic who wrote extensively on occult and esoteric matters, and co-created the widely used Rider-Waite Tarot deck.

Stefan Zweig, one of the most famous authors in the world of the 1920s and 1930s;

Franz Boas, a German-American pioneer of modern anthropology often referred to as the “Father of American Anthropology”. He applied the scientific method to the study of human cultures and societies; previously this discipline was based on the formulation of grand theories around anecdotal knowledge.

Robert Musil, an Austrian writer whose huge tome of an unfinished novel “The Man Without Qualities” is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels;

… and many more.

The Public Domain Review has compiled a list of the most notable authors whose works are entering the public domain in those countries with a ‘life plus 70 years’ copyright term.

These works can now be freely reproduced and shared to everyone; they can be freely use, reused, translated, adapted or otherwise modified by anyone without asking for permission and without incurring the risk of violating the law.

Yet, it is important to remember that copyright law differs from one country to another. For instance, in the U.S., the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act – which added 20 years to most copyright terms – effectively “froze” the public domain by stipulating that, unless otherwise stipulated by the copyright owner, all works produced in or after 1923 and still eligible for protection in 1998 would not enter the public domain until 2019 or after. Unfortunately, today, there is not much to celebrate for them.

Hence, before using a work, it is always necessary to check the status of the work in the country where it will actually be used. Yet, given the complexity of copyright law, this can often be an extremely tedious complicated process. To facilitate the task, various tools have been developed – such the Public Domain Calculators of the Open Knowledge Foundation, and outofcopyright.eu from Europeana – to help determine which works are in the public domain in various countries around the world.

For more information on the public domain day, check out the Public Domain Day website – an initiative of the international Communia Association for the promotion and the preservation of the Digital Public Domain, with the special support of the Open Knowledge Foundation.

Regali di fine anno

2012-12-31T20:13:46Z

Se ancora state cercando regali di fine anno ci sono tre cose che vorrei portare alla vostra attenzione.

Sono tre cause che mi stanno a cuore, di natura diversa, per motivi diversi.

La prima e` la Siria, il paese che ho nel cuore, che soffre in questi giorni enormemente..molti, troppi, sono al freddo, senza alloggi, senza gas, elettricita`..molti, troppi, sono in campi profughi sparsi nei paesi limitrofi e in alloggiamenti di fortuna nella stessa Siria.

La ONG Un ponte per.., da sempre attiva in Medio oriente, ha lanciato Emergenza Siria, un sostegno ai rifugiati siriani che fuggono al confine con l`Iraq. Per sostenere il progetto potete dare il vostro contributo qui.

Il Teatro Valle Occupato e` il progetto di resistenza culturale -e politica- piu` interessante che sia venuto fuori nel nostro paese negli ultimi anni. I lavoratori dello spettacolo hanno occupato lo storico Teatro Valle, un gioiello architettonico, un tesoro storico al centro di Roma che rischiava di finire nel dimenticatoio. Dal giugno del 2011, gli hanno ridato la vita e da quel momento e` un cuore pulsante dell`offerta culturale della citta` e un esempio per quanti di noi credono nella cittadinanza attiva. Gli occupanti del Teatro Valle stanno cercando di trasformarlo in Fondazione e cosi restituirlo pienamente alla citta e alla cittadinanza. Sebbene a buon punto, il traguardo non e` ancora raggiunto, e il Teatro ha bisogno di tutti noi per mantenere questa sua vita cosi speciale e per continuare a dare un segnale che un`altra strada alla cultura, alla politica, e`possibile. Per diventare socio fondatore e` possibile versare un contributo – e anche regalare quote – qui.

Creative Commons, la no-profit per la quale mi occupo della comunita` di lingua araba, ha lanciato la sua campagna annuale di fundraising.

Quest`anno CC ha compiuto 10 anni, 10 anni di attivita` intensa in giro per il mondo per promuovere la flessibilita nel diritto d`autore e lo sharing legale su Internet. Ma, soprattutto, per promuovere la condivisione e lo scambio, i valori fondamentali sui quali si basa l`architettura aperta di Internet.

CC ha un network di affiliati in oltre 70 paesi del mondo, compresa l`Italia.

Per sostenere le attivita` di Creative Commons e` possibile regalare donazioni qui.

A tutti, buon inizio di anno nuovo…

Post-workshop notes: Creating Digital Music 101: GarageBand

2012-12-28T14:36:14Z

[Sat, 10 Nov 2012]

Nine people turned up (there was a cap of 12; heard it rained heavily so maybe some opted to stay home?)

Nine was a nice number. I sensed the average age was around late 20s to early thirties. Heh, it's nice to know as an 'uncle' in my 40s, I'm teaching the young'uns something.

What the session covered:

Hour 1: Getting to know GB; learning the basics
Hour 2: Composing your own track/ Some ‘audio production’ tips
Hour 3: Continue + Showcase

Demo of a track composed in GB.

Musical concepts - “Bars”, “patterns”, “Even counts”
Layering concept - like photoshop

Pair up - check with a “musical buddy for the day”

Opening a new GB project (file names, tempo)

The GB environment and controls
File menu, add tracks, LCD, Loops, Instruments
Shortcut Keys - Copy, Paste, Undo, Redo, Zoom in/ Out

Preferences panel

Using loops to create music - 20mins
Change tempo
Drag loops into workspace
Copy
Extend loops
Edit - Split/ cut/ copy
Layers

Instruments - 20mins
Experiment with different instruments
Musical Typing
Changing MIDI notes

Individual Track controls

Effects (“i” Edit)

Audio Production tweaks
Compressor
EQ

Export

Share

Before we started, I asked what were they wanted to take away from this session. Most had their Macs for a while but never quite learned how to use GarageBand.

About a third played some form of instruments. Most were piano players (interesting!)

Going round I saw everyone actively building their tracks.

What I tried not to do was overwhelm them by whacking all I knew from the past seven years and seven albums, since I picked up a Mac (woah, seven already?)

I let each participant copy a GarageBand sampler (composed the day earlier) and let them attempt a remix. The sampler (aptly titled TenElevenTwelve) sounds like this:
TenElevenTwelve by Ivan Chew

They didn't seem overwhelmed. Plenty of time to play around. Nice arranges tracks too; these folks have good musical timing.

Three hours was a good duration. Class size of ten was excellent; probably 20 would be fine with an assistant.

One tech problems: The rental MacBook didnt have the latest GarageBand version. Wasnt able to drag and drop loops. Luckily while the software update was in progress, one participant readily volunteered his Mac until the update was completed.

Planned for everything (extra power extensions, making sure we nailed down the screen resolution; a 'live' dry run with my colleagues before this public session) except that one. Must make mental note.

When I was mulling over the session on the train, I asked myself why I liked to share and teach.

On one hand, it means putting myself in the firing line, where participants have a range of expectations. Even of the session is a free one, I don't believe it's an excuse to waste people's time.

On the other, there's something immensely satisfying in seeing people give that nod of understanding, or outwardly thanking for having gained insights.

I wonder if it's an affirmation of my own self worth. Maybe, though I can find other ways to satisfy my ego.

Oh, I ended up conducting this workshop because the Public Library was running a series of Arts related programmes. Mooted the idea of a digital music workshop to a colleague, she liked it, and I volunteered to run it.

Coincidentally it was held on a 10.11.12

Hmm, if nine people turned up, that meant 9.10.11.12.

lol

Web ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com

myrightbrain.wordpress.com roughnotes.wordpress.com

The Little Prince and the Public Domain

2012-12-27T13:50:33Z

so it’s the time of the year again where lists of authors who’s works will enter into the public domain on the 1st of january are compiled left and right. Generally these efforts work like this: you start a list of authors who have died in in the year ending 70 years ago (1942) and then compile them into a list and rank them by whatever criterion you wish to apply (notability, specific nationality, etc..).

While this seems rather straightforward it seems like a good opportunity to recall the underlying complexities of calculating copyright term duration: If you have a fast internet connection and a big screen, you may want to take a look at this 25 MB pdf, which depicts the decision trees for 30 european jurisdictions that power the public domain calculators on www.outofcopyright.eu.

The interesting thing about this PDF is not how complex it is in absolute terms, but rather that the subject matter depicted is supposed is something that the EU considers to be ‘harmonized’ (by the 2006 copyright term directive). As you can easily tell by glancing at the image above, copyright duration in the EU is anything but harmonised. In fact, as Christiana Angelopoulos, who compiled the information contained in the pdf, argues in a new paper, we are dealing with 27 different public domains for the 27 member states of the EU.

According to Angelopoulos this is the result of four parallel failures of the harmonisation effort (Gaps in Conceptual Harmonisation, Exceptions to Harmonisation, Related Rights of Unharmonised Term and Incorrect Implementation of the directive). One of the most interesting passages of her paper is the one about the effects of the war-related term extensions that are part of French copyright law:

In France, the Intellectual Property Code contains three provisions extending the term of protection for works which were in copyright during WWI and WWII or whose authors died for France. To compensate the loss and difficulties in the commercial exploitation of works during the two World Wars:

The rights of authors, composers and artists of works published before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and which had not fallen into the public domain on 3 February 1919 were extended by 6 years and 152 days;

The rights of authors, composers and artists of works published before 1 January 1948 and which had not fallen into the public domain on 13 August 1941 were extended by 8 years and 120 days;

The rights of authors, composers and artists who died for France during WWI or WWII were extended by 30 years.

It should be noted that the two first extensions can accumulate in cases of works published during WWI, which can then benefit from an extension of up to 14 years and 272 days.

[…]

The fate of the 30-year extension in favour of authors who died for France has not been decided upon by the courts. If the provision remains valid, then depending on the applicability of the other extensions, the term of protection of a musical work whose author died for France may range from 100 years pma (70 years pma + 30 years) to 114 years and 272 days pma (70 years pma + 30 years + 6 years and 152 days + 8 years and 120 days). With regard to non-musical works, commentators are divided on whether the added mileage would salvage the other two extensions as well: some commentators consider that the extensions due to the wars remain absorbed by the new harmonised term of protection. In this case, a non-musical work whose author died for France, whether published during WWI or WWII or not, will benefit from a term of protection of 100 years pma (70 years pma + 30 years). Others argue that, given that the accumulated extensions will certainly result in a term longer than that of the Directive, the calculation should be made on the basis of the old 50 years pma rule. As a result, the term for non-musical works whose author died for France would vary between 80 years pma (50 years pma + 30 years) and 94 years and 272 days (50 years pma + 30 years + 6 years and 152 days + 8 years and 120 days), depending on the date of publication of the work.

The case of a non-musical work published during WWI or WWII and written by an author who died for France is not hypothetical. Several famous authors belong to this category, including Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Guillaume Appolinaire and Charles Péguy; uncertainty thus surrounds the term of protection of their works. For example, the entry of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s famous novella The Little Prince into the public domain oscillates from 1 May 2033 to 1 January 2045, depending on the interpretation accepted. (Christina Angelopoulos: The Myth of European Term Harmonisation: 27 Public Domains for the 27 Member States, IIC, 2012-5, p. 567.)

These extensions can make life rather difficult for anyone compiling lists of authors whose works will enter into the public domain. More generally the lack of harmonisation points to a bigger problem though. If copyright is indeed the primary system of assigning ownership in knowledge driven economies then we should be seriously concerned about the complexity of the system, which makes it extremely difficult to ascertain if a work can be used without permission from the author or not. COMMUNIA has pointed this out in our policy recommendation #4 and it appears timely to point out the need for more harmonisation in the light of the upcoming public domain day on the 1st of January 2013.

Novel legalistic © education: Right to Culture

2012-12-25T03:53:41Z

Collage based on Social Campaign: The Right to Culture CC-BY-SA

What passes for copyright education aimed at the general public (caveat: aiming to educate about copyright out of context of broader info- and social-policy is misguided, but I’ll leave that be for now, and the campaign described fortunately doesn’t mention copyright) might be categorized along the following:

Legalistic (explaining what can or can’t be done within current law) and/or normative

Blunt (e.g., downloading is a crime, copying isn’t theft) and/or turgid (e.g., how to comply with the DMCA, what maybe fair use, how public copyright licenses work)

Tilted in favor of more or less restriction

It’s easy to think of examples of examples of all of the resulting combinations, except for one: legalistic, blunt, and favoring less restriction. The nearest I can recall were the EFF “MP3 is not a crime” and “coding is not a crime” stickers, but it is hard to know what to take from those without knowing background stories (and I can’t recall what the MP3 one referred to), and “not a crime” is not very positive. Thus I find the Modern Poland Foundation’s Right to Culture campaign interesting (emphasis added):

The Modern Poland Foundation has launched a social campaign ‘The Right to Culture’. Its main goal is to enhance public awareness of freedoms under the copyright law.

The message is carried by three simple statements which are consistent with the copyright law, but often wrongly seen as a violation:

I have the right to copy books.
I have the right to download films.
I have the right to share music.

The three sentences – in speech bubbles – have been placed on the Warsaw subway cars’ windows. They also point to the project website prawokultury.pl, where one can find detailed information explaining legal provisions of the Copyright Law in Poland.

Art. 23 of the Copyright Law states that one is “permitted to use free of charge the work, which has been already disseminated for purposes of private use without the permission of the author.” This includes “the use of single copies of the work by a group of persons staying in a personal interrelation with each other, including in particular blood relation, kinship or a social relationship.” This means that restrictions concerning everyday activities such as copying books or e-books, downloading films or sharing music or files are not unconditional. Therefore, it is legal to make a copy of a book, download a film from the Internet or send a music album to a friend.

Go to the announcement for links and more.

Perhaps similarly legalistic, blunt, and favoring less restriction campaigns should be considered for your jurisdiction.

Syria Deeply, an open-licensed news aggregator about Syria

2012-12-22T13:15:33Z

For those who think that news reports on Syria lack context and historical background, Syria Deeply might be the solution. It is an amazingly well-done news aggregator, a great combination betwee journalism and technology. And it is also open-licensed., using the most flexible Creative Commons license, CC BY.

Read my post on Creative Commons blog:

Syria Deeply: CC-Licensed News Aggregator

Donatella Della Ratta, December 21st, 2012

In January 2009, Al Jazeera launched a pioneering initiative: the first news repository licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license. At the time, restrictions imposed by the Israeli military in Gaza prevented international news outlets from reaching the Strip and reporting from within. Al Jazeera, which had the advantage of being the only news outlet with a correspondent on the ground, came up with a creative solution by making its exclusive footage available to be used, remixed, translated and re-broadcasted by everybody, including competitors.

Three years later, a similar situation is happening with Syria. Shortage of news is dramatic and reports from within the country are rare and often require that journalists’ lives are put at risk in order to gather information. This is why it is key to have initiatives such as Syria Deeply, a news aggregator launched two weeks ago by a team of journalists and technologists headed by seasoned reporter Lara Setrakian.

Syria Deeply is a news platform that aims to redesign the user experience of the Syria story, for greater understanding and engagement around a complex global issue.‬ The platform is part news aggregator, part interactive backgrounder, part original reporting and feature stories. And the great news is that the content on the site is entirely CC BY–licensed, in order to encourage sharing and viral distribution.

This is a major step in crisis reporting and will allow a wider audience to become more aware of the dramatic situation in Syria, fostering a better understanding of a complex issue by adding context and historical information to the headlines.

“I believe technology is the key to getting more and better news to a broader audience,” says Setrakian. Open licensing can support this process and spread more and better understanding on Syria-related issues.

This work is licensed under aevery Creative Commons license

2012-12-21T08:41:56Z

♡ Copying is an act of love. Please copy and share. Contact for more permissions relating to This work is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

“Es ist ein weiter Weg bis dahin, dass die Leute begreifen, dass das Urheberrecht in seiner herkömmlichen Form keinen Sinn ergibt.”

2012-12-17T09:14:38Z

Dieses Interview mit Lawrence Lessig zum zehnten Geburtstag von Creative Commons ist zuerst im “Jahrbuch Netzpolitik 2012 – Von A wie ACTA bis Z wie Zensur” erschienen.

netzpolitik.org: Sicher hast du diese Frage schon viel zu oft beantwortet, aber warum habt ihr Creative Commons gegründet?

Lawrence Lessig: Der konkrete Anlass war, dass wir damals den Fall Eldred vs. Ashcroft verhandelten, und Eric Eldred war skeptisch, ob wir den Fall gewinnen könnten. Und er sagte, er wolle sicherstellen, dass bei der Verhandlung nicht bloß ein verlorener Fall vor dem Supreme Court heraus käme, sondern dass daraus ein tragfähiges Fundament entstehen würde für das, was wir heute Freie Kultur nennen.

Ich fand das richtig; und ich erkannte (was noch wichtiger war), dass wir, um jemals echte Veränderungen zu bewirken, bei den Menschen selbst auf Verständnis hinwirken müssten. Das hier würde sich nicht von oben verordnen lassen, es würde von unten wachsen müssen. Also begannen einige von uns darüber zu sprechen, wie man so eine Bewegung schaffen könnte, um diese Idee umzusetzen: Wie man Menschen in die Lage versetzen könnte, zu zeigen, dass sie an keines der beiden Extreme glauben – weder an perfekte Kontrolle noch an den Verzicht auf sämtliche Rechte. Und das war die Initialzündung für Creative Commons.

netzpolitik.org: Es gab doch schon mehrere Open-Content-Lizenzen. Warum habt ihr eigene CC-Lizenzen entwickelt, statt zum Beispiel die bestehenden Lizenzen der Free Software Foundation zu unterstützen?

Lawrence Lessig: Das hatte zwei Gründe. Erstens dachten wir, dass wir einen größeren und flexibleren Bereich von Lizenzen bräuchten. Die Free Document License ist zum Beispiel so ein Fall einer freien Lizenz, die sich nicht unbedingt auf alle Arten von Material anwenden lässt. Aber zweitens fanden wir es wirklich wichtig, dass man seine eigenen Lizenzen verstehen kann; es war sehr wichtig, endlich eine Architektur einzubetten, die (A) menschenlesbar, verständlich wäre, (B) maschinenlesbar und (C), ganz wesentlich, auf dem Rechtsweg durchsetzbar. Und keine der anderen Lizenzierungsstrukturen da draußen hatte diese Anforderungen berücksichtigt, drei Sprachen zugleich sprechen zu können. Das gab uns den Anstoß zu diesem Konstrukt. Von Anfang an hatten wir es uns auf die Fahne geschrieben, zwischen den freien Lizenzen Portabilität zu ermöglichen; mit der Free Document License ist uns das gelungen, und bei der Free Art License sind wir da noch in Gesprächen. Unsere Idee war, dass es irgendwann egal sein soll, in welchem Bereich freier Lizenzen man sich bewegt, Hauptsache, es findet sich eine äquivalente freie Lizenz, die CC-kompatibel ist.

netzpolitik.org: Du hast gesagt, CC sei ein Werkzeug gewesen, mit dem Leute dokumentieren können, dass sie an der Urheberrechts-Grundeinstellung, „alle Rechte vorbehalten“, nicht interessiert sind. Inwieweit ist es für dich ein Werkzeug, und inwieweit ist es eine Bewegung?

Lawrence Lessig: Ich denke, es muss beides verbinden. Es muss echten Wert erzeugen, also kann es nicht nur eine Bewegung sein – echten Wert meine ich im Hinblick auf Leute, die schöpferisch tätig sein wollen. Sehr wichtig dabei war der Aspekt eines Innovations-Ökosystems, das auf der Grundlage freier Inhalte aufbaut. Es gibt da zum Beispiel ein paar ganz tolle Android- und iPhone-Apps, die auf dem freien flickr-Archiv CC-lizenzierter Bilder aufsetzen. Nehmen wir Haikudeck: Damit lassen sich Bildersammlungen erstellen, indem die Software, sobald man anfängt, ein Wort zu tippen, die Bedeutung analysiert und dazu passende Fotos von flickr zieht, CC-lizenzierte Fotos. Und damit es hochwertige Bilder werden, schaut die App nach, aus welcher Kamera sie kommen, und wenn es eine super Kamera war, dann wird sie wohl auch super Fotos gemacht haben (lacht). Die Bilder, die man damit bekommt, sind echt erstaunlich; diese App, diese ganze Art und Weise, Kreativität verfügbar zu machen, das wäre alles gar nicht möglich ohne das grundlegende Ökosystem frei lizenzierter Werke.

Insofern erfüllt es eine Funktion; wie ja auch diese Remix-Musik und Remix-Websites sich nicht bloß auf CC stützen, sondern CC in ihrem Erbgut haben: Es ist schlicht unmöglich, ohne solch eine Struktur ein Werk zu lizenzieren. Auf diese Weise liefert es einen echten Mehrwert beim Erledigen deiner Arbeit. Aber eine Stufe darüber ist eine Bewegung, Leute, die zu Universitäten sagen, „eure Arbeit sollte nicht weggeschlossen bleiben“, worauf kommt „aber was sollen wir sonst machen?“, und darauf antworten sie, „ihr könntet ja zum Beispiel unter einer beliebigen CC-Lizenz veröffentlichen“. Und hier müssen wir beide Seiten ermutigen, weil es noch ein weiter Weg ist bis dahin, dass die Leute begreifen, dass das Urheberrecht in seiner herkömmlichen Form keinen Sinn ergibt.

netzpolitik.org: Als du CC mitbegründet hast, war es euch da schon klar, dass es so bald eine internationale, eng vernetzte Organisation werden würde, oder habt ihr euch am Anfang nur auf die USA konzentriert und erst später um den Rest der Welt gekümmert?

Lawrence Lessig: Ich habe von Anfang an daran geglaubt, dass wir einen internationalen Fokus brauchen. Und wir hatten das große Glück, Christiane Asschenfeld, heute von Donnersmarck, zu finden, die sich um die internationale Seite kümmern wollte. Sie eröffnete das Büro in Berlin und ruck-zuck hatten wir ein System für die vereinfachte Vergabe und die Portierung von Lizenzen, und dann hatten wir auch schon ein internationales Netzwerk. Und das war sehr wichtig, denn der Erfolg hing davon ab, dass man das Projekt als eine Idee der Freiheit auffassen würde – nicht als eine originär amerikanische Idee. Und indem wir das internationale Projekt unter unsere Fittiche nahmen, konnten wir viele Leute zur Mitarbeit hier bewegen: Sie portierten Lizenzen und wurden so ein Teil der Community. Ihr beide, ihr wart ja schon von Anfang an bei uns und wisst, wie dieser Prozess abgelaufen ist; aber in vielen Ländern wird das Ganze so wahrgenommen, dass einige zentrale Leute auf kreative, progressive Art über das Problem nachdenken, und das gibt den Anstoß für diverse andere Aktivitäten, die darauf aufbauen.

netzpolitik.org: Reden wir mal über die Zukunft: Immer mal wieder kommen Leute zu uns, die ein Projekt zu Open Access planen; oder eins darüber, wie man Open Access zertifiziert; oder die einen Open-Access-Standard für Wissenschaft und Forschung etablieren wollen. Und die sagen, „hey, es gibt da diesen Standard für Freie Software, der von der Free Software Foundation zertifiziert ist; da weiß jeder, klar, das hier ist Freie Software und das hier nicht. Aber bei Open Access ist das nicht so klar. Ist etwas Open Access oder wird es bloß so gelabelt? Kannst du dir also vorstellen, dass irgendwer, ein Komitee, eine Institution, einen weltweit verbindlichen Standard für Open Access definiert, wie das die Free Software Foundation für Freie Software getan hat?

Lawrence Lessig: Nun, es gibt da ja schon eine Körperschaft, die sich in Verbindung mit der Wikipedia ergeben hat und deren Aufgabe es ist, Werke freier Kultur als solche zu kennzeichnen. Und einige der CC-Lizenzen sind mit diesem Free-Cultural-Works-Label vereinbar, und einige andere sind es nicht. Ich halte das für wertvoll insofern, als da Leute sind, die diese Unterscheidung treffen mögen und die eben lieber auf Material aufbauen wollen, das als Werk freier Kultur definiert ist. Das ist schon sehr nützlich. Aber wovon ich noch nicht überzeugt bin, das ist diese Sitte, die Lizenzstruktur als Waffe gegen Leute einzusetzen, die ihr Material nicht genau so lizenzieren, wie gewisse andere Leute das erwarten würden. Es gibt da draußen eine unglaubliche Vielfalt von Kreativen, die aus den unterschiedlichsten Motiven Dinge erschaffen – und unter den verschiedensten Zwängen.

Ein Beispiel: Einer der ersten Filme, die wir bekamen, war ein Film von Davis Guggenheim, der auch „Eine unbequeme Wahrheit“ und „Waiting for ,Superman‘“ gemacht hat. Darin geht es um Erziehung, und er wurde teilweise in öffentlichen Schulen gedreht. Dementsprechend sieht man in dem Film ziemlich viele Kinder. Und Davis wollte den Film unter CC lizenzieren, um den Zugang möglichst einfach zu machen. Aber er fühlte auch eine moralische Verantwortung den Kindern gegenüber: Ihre Aufnahmen sollten nicht in einem anderen Kontext verwendet werden als demjenigen, in dem er die Kinder dargestellt hatte. Also verwendete er eine Lizenz, die keine Bearbeitung erlaubt (Anm.: CC-Lizenzelement ND), weil es ihm wichtig war, die Menschen zu schützen, die er zeigte. Das finde ich völlig in Ordnung, obwohl es ja streng genommen keine freie Lizenz mehr ist. Nein, ich finde, wir sollten aufhören, davon zu träumen, dass die ganze Welt so funktioniert wie freie Software, und lieber akzeptieren, dass es diese Unterschiede gibt. Und dann sollten wir die Leute in Richtung dieser Freiheit stupsen, damit sie Dinge tun können, die ihren eigenen Werten entsprechen und den jeweiligen Absichten ihres Kulturschaffens.

netzpolitik.org: Kommen wir zur nächsten Frage: Wir haben ständig diese Diskussion mit den Wikipedianern, dass nur die Lizenzen, die kommerzielle Nutzung erlauben, freie Kultur seien – den Rest könne man vergessen. Außerdem haben wir ein Definitionsproblem für „nichtkommerziell“ (Anm.: CC-Lizenzelement NC). Wie würdest du nichtkommerziell definieren? Und würdest du es im Rückblick aus heutiger Perspektive noch mal genauso machen?

Lawrence Lessig: Meiner Ansicht nach war „nichtkommerziell“ (weniger im geschriebenen Sinn der Lizenz als im umgangssprachlichen Verständnis) ein Platzhalter für eine bestimmte kulturelle Übereinkunft, die besagt: Ich stelle dir etwas zur Verfügung und es ist völlig okay, wenn du dich daran bedienst. Aber es ist absolut nicht okay, wenn du die Früchte meiner Arbeit nimmst, um sie sonst jemandem zu verkaufen. Okay, so würde das niemand ausdrücken; es gibt einfach kein simples Wort dafür, um diese Grenzlinie zu beschreiben, zumal die Linie je nach Kontext ja auch immer anders verlaufen kann. Jedenfalls finde ich es völlig nachvollziehbar, dass du zum Beispiel eine CD mit einer Menge frei lizenzierter Musik unter nichtkommerzieller Lizenz und mit Weitergabe unter gleichen Bedingungen (Anm. CC-Lizenzelemente NC, SA) rausbringen würdest. Denn die Idee, dass Sony daraus einen Filmsoundtrack machen und damit Geld scheffeln könnte – klar, ich verstehe vollkommen, wenn jemand sagt, er will das nicht.
Ich selbst lizenziere meine Arbeiten ja komplett frei; ich wäre happy, wenn jemand meinen Kram nehmen und daraus einen Film machen würde (lacht). Aber ich denke nicht, dass jemand die schlechtere Kreative ist oder weniger der Idee Freier Kultur verpflichtet, wenn sie sagt, „wenn jemand von meiner Arbeit profitieren will, sollte er zuerst mit mir darüber reden“. Ich wünschte, wir könnten die Grenze zwischen dieser kulturellen Übereinkunft und der jeweils angemessenen kommerziellen Interaktion klarer bestimmen. Und wir grübeln ja immer noch über Methoden, wie wir die Grenzbestimmung vereinfachen können. Aber ich bleibe bei meiner Überzeugung, dass es diese Trennung gibt und dass sich Menschen ausgenutzt fühlen würden, wenn sie ihre Arbeit verfügbar machen und daraus Dritten die Möglichkeit erwächst, Geld zu verdienen, ohne dass davon etwas beim ursprünglichen Urheber ankommt.

netzpolitik.org: CC feiert ja gerade zehnten Geburtstag. Welche Entwicklungen haben wir in Zukunft zu erwarten. Welche strategischen Ziele habt ihr für die Organisation und die Lizenzen? Soll es noch mehr Lizenzen geben, oder kümmert ihr euch um noch mal andere Sachen?

Lawrence Lessig: Ich hoffe – aber ich bin nicht mehr im Management, also kann ich nichts versprechen – auf einen sehr spannenden neuen Ansatz, den wir zurzeit diskutieren. Das ist der Ansatz, mehr Leute an die Lizenzierungsstrukturen heranzuführen, indem wir ihnen eine effektivere Methode an die Hand geben, ihre Rechte durchzusetzen. Dann könnte auch, sagen wir, ein Profifotograf ein Interesse haben, so eine Lizenz zu verwenden. Er könnte dann guten Gewissens die nichtkommerziellen Rechte an seiner Arbeit freigeben, wenn er im Gegenzug weiß, er bewegt sich innerhalb eines Rechtsrahmens, in dem die Durchsetzbarkeit seiner Rechte viel effizienter ist als im bestehenden System. Daran arbeiten wir jedenfalls momentan. Und darin sehe ich eine riesige Chance, denn damit würde man ja nicht nur mehr Werke frei unter CC-Lizenzen zugänglich machen, sondern man würde im Prinzip die Urheberrechts-Gesetze ganz allgemein vereinfachen.

Ich glaube auch, dass wir (hoffentlich gemeinsam mit der Wikipedia) neue Anreize schaffen müssen, um die Commons (Anm. Im Deutschen manchmal auch Allmende genannt), den Pool freier Werke, zu bereichern. Dafür brauchen wir Spiele und andere Apps, mit denen Leute eigene Beiträge leisten können oder mit denen sie sich im Pool bedienen können; es muss einfacher werden, die Commons zu füttern, damit man wiederum besser Material finden und darauf aufbauen kann. Dieser Aspekt, die Commons leichter als bisher anzureichern und zu kuratieren, wird meines Erachtens sehr entscheidend sein. Ich hoffe, das sind die beiden Wege, die CC einschlagen wird.

netzpolitik.org: Magst du uns drei CC-Projekte nennen, die du besonders toll fandest und bei denen du dachtest, wow, fantastisch, wie man auf freien Lizenzen neue, unglaubliche Dinge aufbauen kann?

Lawrence Lessig: Puh, nur drei neue, unglaubliche Projekte?

netzpolitik.org: Du darfst gern auch zehn aufzählen!

Lawrence Lessig: Es gibt da einige Remix-Projekte, die im CC-lizenzierten Bereich für Wettbewerb gesorgt haben. Und was ich immer extrem ermutigend finde, sind diese Geschäftsmodelle, die auf der Basis kreativen Ausdrucks etwas Neues obendrauf setzen, weil das für mich die Idee eines Ökosystems stützt. Über Haikudeck hatte ich ja schon gesprochen; oder nehmen wir ein Projekt wie al-Dschasira,. Dort werden alle palästinensischen Filme unter der freiesten Lizenz, CC-BY, veröffentlicht, damit das Material möglichst leicht zugänglich ist und Dokumentarfilme und TV-Nachrichten Zugriff darauf haben, was wirklich in Palästina passiert. Das fand ich sehr spannend. Aber nichts ist so wesentlich wie die Entscheidung der Wikipedia-Community, dass dies die Infrastruktur-Plattform sein soll, auf der sie weiter aufgebaut werden soll. Es dauerte etliche Jahre, bis dieser Übergang ausgehandelt war, und es war viel Bescheidenheit und Weisheit gefragt, bevor Richard Stallman der Migration zustimmte. Aber ich denke, das macht nochmals deutlicher, dass CC eine Dachmarke für freie Kultur ist, und damit sollte die Prominenz und der Erfolg des Projekts auf Dauer gewährleistet sein.

netzpolitik.org: Wie entscheidend ist Netzneutralität für die Weiterentwicklung dieser neuen Bewegung und für die Kreativkultur allgemein?

Lawrence Lessig: In meinen Augen ist Netzneutralität sehr entscheidend, und zwar nicht nur für freie Kultur. Freie Kultur hängt davon ab, vielleicht sogar mehr als andere Dinge (darüber wäre mal nachzudenken), aber es betrifft eben mehr als nur die freie Kultur. Ich halte sie für einen eigenen, unabhängigen Wert, um den wir uns kümmern müssen, zusätzlich zu dem Problem, wie wir die Kontrolle von Inhalten ausbalancieren. Von Benkler habe ich für mein Buch „The Future of Ideas“ (Die Zukunft der Ideen) das Konzept einer in Schichten aufgebauten Architektur geklaut. Ich habe das Konzept auf drei Ebenen eingedampft und stelle mir vor, dass es auf jeder Ebene eine freie und eine proprietäre Komponente gibt. Der Kerngedanke ist, dass man auf jeder einzelnen Ebene zumindest eine Balance zwischen frei und proprietär herstellen muss, und im Idealfall würde man den freien Anteil maximieren. In diesem Schema bewegt sich Netzneutralität auf einer anderen Ebene als freie Kultur, aber die beiden Aspekte greifen ineinander und bedingen einander.

netzpolitik.org: Wie würdest du Netzneutralität definieren? Darunter stellt sich ja jeder was anderes vor.

Lawrence Lessig: Netzneutralität entstand aus dem, was Netzwerkarchitekten das Ende-zu-Ende-Prinzip nennen. In Stanford hatten wir um 2001 eine Konferenz zum Thema „Architektur des Ende-zu-Ende-Prinzips“. Dort trafen sich Tim Wu, Barbara van Schewick, Yochai Benkler und eine Menge anderer Leute, um darüber zu sprechen, inwieweit dieses konstruktive Prinzip wirtschaftliche und soziale Folgen hatte und warum es so wichtig war, es aufrecht zu erhalten. Dort begann Tim die Arbeit am Projekt, dann mussten wir dem Kind einen Namen geben, und im Oktober 2002 wurde die Netzneutralität geboren. Und egal aus welcher Richtung man es betrachtet, darf man es nicht nur technisch sehen – es ist immer entscheidend, die politische Ausrichtung und den Wettbewerbsaspekt dieses Prinzips im Auge zu behalten. Es ist zwar ein technisches Prinzip, aber es hat uns ein wettbewerbsfreundliches Ökosystem gebracht, und es liegt an uns, das Wesentliche dieses Prinzips zu bewahren, um damit zugleich das Wettbewerbs-System erhalten zu können.

Für mich ist dabei wichtig, dass in diesem Ökosystem keine rechtliche Möglichkeit vorgesehen ist (die technische Möglichkeit gibt es immer), dass das Netzwerk zu Diskriminierungszwecken eingesetzt wird. Denn das wäre Gift für jeglichen Anreiz, Innovationen bei Apps und Inhalten voranzutreiben, die in diesem Netzwerk zum Einsatz kommen. Vielleicht sollten wir das Prinzip durchsetzen, indem wir den im Netz involvierten Firmen bestimmte Arten von Verträgen gesetzlich verbieten – das wäre sicher besser, als einen Regulierer darauf anzusetzen, wie man die Kanäle sauber und offen hält, damit die Daten fließen können. Aber das ist nur eine Detailfrage.

Im Kern geht es darum, sicherzustellen, dass niemand seine Macht über die Infrastruktur dazu missbrauchen kann, zerstörerische Macht im Wettbewerb zu erlangen. Das muss man besonders für die USA betonen, weil wir die Idee, die damals Open Access hieß, schon aufgegeben haben – es ging damals um den Letzte Meile-Zugang konkurrierender Infrastruktur-Anbieter im Netzwerk. Dazu war im 1996er Kommunikationsgesetz der USA etwas festgeschrieben, aber das war unzureichend, weil es sich nur auf Telefonleitungen bezog, nicht aber auf Datenkabel.
Aber als 2000 die Bush-Regierung an die Macht kam, war das Prinzip nicht mal mehr für Telefonleitungen gültig. Es gab damit auf der physikalischen Ebene keinen verbindlichen Wettbewerb mehr, nun ging es also darum, ein Modell für funktionierenden Wettbewerb auf der logischen Ebene zu etablieren. Dazu sollte das Ende-zu-Ende-Prinzip beitragen. Daraus erklärt sich auch, warum es in unterschiedlichen Teilen der Welt unterschiedlich wichtig ist. In Barbara van Schewicks Worten: Selbst bei optimalen Wettbewerbsvoraussetzungen auf der physikalischen Ebene müssen wir uns immer noch Sorgen um die Netzneutralität machen. Trotzdem denke ich, dass die Netzneutralität unter weniger Druck steht, je stärkerer Wettbewerb auf der physikalischen Ebene stattfindet.

Andere Länder überall auf der Welt bleiben dem Ideal von Open Access auf der physikalischen Ebene übrigens immer noch treu, lange nachdem die USA sich davon verabschiedet haben. Und wie man rückblickend feststellen muss: Eine Studie von Yochai Benkler für das Berkman-Center hat gezeigt, dass Länder, die am Open-Access-Prinzip festhielten, viel schnelleres, preisgünstigeres und besseres Internet anbieten konnten als Länder wie die Vereinigten Staaten, die Open Access aufgegeben hatten. Solche Länder mögen sich vielleicht weniger Sorgen um Open Access und Netzneutralität machen müssen als wir; aber ich denke, man kann überall beobachten, besonders hier in Deutschland, wie der Wettbewerb auf der physikalischen Ebene allmählich verkrustet und verkalkt. Und deshalb ist es so wichtig, darauf zu achten, dass zumindest auf der logischen Ebene hinreichender Wettbewerb erhalten bleibt.

Das Interview mit Lawrence Lessig führten John Weitzmann und Markus Beckedahl im September in Berlin. Das Transcript wurde freundlicherweise von Christian Wöhrl erstellt und übersetzt.

Wir wollen netzpolitik.org weiter ausbauen. Dafür brauchen wir finanzielle Unterstützung, auch um weiterhin einen Full-RSS-Feed anbieten zu können. Investiere in digitale Bürgerrechte.

WIPO CDIP/10 – Comments on the Terms of Reference for a Comparative Study on Copyright Relinquishment

2012-12-16T18:09:04Z

WIPO CDIP/10 – Geneva, November 12 to 16, 2012

This statement on the Terms of Reference for a Comparative Study on Copyright Relinquishment by the WIPO Secretariat (CDIP/10/14) is following Communia’s previous statements delivered at CDIP/8 and CDIP/9 supporting the Scoping Study on Copyright and Related Rights and the Public Domain by Séverine Dusollier (document CDIP/7/INF/2) and the Scenarios and Possible Options Concerning Recommendations 1c, 1f and 2a of the Scoping Study on Copyright and Related Rights and the Public Domain by the Secretariat (document CDIP/9/INF/2).

Comments on the Terms of Reference for a Comparative Study on Copyright Relinquishment

COMMUNIA International Association on the Public Domain welcomes the document produced by the WIPO Secretariat in preparation for the tenth session of the Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP) titled Terms of Reference for a Comparative Study on Copyright Relinquishment (CDIP/10/14).

We believe that this document is an encouraging sign for copyright international law-making to commit itself to considering crucial aspects of access to culture and knowledge in recognising the increasing importance of the Public Domain, on the basis of the WIPO Development Agenda Recommendation #16: “Consider the preservation of the public domain within WIPO’s normative processes and deepen the analysis of the implications and benefits of a rich and accessible public domain”.

A comparative study on the issue of copyright relinquishment will be very useful in order to assess the possibilities offered by voluntary contributions to the Public Domain. Beyond a legal academic study, concrete solutions are needed. We believe however that the language of the Terms of Reference (ToR) could be improved: using a precise vocabulary will ensure a positive mindset for the success of such a study.

Instead of characterizing the Public Domain as “relinquishment” of rights, it would be preferable to use the term “dedication” to the Public Domain. Indeed, “dedication” to the Public Domain is a more positive expression than voluntary “relinquishment” of rights, similar to how a half-full rather than a half-empty glass reflects the positive value of contributing to a common pool of works that are accessible and reusable for all. Moreover, the reference made in the study by Professor Dusollier (Scoping Study on the Public Domain, CDIP/7/INF/2) about the “voluntary Public Domain” is cited by the ToR themselves.

The use of the term “cultural heritage” has been mentioned as problematic for some delegations and observers as it would create confusion. This concern should be addressed. The target of the study–copyright relinquishment (or dedication to the Public Domain) should be focused primarily on works and subject matters that are or were covered by copyright, neighbouring rights or sui generis related rights. The scope of the study does not and should not pertain to traditional knowledge, traditional cultural expressions and folklore.

On the text of the ToR itself:

- On section II 1. and the objectives of the study

It would be useful to study not only the possible problems and complexities, but also discuss possible solutions. These ideas for solutions should be envisaged from the start, instead of waiting for conclusions in a third stage. Also, we need to identify what would be required to ensure the enforceability of Public Domain dedication tools. We hope that the study will not only raise relevant issues, but will also be action-oriented and propose concrete means to overcome identified problems and explain how dedication/relinquishment can be enabled by applicable law. The objectives of the study should be clear and work toward nimble, implementable solutions instead of waiting for long, drawn out conclusions.

The study should target the relinquishment of copyright / dedication to the Public Domain, as a purpose for a rich and accessible Public Domain to be integrated into the copyright legal framework.

- On section II 2. and the inalienability of moral rights

The Public Domain status of a work does not conflict with moral rights.

Moral rights still apply to works that are already in the Public Domain because copyright has expired at the regular end of the copyright protection term. Voluntary waivers of rights by their owners need not be addressed differently. If moral rights are respected upon the expiration of the copyright term, they are similarly respected when the rights holder voluntarily decides to dedicate his/her rights before the end of copyright protection.

The Public Domain should not be considered as a contradiction to moral rights. On the contrary, the act of dedicating a work to the Public Domain should be fully considered as a way to exercise one’s moral rights. This is why allowing rights holders to express their will in a free and informed manner is important.

- On last paragraphs, point 2

The definition of the term “material”, “including creative industries, the online environment, with reference to collaborative creativity and user generated content, and in regard to materials prepared by not-for-profit and public institutions”, is too generic. In our sense, it would be more appropriate for the concerned “material” to encompass “copyrighted works but also data, databases and compilations subject to copyright-related protection, performances, phonograms and protected broadcasts.”

This clarification should also be extended to the first part of the legal study which should not only focus on copyright but also on other applicable related rights.

Are European orphans about to be freed?

2012-12-16T17:35:38Z

This post by Lucie Guibault was first published on the Kluwer Copyright Blog and is reproduced here with kind permission of the author.

Last week, the European Parliament approved the draft Directive on certain permitted uses of orphan works. The approval of the Council of Ministers is expected to occur shortly.

This is big news indeed, for it’s the first draft directive in the area of copyright law to make it this far in more than 10 years. It’s been commented and reported by many.

The proposed directive is striking in many respects. Most prominent is the virtually unanimous opinion that the directive ‘is a step in the right direction’, but that it ‘will not facilitate nor promote mass digitization and large-scale preservation of Europe’s vast cultural heritage’. This conjures up the image of the elephant giving birth to a mouse.

The text of the proposed directive went through several iterations before reaching its current stage, including the last amendments brought by the Parliament to the compromise text of last July. Some of the sharp edges have been softened in response to criticism, but the main point of contention remains: how can a cultural heritage institution with millions of items in its collection proceed with digitization if it must conduct prior to use a diligent search for each item? Since this train could not be stopped, cultural heritage institutions are now looking in the direction of their own lawmakers and partner-stakeholders to determine what constitutes a ‘diligent search’ at national level, following the criteria they may establish pursuant to article 3(2) of the directive.

The fair compensation to the reappearing rights holder

Another issue left at the discretion of the individual Member States concerns the determination of the circumstances under which the payment of a fair compensation to the rights holders that put an end to the orphan status of a work is to be organised. Article 6 paragraph 5 of the proposed directive states that the ‘level of the compensation shall be determined, within the limits imposed by Union law, by the law of the Member State in which the organisation which uses the orphan work in question is established’. Recital 18 specifies that ‘for the purposes of determining the possible level of fair compensation, due account should be taken, inter alia, of Member States’ cultural promotion objectives, of the non-commercial nature of the use made by the organisations in question in order to achieve aims related to their public-interest missions, such as promoting learning and disseminating culture, and of the possible harm to rights holders’. In practice, the combination of all these factors could justify the payment of a very low compensation, one that would still qualify as fair.

What the proposed directive omits to mention is how the compensation for past use based on mutual recognition of orphan works status (art. 4) should be regulated. Since the proposed directive emphasises that a work or phonogram so recognised may ‘be used and accessed in accordance with this Directive in all Member States’, does it give a right to fair compensation to the reappearing rights holder in every single Member State? A prudent legislator would, when implementing this provision at national level, make necessary arrangements to avoid that the budgets of its cultural heritage institutions be plundered by reappearing foreign rights holders. The determination of what is ‘fair compensation’ in this case could be linked – in addition to the factors enumarated in Recital 18 – to the total amount of downloads of the work/phonogram in question (actual use) in the Member State. The rights holder of a more popular work/phonogram would therefore receive a higher compensation than one whose work/phonogram hardly was consulted. This element would actually be connected to the criterion of potential ‘harm’ to the interests of the rights holder.

The registry of search records and orphan status

A (somewhat surprising) novelty in the compromise text as approved by the Parliament is the appointment of the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market (OHIM) as the publicly accessible online database entrusted with the collection and maintenance of the diligent search records and outcomes for all works declared orphan. Of course, the OHIM is among the few pan-European institutions dealing with intellectual property rights, namely trademarks and designs (the other organization in the field would have been the Commmunity Plant Variety Office) and it certainly has experience with holding registries. But the OHIM has no experience or affinity with copyright protected works or phonograms.

Dealing with trademark and design registration is likely very different from dealing with research records and metadata reflecting the orphan status of works. Moreover, the OHIM is not the first place that comes to mind to look for information on orphan works. Consequently, it could be overlooked by all those who are not familiar with the specifics of this arrangement, e.g. the general public. Wouldn’t it have been more logical to appoint an organisation like Europeana, which is mentioned in Recital 1 of the proposed directive as the main beneficiary of the provisions contained therein.

The ‘legal certainty’ ‘without prejudice to’…

The most striking aspect of the proposed directive is that in its effort to ensure ‘legal certainty with respect to the use of orphan works’ (Recital 25), the application of the provisions is without prejudice to the following:

the Memorandum of Understanding on key principles on the digitisation and making available of out-of-commerce works, signed on 20 September 2011 (Recital 4);

the arrangements in the Member States concerning the management of rights such as extended collective licences, legal presumptions of representatino or transfer, collective management or similar arrangements or a combination of them, including for mass digitisation (Recital 24);

any arrangements concerning the management of rights at national level (art. 1(5));

national provisions on anonymous or pseudonymous works (art. 2(5));

provisions concerning, in particular, patent rights, trade marks, design rights, utility models, the topographies of semi-conductor products, type faces, conditional access, access to cable of broadcasting services, the protection of national treasures, legal deposit requirements, laws on restrictive practices and unfair competition, trade secrets, security, confidentiality, data protection and privacy, access to public documents, the law of contract, and rules on the freedom of the press and freedom of expression in the media (art. 7);

any acts concluded and rights acquired before (a certain date) (art. 8(2));

In addition to all these rules or arrangements that may be given precedence over those of the proposed directive, whenever dealing with musical works, a cultural heritage institution will have to take account of the future rules deriving from the proposed directive on collective rights management and multi-territorial licensing of rights in musical works for online uses.

All and all, not an easy task ahead for the main beneficiaries the provisions of the proposed directive on certain permitted uses of orphan works… Cultural heritage institutions may choose instead to stick to the ‘contractual method’… which may not bring much freedom to European orphans after all.

WIPO CDIP/10 Comments on the Scenarios and Possible Options Concerning Recommendations 1c, 1f and 2a of the Scoping Study on Copyright and Related Rights and the Public Domain

2012-12-16T17:34:08Z

This CDIP/10 second statement on Scenarios and Possible Options Concerning Recommendations 1c, 1f and 2a of the Scoping Study on Copyright and Related Rights and the Public Domain (CDIP/9/INF/2 Rev.) is following Communia’s previous statements delivered at:

- CDIP/10 commenting on Terms of Reference for a Comparative Study on Copyright Relinquishment (document CDIP/10/14),

- CDIP/9 on the Scenarios and Possible Options Concerning Recommendations 1c, 1f and 2a of the Scoping Study on Copyright and Related Rights and the Public Domain by the Secretariat (document CDIP/9/INF/2) and

- CDIP/8 supporting the Scoping Study on Copyright and Related Rights and the Public Domain by Séverine Dusollier (document CDIP/7/INF/2).

Communia Association is a WIPO permanent observer since October 2012 after several meetings as ad hoc observer

Comments on the Scenarios and Possible Options Concerning Recommendations 1c, 1f and 2a of the Scoping Study on Copyright and Related Rights and the Public Domain

COMMUNIA International International Association on the Public Domain welcomes the document prepared by the WIPO Secretariat for the tenth session of the Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP) entitled Scenarios and Possible Options Concerning Recommendations 1c, 1f and 2a of the Scoping Study on Copyright and Related Rights and the Public Domain (CDIP/9/INF/2 Rev.).

COMMUNIA would like to submit proposals to allow CDIP to build upon the reflection suggested by the Scoping Study on the Public Domain drafted by Professor Dusollier (CDIP/7/INF/2. Hereafter: the Study).

First, COMMUNIA suggests that the Committee expand its consideration to other recommendations from the Study, as all of them are extremely valuable and need to be further examined, especially:

- Recommendation 1.e on “orphan works”;

- Recommendation 2.b encouraging legal deposit;

- Recommendation 2.c on the role of libraries.

These recommendations are complementary to recommendation 1f of the Study aiming at identifying what should belong to the Public Domain.

Second, COMMUNIA urges WIPO delegations to select concrete actions that could be developed by CDIP to provide assistance to Member States. On the basis of the recommendations proposed by the Scoping Study, we have the following comments:

- On recommendation 1f on the development of technical or informational tools to identify the contents of the Public Domain:

Registration tools that enable the identification and location of rights holders are of crucial importance in the context of mass digitization and use of cultural resources, as shown shown by the “orphan works” phenomenon. The development and promotion of these tools need to be encouraged. WIPO has already started to investigate the need for these mechanisms, as demonstrated by the Survey of Private Copyright Documentation Systems and Practices, coordinated by the NEXA Research Centre (available at http://www.wipo.int/meetings/en/2011/wipo_cr_doc_ge_11/pdf/survey_private_crdocystems.pdf)). The development of such works and rights registries under the auspices of WIPO (similar to the ongoing Global Repertoire Database initiative for musical works) should be further considered. How these registries shall be governed under a comprehensive policy providing for a balance between private and public interests – and how they could be put in place within the Berne Convention framework – require ongoing dedicated discussions. These discussions should also address the role of collecting societies in the administration of common information technology infrastructures allowing such databases to be effective on a trans-national level.

Useful Public Domain legal tools can leverage metadata to help promote the discovery and identification of materials in the Public Domain. For instance, the Creative Commons’ CC0 Public Domain Dedication license and the Public Domain Mark allow identifying works with machine-readable metadata of copyright licensing terms and related information, so that content can be exposed to Internet search engines. By leveraging this metadata, search engines can discern and communicate to end users what is available for reuse, and under which conditions.

- On recommendation 2a and the role of cultural heritage institutions:

Following the input from the UNESCO International Conference on Memory of the World in the Digital Age: Digitization and Preservation, which took place in September 2012 in Vancouver, COMMUNIA suggests that CDIP develop guidelines for memory institutions that curate works already in the Public Domain in order to help them to release digital reproductions of Public Domain works (as well as related notices and metadata they are producing to accompany these works). Oftentimes, museums and libraries add contractual restrictions (terms of use) to access and use of Public Domain works they host on their websites. These practices should end. According to COMMUNIA policy recommendation #5, “Digital reproductions of works that are in the Public Domain must also belong to the Public Domain. The use of works in the public domain should not be limited by any means, either legal or technical.”

Third, COMMUNIA proposes to bring substantive legal proposals from the Scoping Study to SCCR negotiations for the definition of a Public Domain positive agenda. Having a clear definition of the Public Domain in an international legal instrument and outlining the legal means to prevent the re-enclosure of works in the Public Domain should be considered as agenda items in future SCCR discussions.

In this purpose, COMMUNIA has several recommendations:

1. Defining a positive status for the Public Domain

The Public Domain deserves a positive recognition to better identify works and uses which are available for creators and users to build upon. It is time for copyright policymakers to consider the Public Domain as something more than a mere “non IP protected” zone. Such an evolution in describing the Public Domain would be consistent with the history of “Intellectual Property”, which used to consider the Public Domain as the rule and copyright as the exception, as a temporary and limited monopoly of exploitation.

This positive status shall be reached by:

1.1. Integrating a definition of the Public Domain within copyright law instruments.

1.2. Preserving the Public Domain from private appropriation.

Beyond a positive definition, the Public Domain should be preserved from private appropriation and closures through legal, contractual or technical barriers. Works that are in the Public Domain in analogue form should stay in the Public Domain once they have been digitized.

2. Recognizing the validity of voluntary dedication to the Public Domain

Dedicating a work to the Public Domain should be considered as a legitimate way to exercise one’s exclusive right and as compatible with moral rights. The legal enforceability of voluntary dedications should be evenly recognized in all jurisdictions.

3. Facilitating the identification of the contents of the Public Domain

It is difficult to assess whether a work is in the Public Domain, notably because of the complexity and the lack of harmonized copyright rules pertaining to the duration of protection. There is a need for certainty for users to clearly identify what is in the Public Domain. Beyond registration and Rights Management Information tools, legal security is required in order to assess the status of a work or any subject-matter eligible for copyright or copyright-related protection.

This shall be implemented through:

3.1. Simplified and harmonized copyright duration and territoriality rules

Establishing a harmonized framework with regard to copyright scope and duration would permit an easier identification of Public Domain works across the world.

3.2. Rights Information Measures

The role of Rights Management Information (RMI) should be recognized in the identification of the contents of the Public Domain.

3.3. Registration tools

The relevance of registration tools to help identify and locate rights holders and Public Domain contents has to be acknowledged and further analyzed.

Position on EC Horizon 2020 Open Access policy

2012-12-16T17:32:42Z

COMMUNIA International Association on the Public Domain is publishing a policy paper entitled Position on EC Horizon 2020 Open Access policy before the vote taking place at the European Parliament in November 2012. The policy paper is available as a PDF and reproduced below:

The work of Communia is based on a set of 14 policy recommendations which aim to support policies that enable a rich and accessible Public Domain. In light of these recommendations, Communia welcomes the development of a strong Open Access (OA) policy at the European level around the following main ideas:

All publicly funded research outputs and educational resources must be made available as open access materials (aligned with the Budapest Open Access Initiative).

Notwithstanding the need to support OA policies, access to copyright protected material for education and research purposes must be improved by strengthening existing exceptions and limitations to copyright, and broadening these exceptions to cover uses outside of formal educational and research institutions.

Social and Economic Meanings of Open Access

Open Access is defined by the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) as the free availability and unrestricted access of research results, without financial, legal or technical barriers. According to the revised BOAI recommendations, research results should be made available:

Without payment by the reader,

Without contractual, legal, or licensing restrictions on use or reuse other than integrity and attribution of the author,

Without technical restrictions which might prevent indexing, mining, searching, filtering and any other automatic processing making research more useful and likely to be connected with related results for the advancement of research,

When possible, as “libre OA” (which combines free access as well as liberal open licensing) – preferably under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license or equivalent.

OA is beneficial for the research community, for the economy and for society as a whole. Researchers need to be able to access research results without having to pay expensive subscription fees. They should be able to read and use what they need to be able to perform their work effectively and efficiently. Universities and funding agencies are not able to sustain the rising prices of an oligopolistic journal publishing industry. Even the most well-funded libraries (such as Harvard University and the University of Munich) have had to cancel journal subscriptions because they cannot afford to continue paying the subscription fees.

Academic research is mostly financed through public funding. The current system oftentimes results in the government essentially paying for the research several times: first, when the governmental entity awards research grants; second, when the government subsidizes the salaries of the academics who serve as peer-reviewers; third, when the government pays for libraries in research universities that subscribe to the journals. The public should receive a better return on the investments being made for the research, development, and publication of publicly funded scholarship. OA provides an economic and social return on investment through higher dissemination to citizens, taxpayers, and researchers from other countries and other disciplines, OA fosters interdisciplinary cross-fertilization and international impact.

Open Access quick facts

1. OA is always free (“gratis”) for the reader

At the very minimum, every Open Access model assumes that content is available for free of charge (gratis) to the reader.

2. Two publications models

The two OA publication models, just like the traditional conventional (non-OA) model (with financial, legal or technical barriers), are sustainable ways of not only making knowledge available, but also of conducting business activity. OA requirements can be fulfilled through various publishing models combined with various business models:

Green OA designates the self-archival by researchers of their publications in institutional or disciplinary repositories, free of charge to the reader. Most non-OA publishers already authorize an author to deposit in a repository, sometimes after an embargo period. For more than 20 years the discipline of physics has seen high levels of green OA deposit and has not lead to subscription cancellation of non-OA journals.

Gold OA designates publishers or journals which distribute their publications free of charge for the reader under a liberal open license (such as the Creative Commons Attribution license).

Various business models can be employed to cover the costs of Open Access publications:

Public funding, institutional subsidies, advertising, donations: 100% of scientific publications, both OA and non-OA, already rely on external funding and volunteers authors, referees and editors.

Paid additional services, such as user statistics or other formats.

Publication or a submission fee by the author, like in many non-OA journals. However those fees can be waived, depending on the origin of the authors, and cannot be understood as the only model for OA.

Gold OA is compatible with market and cost recovery. Some OA publishers are commercial and profitable. Online OA may increase the sales for printed journals.

3. OA respects research policy and Intellectual Property

A well-written OA policy:

Is consistent with the rules of copyright, and allows the rightsholder to leverage open licensing to communicate a set of rights to downstream users.

Does not interfere with the academic freedom of the author to publish in the venue chosen by them.

Does not preclude rightsholders from pursuing the exploitation (such as through a patent) of the findings within the research paper before publishing the results.

Is aligned with the current peer-review process. Peer review takes place before any publication, while OA focuses on distribution. Scholarship destined to be released as OA undergo the same peer review as Non-OA articles.

Is impartial with respect to quality. Both OA and Non-OA publications can be of varied quality, and there is nothing about OA that suggests it is of lower quality; all articles should be judged on their merits.

Operates in tandem with accepted academic integrity and ethics: OA articles are not more likely to contain plagiarism than Non-OA scholarship.

Can increase the impact of a researcher’s work. The researcher may be able to receive more citations because articles in OA are more likely to be cited than non-OA papers. OA is beneficial for the career of all researchers as readers and as authors.

4. OA to data is indispensable

In addition to OA to articles, OA to the data associated with the articles is important so that other researchers can confirm and reproduce the results.

OA to data is compatible with both green and gold OA models: repositories and journals can host data in content management systems linked with publications. OA and non-OA journals are requiring the deposit of underlying data and code in order to assess submissions’ validity and quality.

COMMUNIA Recommendations

Communia Association calls the Members of the European Parliament to establish a clear OA policy:

1. OA mandate for all publicly-funded research output

All publicly-funded research outputs (including published articles, preprints or drafts prior to peer-review, books, scientific data, databases, archival records, software source code, conference presentations, audiovisual and teaching material, etc.) must be made available without financial, legal, contractual or technical restriction to access, use and reuse, as aligned with the Budapest Open Access Initiative, as soon as possible.

An OA mandate should require:

Publications to be released under conditions compatible with a Creative Commons Attribution license.

Data to be released in the public domain or using a tool such as the CC0 Public Domain Dedication.

When publications and related data could not be released under those conditions, they should be made available at the latest at the moment of publication or immediately afterwards. An embargo of 6 months counting from the date of publication is acceptable.

A mechanism of incentives, control and sanctions should be devised and enforced for entities who do not comply with the policy.

2. Eliminate sui generis rights on databases

The 1996 Database directive, which imposes additional restriction to the use of data contained in databases, has not demonstrated any benefit and should be annulled.

3. Prevent unfair publishing agreements

Publishing agreements precluding authors to archive their research output in OA repositories or banning authors who are bound by an institutional OA mandate should be prohibited.

COMMUNIA Positive Agenda for the Public Domain

2012-12-16T17:31:20Z

This policy paper proposes to contribute to defining a positive agenda for the Public Domain. It is grounded on a WIPO study by Professor Séverine Dusollier, Communia policy recommendations and Communia previous WIPO statements.

This work-in-progress document presents policy recommendations and strategies aimed at the transnational level, namely WIPO CDIP and SCCR. Legal language will be drafted at a later stage.

Policy recommendations are:

1. Definition of a positive status for the Public Domain

2. Recognition of the validity of voluntary dedication to the Public Domain

3. Facilitating the identification of the Public Domain status

The full policy paper can be downloaded as a pdf: Communia Positive Agenda for the Public Domain and the full text is also available below/after the jump.

Preamble: what is the Public Domain?

The Public Domain consists of all material that can be freely accessed and reused:

creations which are no longer covered by copyright or related rights,

information, facts, data, and ideas which are outside of the scope of copyright protection.

These materials are the basis of the exercise of many fundamental human rights and values, such as the right to cultural expression and to education, freedom of expression, citizen democratic participation and economic and social innovation.

Rationale: why strengthen the Public Domain?

The role of the Public Domain, already crucial in the past, is even more important today, as the Internet and digital technologies enable us to access, use and re-distribute information with a marginal cost of zero. It has thus become necessary to reform the copyright system to recognise the existence of the Public Domain, so as to counteract the continuous extension of copyright protection threatening the right to access and reuse culture, education, science and public information for the shared benefit of all creators and members of the society.

Policy recommendations

1. Definition of a positive status for the Public Domain

The Public Domain deserves a positive recognition to better identify works and usages which are available for creators and users to build upon. It should not be defined as a mere non “Intellectual Property” protection zone. This would be consistent with the history of “Intellectual Property”, which used to consider the Public Domain as the rule and copyright as the exception, as a temporary and limited monopoly of exploitation. This crucial balance should be clearly reintroduced within the copyright regulatory framework.

Implementation:

1.1. Positive definition

Copyright law should include a definition for the Public Domain.

Proposed legal language:

The Public Domain consists of all material that can be freely accessed and reused. This shall include:

1.1.1. Material being no longer covered by copyright protection: these include copyrighted works but also data, databases, compilations, performances, phonograms and broadcasts subject to copyright-related protection.

For example, Chilean Law No. 17,336, article 11 recognises the existence of the Public Domain as a common pool of works that “may be used by anyone, provided they respect the ownership and integrity of the work.” This includes, inter alia, “(a) Works whose term of protection has been extinguished.”

1.1.2. Information, facts, data, and ideas which are outside of the scope of copyright protection: these include all materials that are not eligible for protection under copyright or related rights.

Copyright legislations usually provide a list of material subject to protection but not of items which should remain out of protection. This contrasts with patent laws in many jurisdictions, which often include specific provisions stipulating what is specifically excluded from protection.

1.2. Legal safeguarding

The Public Domain should be safeguarded from private appropriation and closures through legal, contractual or technical barriers. Works that are in the Public Domain in analogue form should stay in the Public Domain once they have been digitised.

Implementation:

1.2.1. Safeguarding the Public Domain from private appropriation

A positive definition of the Public Domain should be accompanied by guarantees of freedom of access and re-use for all, without the possibility for adding legal, contractual or technical restrictions.

The WIPO 1996 Treaties should prohibit the use of technical protection measures on Public Domain material.

There should be a system for legal recourse allowing Public Domain users to prevent attempts of Public Domain misappropriation. Legal sanctions should be devised to prevent false or misleading attempts to claim exclusivity over Public Domain material.

For instance, Chilean Law No. 17,336, article 80 provides that “(a) anyone who knowingly reproduces, distributes, makes available or communicates to the public a work belonging to the public domain [...] under a name which is not that of the true author” or “(b) anyone who claims or demands economic rights in works in the public domain” shall be “deemed to have committed an intellectual property violation.”

1.2.2. Preserving the digital Public Domain

Digital reproductions of works that are in the Public Domain shall also belong to the Public Domain. The use of works in the Public Domain should not be limited by any means, either legal or technical.

The internet enables the widespread re-use of digital reproductions of works whose copyright protection has expired. The Public Domain status of these works means that there is no owner who can impose restrictions on their reuse. Nonetheless, the owners of the physical works (such as heritage institutions) can consider themselves entitled to control digital reproductions and impose restrictions on their reuse conditions. However, the digitisation of Public Domain works does not create new rights: works that are in the Public Domain in analogue form continue to be in the Public Domain once they have been digitised.

Therefore, the law shall consider such restrictions to access and reuse of digitised Public Domain material as void (with possible legal sanctions).

2. Recognition of the validity of voluntary dedication to the Public Domain

Dedicating a work or any copyright protected item to the Public Domain should be considered as a legitimate way to exercise one’s exclusive right in order to contribute to a common pool of reusable works. (We recommend the use of “dedication” to the Public Domain as a more positive expression than “voluntary relinquishment of rights”).

The legal enforceability of voluntary dedications (or “rights relinquishments”) should be recognised in all jurisdictions and interpreted as compatible with rightholders’ moral rights.

A positive status for the Public Domain should recognise in all jurisdictions the legitimacy and enforceability of voluntary dedications to the Public Domain by the use of tools such as CC0. Moral rights should not be seen as impediments, as dedicating a work to the Public Domain is in fact a way to exercise one’s moral rights. Since moral rights are compatible with the Public Domain, they are also compatible with the voluntary Public Domain.

For example, Chilean Law No. 17,336, article 11 stipulates that the Public Domain shall include, inter alia, “(c) works whose owners have waived the protection granted by [copyright] Law” which “may be used by anyone, provided they respect the ownership and integrity of the work.”

Besides, the mandates between collective rights management organisations and their members should guarantee the ability of rightholders to fully exercise their rights to dedicate their works to the Public Domain.

3. Facilitating the identification of the Public Domain status

It is difficult to assess whether a work is in the Public Domain due to the complexity and the lack of harmonisation of national copyright rules. The need for legal certainty for users in this respect calls for clarification. Beyond registration and Rights Management Information systems, copyright law shall allow for a clear identification of the Public Domain status of a work or any subject-matter eligible for copyright or copyright-related protection.

Implementation:

3.1 Simplified and harmonised copyright duration and territoriality rules

The rules to determine the term of copyright protection have become so complex that it is almost impossible to establish with certainty whether a work or other subject matter is protected by copyright or whether it is in the Public Domain. Harmonising the legal framework with regard to copyright duration and territorial scope would allow for an easier identification of Public Domain contents across the world.

The way to reduce the divergence between national legislations as regards copyright scope and duration should be clarified at WIPO and EU levels.

3.2 Rights Information Measures

The role of Rights Management Information (RMI) in the identification of the contents of the Public Domain should be recognised. The use of a “Public Domain Mark” such as the tool developed by Creative Commons or a stronger equivalent with metadata carrying the stamp of the declarant – be it a national library, the ministry of culture or public and private registries – would be extremely useful to identify Public Domain material and prevent their misappropriation by adding a layer of rights.

Such technical informational tools identifying Public Domain contents shall be coordinated on a trans-national level by existing rights management structures such as collecting societies.

The definition of “Rights Management Information” in the 1996 WIPO Treaties should include any electronic information pertaining to Public Domain material as recommended by Prof. Severine Dusollier.

3.3 Registration tools

The relevance of registration tools to help identify and locate rights holders and Public Domain contents has to be acknowledged and further analysed. Easier identification and location of rights holders and Public Domain material would help avoid situations like the “orphan works” phenomenon and foster innovative digitisation initiatives. In this respect, the re-introduction of copyright protection formalities would deserve further analysis.

In order to prevent a default protection system being not in line with both digital needs and rightholders’ will for less protection, full copyright protection should only be granted upon registration. Non-registered items eligible for copyright protection should only get moral rights protection. This would help users identify resources being in the Public Domain, either at the end of rights duration or following a Public Domain dedication.

Creative Commons is 10 years old

2012-12-15T16:31:40Z

Source: http://www.opensrs.com/blog/2010/12/happy-birthday-creative-commons/

How time flies! Here we are, 10 years after we launched the licenses into the world. So many happy surprises. The supporters, adopters, and the extraordinary network of affiliates and projects around the world. I want to express thanks and admiration to all.  http://10.creativecommons.org/

We still have much more to do, and we continue to need support. I'm looking forward to the next decade, and thanks in advance to all who have been able to support us along the way.

Second Global Congress on IP and the Public Interest

2012-12-15T16:12:46Z

The Second Global Congress on Intellectual Property and the Public Interest is being held on December 15-17, 2012 in Rio de Janeiro. Information on the schedule, live (and later, archived) webcast links are here. http://www.global-congress.org/

Twitter feed is at #gcongress.

#cc10 Musik-App von CC Korea

2012-12-15T12:46:06Z

Das koreanische CC Länderprojekt um Jay Yoon feiert den 10. CC-Geburtstag mit einer App. Damit kann man CC-lizenzierte Musik finden und sich die Tracks auch gleich streamen lassen. Bisher gibt’s die App nur für iOS bei iTunes, an einer Androidversion wird gearbeitet. Disclaimer: Mangels entsprechenden Endgeräts konnte ich die App nicht testen. Es gibt aber ein kurzes Video zur App bei Vimeo. Dessen Soundtrack schlägt wiederum einen direkten Bogen zur Diskussion um “Metall auf Metall II”, der jüngst verkündeten Entscheidung des BGH zu kleinsten Samples: Der Anfang des druntergelegten Tracks stammt ganz offenhörbar von Edwin Starrs “War (what is it good for)”. Auch wenn der Volltext des BGH noch aussteht, ist davon auszugehen, dass nach BGH-Ansicht ein Sample wie dieses nicht als freie Benutzung im Sinne des § 24 UrhG gilt und damit auch kaum unter freie Lizenz gestellt werden könnte. Der Verwender müsste sich vielmehr von Starrs Plattenfirma das Recht besorgen, der ganzen Welt die Weiterverbreitung dieses doch sehr eingängigen Liedbeginns zu erlauben. Es wäre mal interessant, den zweifellos horrenden Preis eines solchen Geschäfts zu erfahren. Die GEMA jedenfalls, über die ja Vergütungen für Coverversionen und dergleichen abgerechnet werden können, bietet keinen passenden Tarif für die spätere Vergabe von CC-Lizenzen an.

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Creative Commons licenses on Flickr: unchanged rate of change in past 32 months?

2012-12-13T07:47:49Z

About 32 months ago I posted Creative Commons licenses on Flickr: many more images, slightly more freedom. Since then the rate of growth and change in license composition appears to have remained about the same. I haven’t looked past the graphs. You can download my updated spreadsheet. The old post has explanations and links to raw data.

I was reminded to look again by a mailing list discussion tangentially related to the ongoing development of version 4.0 CC licenses.

#cc10: Das Jubiläums-Mixtape ist online

2012-12-12T19:15:05Z

[Crosspost vom CC-DE-Blog]

Aus Anlass des 10. Geburtstags von Creative Commons hat CC Europe, der Verbund der europäischen CC-Länderprojekte, eine Compilation zusammengestellt. In der Sendung Breitband von Deutschlandradio Kultur und bei der Geburtstagsparty in Berlin wurden bereits ein paar Previews geboten, jetzt ist das komplette “Mixtape” bei mehreren Hostern online, beispielsweise bei Soundcloud. Gleich der erste Titel ist der von CC DE vorgeschlagene Track “Jewel” von Zoe.Leelas Album “Digital Guilt“.

Bei der Suche nach geeigneten Tracks hat sich einmal mehr gezeigt, dass die CC-Lizenz BY-NC-SA so etwas wie die Standardlizenz der alterniv lizenzierten Netzmusik zu werden scheint. Überraschend war, wieviele Künstler ihre Musik mit einer ND-Lizenz versehen, also nicht möchten, dass ihre Musik ohne vorherige Anfrage verändert oder in Remixes verwendet wird. Auch 6 der Tracks auf dem Jubiläums-Mixtape sind auf diese Weise lizenziert. Hier eine Übersicht des Inhalts:

1. Jewel – ZOE.LEELA – 2012 – BY-NC-SA 3.0 Unported
2. Fragile Meadow – Black Atlantic – 2009 – BY-NC-SA 3.0 Unported
3. Weapons – Dad Rocks! – 2011 – BY-NC-SA 3.0 Unported
4. Tork Sport – Shoes and Socks Off! – 2012 – BY-NC 3.0 Unported
5. IMF – Dot – 2012 – BY-NC-SA 2.0 England and Wales
6. Alone in the city (feat. Moon Reflecting) – The Global Optimistic – 2012 – BY-NC-SA 3.0 Unported
7. Work it – Tone – 2008 – BY-NC-ND 2.5. Dänemark
8. Different Feelings – StrangeZero – 2010 – BY-SA 3.0 Unported
9. Jos jedan od onih dana – MC Sky Wikluh vs. Mistake Mistake – 2012 – BY-NC 3.0 Serbien
10. At The Mall – Emerald Park – 2010 – BY-NC-ND 3.0 Unported
11. Deep Cut – Mezonom – 2011 – BY-NC-ND 2.0 Generic
12. Hadas G.H Drum&bass – Zimbalista – 2009 – BY-NC-SA 3.0 Unported
13. Zeitmaschine – Melodiesinfonie – 2012 – BY-NC-SA 3.0 Unported
14. Belly Button – Morsa – 2012 – BY-NC-SA 3.0 Unported
15. Odysseus – Bonus – 2011 – BY-NC-SA 3.0 Tschechische Republik
16. Bańka mydlana – Usta – 2008 – BY-SA 3.0 Unported
17. Flushing Economy – Herrmutt Lobby – 2012 – BY-NC-ND 3.0 Unported
18. Deep Blue (2005) – Antony Raijekov – 2007 – BY-NC-SA 3.0 Unported
19. Sunrise Number 1 – Stormy Mondays – 2011 – BY-NC-ND 3.0 Spanien
20. Skango (feat. Volatil) – Volfoniq – 2009- BY-NC-ND 3.0 Unported

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10. Geburtstag von Creative Commons in Berlin

2012-12-12T16:11:57Z

Am Samstag hatten Creative Commons ihren 10. Geburtstag und weltweit wurde gefeiert. Auch wir veranstalteten unterstützt von Zeit Online und der Wikimedia Deutschland eine Geburtstagsparty im @hausungarn in Berlin und stellten dafür ein umfangreiches Programm auf die Beine.

Die Vorträge wurden alle aufgezeichnet, hier sind Teil 1 und Teil 2 – wer jedoch nur zu bestimmten Themen springen will, lese sich unten die Kurzbeschreibungen durch mit Positionsverlinkung im Video.

Nachdem Markus Beckedahl, Public Project Lead von Creative Commons Deutschland, die Feier eröffnet und eine Torte ankündigt hatte, führte John Weitzmann, der Legal Project Lead von CC Deutschland, in die Geschichte der Creative Commons ein: Von Eldred v. Ashcroft und Lawrence Lessigs erster Version über verschiedene Projekte und Initiativen bis zu heutigen Tools.

Leonard Dobusch, Juniorprofessor für Organisationstheorie, beeindruckte mit “unnützem historschen Wissen” rund um die CC Entstehungsgeschichte, was CC ursprünglich bedeuten und wie die erste Webseite aussehen sollte.

Anschließend führte Markus ein Interview mit Tim Jäger, einem Mitgründer der ifrOSS, der über frühere freie Lizenzen spach und die rechtliche Akzeptanz der Creative Commons.

Der Vorstand der Wikimedia Deutschland, Pavel Richter, berichtete dann über Creative Commons Pornografie und die Nutzung von Commons bei der Wikipedia.

Der Journalist und Leiter des “Elektrischen Reporters” Mario Sixtus erklärte, wie das ZDF die erste CC Sendung in sein Programm nahm und wie das vielleicht bei mehr Sendungen geschehen könnte.

Christine Watty, Moderatorin und Redakteurin bei Deutschlandradio Kultur, berichtete von den Bemühungen des Programms “Breitband“, freie Musik zu spielen. Außerdem von den Ängsten des öffentlichen Rundfunks wenn es um freie Musik geht und die Interpretation des “Non Commercial Use”. Christina stellte für die halbstündige Pause einen Mix aus frei lizenzierter Musik zusammen und dann gab es Torte!

Weiter ging es nach der Pause mit Heise-Redakteur Philip Steffan und seinem Vortrag zu DIY und Open Hardware.

Julia Kloiber, Projektleiterin bei der Open Knowledge Foundation Deutschland, spach über die Unterschiede zwischen den CC-Lizenzen und wieso nicht alle davon wirklich offen sind.

Es folgte Constanze Kurz, Sprecherin des CCC und wissenschaftliche Projektleiterin an der Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft in Berlin, mit einem Vortrag zu Open Access in wissenschaftlichen Bereichen.

Der European Coordinator für Mozilla Drumbeat und vorher Verantwortliche für Creative Commons Dänemark, Henrik Moltke, beendete den öffentlichen Teil des Abends mit einem Vortrag über das Projekt “Free Beer” und das Zusammenspiel von CC und der Verwertungsgesellschaft in Dänemark.

Danach gab es Party und Reste der Torte. Creative Commons: Rock on!

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10 Jahre CC: Lizenzen werden bald auch für Laien besser verständlich sein

2012-12-08T09:39:47Z

Die nächste Version der Creative-Commons-Lizenzen soll den “Hack des urheberrechtlichen Maximalschutzes” weiter erleichtern. Ein Ausblick von John H. Weitzmann (zuerst erschienen bei Zeit.de).

Anders als oft kolportiert ist Creative Commons keine Alternative zum Urheberrecht und will das auch gar nicht sein. Die durch die Non-Profit-Organisation Creative Commons (CC) entwickelten Lizenzen würden ohne den Unterbau des Urheberrechts auch gar nicht funktionieren. Sie sollen vielmehr einen vertraglichen “Hack” des urheberrechtlichen Maximalschutzes darstellen, der in Zeiten des Internets teils zu einer echten Belastung geworden ist.

Entsprechend hat sich CC seit seinem Start im Jahre 2002 auf die Fahnen geschrieben, einen möglichst laientauglichen Weg zu bieten, den ganz strikten urheberrechtlichen Schutz namens “alle Rechte vorbehalten” loszuwerden, der automatisch eintritt, sobald ein Werk geschaffen ist. Wenn also gesagt wird, jemand “schütze sein Werk mittels CC-Lizenz”, dann ist das zumindest missverständlich. Geschützt wird das Werk stets nur durch die staatliche Rechtsordnung und ihre Gesetze. Wer ein Werk mit einer CC-Lizenz versehen veröffentlicht, fährt diesen Schutz bewusst zurück und kann dies zudem abgestuft in sechs verschiedenen Schritten tun.

Dafür gibt es sechs verschiedene CC-Lizenzen, die sich aus der Kombination von vier verschiedenen Lizenzelementen ergeben, von denen eines in jeder Lizenzvariante enthalten ist: Wo und durch wen das lizenzierte Werk auch genutzt wird, es muss immer der Name des Urhebers genannt werden. Letztlich sind CC-Lizenzen an die Allgemeinheit gerichtete Erlaubnisse, das betreffende Werk zu nutzen. Je nach Anwendungsfall kann der Urheber diese Erlaubnis durch Bedingungen einschränken, indem er die passende der sechs Lizenzvarianten einsetzt.

Da individuelles Aushandeln somit obsolet wird – man kann ja an der Standardlizenz erkennen, was man als Nutzer darf und was nicht – sollen die so lizenzierten Werke und Inhalte einfacher im Netz zirkulieren können. Die rechtlichen Transaktionskosten sollen den technischen angenähert werden, die im Internet nahe Null liegen.

Nun feiert CC mit zahlreichen Veranstaltungen weltweit die ersten zehn Jahre seiner Aktivitäten. In dieser Dekade ist viel erreicht worden. Hunderte Millionen Einzelwerke im gesamten Internet, die Zahl ist nicht genau ermittelbar, sind heute CC-lizenziert und damit – je nach konkret gewählter Lizenzvariante – mehr oder weniger freigegeben und nachnutzbar für jedermann. Sie machen die eigentlichen “creative commons”, also die “kreative Allmende” aus, die CC im Namen trägt. Durch diese rege Verwendung seiner Lizenzen hat sich CC inzwischen zu einer Art universellem Hintergrunddienstleister für zahllose Initiativen entwickelt, die darauf setzen, dass Inhalte zugänglich und nachnutzbar sind, eben “Open Content”.

Die Spannbreite der Dinge, mit denen sich diese Initiativen beschäftigen, ist so groß, dass sie an dieser Stelle nicht einmal im Ansatz abbildbar ist. Sie reicht von der Wikipedia über viele wesentlich kleinere, spezialisierte Wissenssammlungen, geodatenbasierte Projekte, Metadatenaggregatoren, öffentliche Datenangebote, Videoportale, Bilddatenbanken, Webradios und Samplingverzeichnisse bis zu politischen und sozialen Initiativen, NGOs und Kampagnen und, nicht zu vergessen, einer immensen Zahl von Blogs.

Wie in jedem System gibt es natürlich auch im CC-Lizenzsystem immer wieder Schwierigkeiten. Das drückt sich nicht zuletzt darin aus, dass die CC-Lizenzen bereits dreimal “versioniert” wurden, also überarbeitet, zuletzt im Jahre 2007. Derzeit steht die Version 4.0 kurz vor der Fertigstellung, die viele Jahre Bestand haben soll. Sie soll vor allem auch für Laien verständlicher sein.

Zudem regelt sie den Umgang mit Datenbankenrechten neu. Gemeint sind Schutzrechte, die an Datenbanken selbst dann entstehen, wenn deren Elemente selbst keinerlei schöpferische Qualität haben und darum auch nicht urheberrechtlich geschützt sind. Dennoch besteht dann ein Schutzrecht an der Datenbank selbst, welches nun mit Version 4.0 in die zentrale Gruppe der Rechte aufgenommen wird, die man mittels CC-Lizenz lizenziert.

Eine weitere Schwierigkeit liegt in der Definition des beliebten Lizenzbausteins “nur nicht-kommerzielle Nutzung erlaubt” (abgekürzt NC). Diese Definition ist in den entsprechenden Lizenztexten relativ offen formuliert, was einerseits verschiedene Gruppen dazu nutzen, um ihre eigenen Vorstellungen von “kommerziell versus nicht-kommerziell” zu entwickeln. Andererseits erhöht die unscharfe Formulierung aber auch die Rechtsunsicherheit für diejenigen, die versuchen einzuschätzen, ob sie selbst beziehungsweise ihr Handeln nun als kommerziell im Sinne der Lizenzen zu gelten hat oder nicht.

Und ganz allgemein besteht bei CC-Lizenzen – wie bei allen Open-Content-Lizenzen – das Problem, dass sie oft nicht eingehalten werden. Mitunter geschieht dies sogar bewusst, und die möglichen Konsequenzen wie Abmahnungen und gerichtliche Klagen werden als bloßer Kostenfaktor ins jeweilige Geschäftsmodell des Verletzers mit eingepreist. Gerade hier sind Weiterentwicklungen nötig und in Planung. Zukünftig sollen CC-Lizenzgeber die Möglichkeit bekommen, ihre Rechte bei Verletzungen der Lizenzen mit weniger Aufwand durchzusetzen. Mittelfristig wird dies voraussichtlich zu weniger Lizenzverletzungen führen und die entstehende kreative Allmende noch nachhaltiger werden lassen.

Besonders aktiv ist CC als Organisation derzeit im Bereich frei nutzbarer Bildungsressourcen (Open Educational Resources – OER). Auch nimmt CC mit seinem kürzlich neu gebildeten “Science Advisory Board” die Fäden seines zwischenzeitlich eingestellten Projekts “Science Commons” wieder auf und setzt sich dafür ein, dass Forschungsergebnisse und Materialien, die Grundlage für weitere Forschungen sein können, mit möglichst wenigen rechtlichen Beschränkungen belegt werden.

Dieser Text ist bei Zeit Online unter der CC-Lizenz BY 3.0 de lizenziert, hier bei netzpolitik.org werden alle Artikel unter der im Footer verlinkten CC-Lizenz BY-NC-SA 3.0 de veröffentlicht.

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Urheberrechtspolitik jenseits von Urheberrechtsreform: Artikel bei Zeit Online

2012-12-07T10:05:22Z

Anlässlich des zehnjährigen Geburtstags von Creative Commons, der morgen in Berlin im Haus Ungarn in Berlin gefeiert wird, durfte ich für Zeit Online einen längeren Beitrag zu den Potentialen von Creative Commons verfassen. Kernbotschaft meines Artikels: Urheberrechtspolitik ist auch jenseits von Urheberrechtsreform sinnvoll und möglich:

Denn glücklicherweise muss sich Urheberrechtspolitik nicht auf Veränderungen des Urheberrechts beschränken. In vielen Bereichen lässt sie sich sogar ganz ohne Änderung von Gesetzen betreiben. Der Schlüssel für eine Versöhnung des Urheberrechts mit der digitalen Revolution sind alternative Urheberrechtslizenzen wie Creative Commons. Sie basieren zwar auf dem Urheberrecht, räumen Dritten jedoch bestimmte Nutzungen ein, die längst zum Alltag gehören: öffentliches Zugänglichmachen, digitale Weitergabe und, je nach Lizenzmodul, auch Remix und kommerzielle Verwertung.

Mit der Überschrift, die die Zeit-Online-Redaktion gewählt hat, bin ich aber nicht ganz glücklich. Viele Probleme wie zum Beispiel transformativer Konsum und zu enge Schranken was Remix bestehender Werke betrifft, erfordern natürlich eine Anpassung des Urheberrechts. Creative Commons bietet aber viele Möglichkeiten auf unterschiedlichsten politischen Ebenen, sofort die Situation zu verbessern, und erlaubt flexibler auf unterschiedliche Rahmenbedingungen Rücksicht zu nehmen. Aber lest selbst.

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#cc10: Glückwünsche, Parties, Mixtapes … und Torte!

2012-12-05T14:29:21Z

Noch zwei Tage, dann startet die Geburtstagswoche zur Feier von 10 Jahren Creative Commons. Die entsprechende Seite im CC-Wiki listet bereits 23 Events in so ziemlich allen Teilen der Welt. Unsere durch Wikimedia Deutschland unterstützte CC10-Party in Berlin steigt am kommenden Samstag im @hausungarn (Ex-HBC) in der Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 9, vorher ab 20 Uhr erzählen einige Protagonisten aus dem deutschen CC-Umfeld vom Stand der Dinge und wie es dazu kam (vorläufiges Programm im CC DE Blog). Am 14.12. wird dann auch in München #cc10 gefeiert, siehe Ankündigung.

Zusätzlich soll ein Video mit weltweiten Glückwünschen entstehen. CC Headquarters ruft darum dazu auf, kurze Clips mit “Happy Birthday CC” oder dem Äquivalent in der jeweiligen Landessprache zu machen und bis 10.12. in die CC10 Flickr group unter http://www.flickr.com/groups/2138128@N21/ hochzuladen oder per Mail an Eric Steuer (eric at creativecommons punkt org) zu schicken. Die Videos sollten möglichst hohe Auflösung haben, aber auch Handyvideos sind natürlich willkommen. Es wäre schön, wenn auch was auf Deutsch/Hessisch/Sorbisch oder sonstigen hierzulande gesprochenen Sprachen dabei wäre.

Am 12.12. erscheint dann aller Voraussicht nach das “#cc10 Mixtape”, eine Compilation von CC-lizenzierten Musiktiteln, die von den europäischen CC-Länderprojekten gemeinsam ausgewählt wurde. Ein Preview gibt es dazu bereits am Samstag bei unserer Party.

~~Bleibt~~ Blieb nur noch eine Frage: Wird es auch eine Geburtstagstorte geben? Wir haben ein bescheidenes Budget dafür (spenden kann man CC Deutschland übrigens auch, wir sind finanziell völlig unabhängig)~~, suchen aber noch Ausführende für den Torten-Plan. Gedacht war an entweder an 10 kleinere oder eine große Torte, die bis Samstag abend fertig sein müsste~~. Zur ~~Inspiration~~ Vorfreude gibt es hier ein Foto von unserer Torte zum 5. Geburtstag, aufgenommen in der c-base.

Update: Wir haben Tortenausführende gefunden!

Am 8.12. in Berlin: 10 Jahre Creative Commons – Party

2012-11-30T17:47:56Z

Im Dezember wird Creative Commons zehn Jahre alt. Wir feiern das in Berlin mit einer Party am Samstag, den 8.12. im HomeBase Club am Alexanderplatz (Ex HBC/Haus Ungarn). Zuerst gibt es rund zwei Stunden lang Programm mit Kurzvorträgen und Interviews darüber, wie Creative Commons Lizenzen in vielen unterschiedlichen Bereichen dazu beigetragen haben, eine Kultur des Teilens zu ermöglichen. Anschließend gibt es Creative Commons lizenzierte Musik von Kraftfuttermischwerk und Peter Withoutfield (Blogrebellen) zu hören.

Das Programm beginnt um 20 Uhr, Einlass ist schon ab 19 Uhr.

Was ist Creative Commons? John Weitzmann über Geschichte und Organisationsstruktur

Leonhard Dobusch über “Unnützes (historisches) Wissen” aus der Entstehung

Till Jaeger über “Wie kamen die Lizenzen nach Deutschland?”

Pavel Richter, Vorstand von Wikimedia Deutschland über die Nutzung von CC durch die Wikipedia-Community

Julia Kloiber über OpenData

Cecilia Palmer über Mode

Christine Watty (DRadio/ Breitband) über Kuration von CC-Musik und Nutzung im Radio

Philip Steffan über Maker-Culture

Constanze Kurz über Open Access

Thorsten Schilling über den Einsatz von CC bei der Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung

Mario Sixtus über den Elektrischen Reporter beim ZDF

Henrik Moltke über CC in Dänemark und die Dokumentation “Good Copy, bad Copy”

Michelle Thorne über CC-Einsatz bei Mozilla

Markus Heidmeier über Offene Bildungsmaterialien

Weitere Punkte wird es sicher auch noch geben.

Dank der Sponsoren Zeit.de und Wikimedia Deutschland gibt es etwas Freibier (wie in kostenlos Bier) und eine große Torte, solange der Vorrat reicht. Wir freuen uns natürlich über weitere Sponsoren. Einen Livestream wird es ebenfalls geben, sowie im Anschluß alle Vorträge und Interviews zum Nachschauen. Der Eintritt läuft nach dem “Bezahl, was Du willst”-Modell. Wir freuen uns dabei über Spenden, um die Party, die Torte und die Freigetränke zumindest refinanziert zu bekommen.

Der Ort: HomeBase Club (ex-HBC) am Alexanderplatz, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 9, 10178 Berlin.

Am 8.12. feiert Berlin 10 Jahre Creative Commons

2012-11-20T09:22:39Z

Im Dezember wird Creative Commons zehn Jahre alt. In der Woche vom 7.12. -15.12. finden dazu weltweit Veranstaltungen rund um den Geburtstag statt. Auch wir wollen in Berlin feiern und laden am Samstag, den 8.12. ins Goldneun (Ex-HBC) nahe Alexanderplatz.

Geplant ist, in verschiedenen Kurzvorträgen und Kurzinterviews aus unterschiedlichsten Disziplinen Erfolgsgeschichten bei der Nutzung von Creative Commons Lizenzen zu erzählen. Und die vergangenen zehn Jahren samt Entstehungsgeschichte zu reflektieren. Anschließend wird bei Creative Commons lizenzierter Musik getanzt und gequatscht. Beginn ist 20 Uhr. Mehr zum umfangreichen Programm gibt es in einer Woche zu lesen.

Wir suchen noch Sponsoren!

Die Veranstaltung selbst wird ehrenamtlich durchgeführt, genau wie die gesamte Arbeit bei Creative Commons Deutschland ehrenamtlich organisiert ist. Zur Refinanzierung der Veranstaltung werden jedoch Sponsoren benötigt, um einige der Kosten decken zu können. Geplant ist, über einen Livestream in HD eine Teilnahme an die Veranstaltung auch Menschen außerhalb Berlins zu ermöglichen. Entstehende Videos der Kurzvorträge und Interviews sollen anschließend geschnitten und einzeln online gestellt werden. Als weitere Highlights planen wir eine große Torte und würden gerne auch Freigetränke unter den Gästen verteilen. Und wenn ausreichend Geld über Sponsoren reinkommt, wird der Eintritt kostenlos sein.

Sollten mehr Sponsorengelder eingehen als wir an dem Abend ausgeben können, werden wir das Geld dazu verwenden, notwendige Ausgaben für Creative Commons Deutschland in der Zukunft zu finanzieren, wie z.B. mehr gedruckte Materialien für die Öffentlichkeitsarbeit.

Was erhalten Sie als Sponsor?

Mit einem kleinen Beitrag zwischen 500 oder 1000 Euro können Sie den zentralen Event des Jahres 2012 rund um Creative Commons Lizenzen in Deutschland fördern und dabei sein. In allen Druckmaterialien werden Sie mit Ihrem Logo genannt, dazu natürlich in der Videodokumentation und auf unserer Webseite. Ab einer Fördersumme von 1000 Euro können Sie optional in einem kurzen Gast-Beitrag im Veranstaltungsprogramm in 3-5 Minuten erklären, warum Sie Creative Commons Lizenzen unterstützen und was Ihnen die Lizenzen in Ihrem Geschäft / als Privatperson bringen.

Erste Sponsoren sind der Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. und Zeit-Online.

Für weitere Fragen steht Ihnen Markus Beckedahl zur Verfügung: 030 – 92105986 oder mb ett newthinking_de.

Wer steht hinter Creative Commons Deutschland?

Creative Commons Deutschland ist die deutsche Repräsentanz von Creative Commons und wird dabei von der gemeinnützigen Europäischen EDV-Akademie des Rechts (EEAR) sowie der newthinking communications GmbH unterstützt. Creative Commons Deutschland ist im Übrigen vollkommen unabhängig von der Mutterorganisation in den USA.

Historische CDU-Wahlplakate unter CC-Lizenz

2012-11-19T14:24:53Z

Die Konrad Adenauer Stiftung hat die Plakatdatenbank des “Archivs für Christlich-Demokratische Politik” neu gelauncht. Sehr lobenswert ist, dass alle Plakate jetzt unter der Creative Commons BY-SA – Lizenz stehen und damit auch in der Wikipedia genutzt werden können. Das ist ein schönes Beispiel dafür, wie sich Archive ans digitale Zeitalter anpassen und ihre Bestände nutzbar machen können. Eine Pressemitteilung erklärt, um welche Plakate es sich handelt und was die Motivation dahinter ist:

Das Spektrum umfasst die ältesten und wertvollsten Plakate der Sammlung, d.h. Anordnungen und Proklamationen der Alliierten vom Ende des 1. Weltkrieges 1918, Plakate aus der Weimarer Republik und Exponate vom Ende des 2. Weltkrieges. Es folgen länderübergreifend Plakate aus der Gründungszeit von den ersten Kommunal- und Landtagswahlen ab 1946, die teilweise bis in die jüngste Vergangenheit hinein reichen. Ein besonderer Schwerpunkt liegt auf Plakaten aus Nordrhein-Westfalen. Die Bundestagswahlplakate, mehr als 4.500 an der Zahl, wurden komplettiert und aktualisiert. Zudem sind erstmals die Wandzeitungen der CDU von den Anfängen unter Ludwig Erhard 1964 bis zur neuesten Ausgabe zu sehen. Viele der hier aus dem Dunkel der Vergangenheit hervorgeholten Plakate dürften unbekannt oder in Vergessenheit geraten sein. Ihre Betrachtung und die Auseinandersetzung mit ihnen sollen nicht zuletzt ein neues Interesse an der Geschichte und Erforschung des politischen Plakates in Deutschland wecken und fördern.

Lobenswert ist auch, dass man eine Remix-fähige Lizenz gewählt hat. Das freut nicht nur Historiker.

(Das Plakat stammt aus dem Jahre 1949, ein Urheber wird nicht genannt. Also CC-BY-SA CDU.)

Qualitätsfoto-Community 500px jetzt mit Creative-Commons-Option

2012-11-16T22:05:47Z

Die kanadische Foto-Plattform 500px hat sich auf qualitativ besonders hochwertige Bilder spezialisiert. Fotos werden dort auf Basis eines Algorithmus promoted, der Views, Votes, Favoriten, Dislikes und anderes auswertet, um die Qualität eines Bildes einzuschätzen. Wie 500px heute in einer Pressemeldung bekannt gab, bietet die Plattform ab sofort auch eine Creative-Commons-Option, wie es sie beispielsweise bei Flickr schon lange gibt. Unter der sehr liberalen Creative Commons (CC) Namensnennung-Lizenz steht beispielsweise folgendes Foto des Eiffelturms bei Tag:

Adam Shutsa, CC-BY

Ein Foto des Eiffelturms bei Nacht wird allerdings auch bei 500px nicht so schnell unter einer CC-Lizenz mit kommerzieller Nutzungsmöglichkeit zu finden sein, beansprucht doch dessen Betreibergesellschaft „SETE – illuminations Pierre Bideau“ das Urheberrecht für nächtliche Aufnahmen, in denen der bestrahlte Eiffelturm als Hauptobjekt zu sehen ist (vgl. “Fotofallen – Juristische Klippen bei der Veröffentlichung von Bildern im Web“).

Future of culture & IP & beating of books in San Jose, Thursday

2012-11-14T04:45:15Z

I’m looking forward to this “in conversation” event with artist Stephanie Syjuco. The ZERO1 Garage is a neat space, and Syjuco’s installation, FREE TEXTS: An Open Source Reading Room, is just right.

For background on my part of the conversation, perhaps read my bit on the future of copyright and my interview with Lewis Hyde, author of at least one of the treated FREE TEXTS (in the title of this post “beating of books” is a play on “beating of bounds”; see the interview, one of my favorite posts ever to the Creative Commons blog).

…

One of the things that makes FREE TEXTS just right is that “IP” makes for a cornucopia of irony (Irony Ponies for all?), and one of the specialty fruits therein is literature extolling the commons and free expression and problematizing copyright … subject to unmitigated copyright and expensive in time and/or money to access, let alone modify.

Even when a text is in-theory offered under a public license, thus mitigating copyright (but note, it is rare for any such mitigation to be offered), access to a digital copy is often frustrated, and access to a conveniently modified copy, almost unknown. The probability of these problems occurring reaches near certainty if a remotely traditional publisher is involved.

Two recent examples that I’m second-hand familiar with (I made small contributions). All chapters of Wealth of the Commons (Levellers Press, 2012) with the exception of one are released under the CC-BY-SA license. But only a paper version of the book is now available. I understand that digital copies (presumably for sale and gratis) will be available sometime next year. Some chapters are now available as HTML pages, including mine. The German version of the book (Transcript, 2012), published earlier this year with a slightly different selection of essays, is all CC-BY-SA and available in whole as a PDF, and some chapters as HTML pages, again including mine (but if one were to nitpick, the accompanying photo under CC-BY-NC-SA is incongruous).

The Social Media Reader (New York University Press, 2012) consists mostly of chapters under free licenses (CC-BY and CC-BY-SA) and a couple under CC-BY-NC-SA, with the collection under the last. Apparently it is selling well for such a book, but digital copies are only available with select university affiliation. Fortunately someone uploaded a PDF copy to the Internet Archive, as the licenses permit.

In the long run, these can be just annoyances and make-work, at least to the extent the books consist of material under free licenses. Free-as-in-freedom does not have to mean free-as-in-price. Even without any copyright mitigation, it’s common for digital books to be made available in various places, as FREE TEXTS highlights. Under free licenses, it becomes feasible for people to openly collaborate to make improved, modifiable, annotatable versions available in various formats. This is currently done for select books at Wikibooks (educational, neutral point of view, not original research) and Wikisource (historically significant). I don’t know of a community for this sort of work on other classes of books, but I’d be happy to hear of such, and may eventually have to start doing it if not. Obvious candidate platforms include Mediawiki, Booktype, and source-repository-per-book.

…

You can register for the event (gratis) in order to help determine seating and refreshments. I expect the conversation to be considerably more wide ranging than the above might imply!

CODATA

2012-11-11T00:29:19Z

Last week I attended CODATA 2012 in Taipei, the biannual conference of the Committee on Data for Science and Technology. I struggled a bit with deciding to go — I am not a “data scientist” nor a scientist and while I know a fair amount about some of the technical and policy issues for data management, specific application to science has never been my expertise, all away from my current focus, and I’m skeptical of travel.

I finally went in order to see through a session on mass collaboration data projects and policies that I developed with Tyng-Ruey Chuang and Shun-Ling Chen. A mere rationalization as they didn’t really need my presence, but I enjoyed the conference and trip anyway.

My favorite moments from the panel:

Mikel Maron said approximately “not only don’t silo your data, don’t silo your code” (see a corresponding bullet in his slides), a point woefully and consistently underestimated and ignored by “open” advocates.

Chen’s eloquent polemic closing with approximately “mass collaboration challenges not only Ⓒ but distribution of power, authority, credibility”; I hope she publishes her talk content!

My slides from the panel (odp, pdf, slideshare) and from an open data workshop following the conference (odp, pdf, slideshare).

Tracey Lauriault summarized the mass collaboration panel (all of it, check out the parts I do not mention), including:

Mike Linksvayer, was provocative in stating that copyright makes us stupider and is stupid and that it should be abolished all together. I argued that for traditional knowledge where people are seriously marginalized and where TK is exploited, copyright might be the only way to protect themselves.

I’m pretty sure I only claimed that including copyright in one’s thinking about any topic, e.g., data policy, effectively makes one’s thinking about that topic more muddled and indeed stupid. I’ve posted about this before but consider a post enumerating the ways copyright makes people stupid individually and collectively forthcoming.

I didn’t say anything about abolishing copyright, but I’m happy for that conclusion to be drawn — I’d be even happier for the conclusion to be drawn that abolition is a moderate reform and boring (in no-brainer and non-interesting senses) among the possibilities for information and innovation policies — indeed, copyright has made society stupid about these broader issues. I sort of make these points in my future of copyright piece that Lauriault linked to, but will eventually address them directly.

Also, Traditional Knowledge, about which I’ve never posted unless you count my claim that malgovernance of the information commons is ancient, for example cult secrets (mentioned in first paragraph of previous link), though I didn’t have contemporary indigenous peoples in mind, and TK covers a wide range of issues. Indeed, my instinct is to divide these between issues where traditional communities are being excluded from their heritage (e.g., plant patents, institutionally-held data and items, perhaps copyrestricted cultural works building on traditional culture) and where they would like to have a collective right to exclude information from the global public domain.

…

The theme of CODATA 2012 was “Open Data and Information for a Changing Planet” and the closing plenary appropriately aimed to place the entire conference in that context, and question its impact and followup. That included the inevitable asking whether anyone would notice. At the beginning of the conference attendees were excitedly encouraged to tweet, and if I understood correctly, there were some conference staff to be dedicated to helping people tweet. As usual, I find this sort of exhortation and dedication of resources to social media scary. But what about journalists? How can we make the media care?

Fortunately for (future) CODATA and other science and data related events, there’s a great answer (usually there isn’t one), but one I didn’t hear mentioned at all outside of my own presentation: invite data journalists. They could learn a lot from other attendees, have a meta story about exactly the topic they’re passionate about, and an inside track on general interest data-driven stories developing from data-driven science in a variety of fields — for example the conference featured a number of sessions on disaster data. Usual CODATA science and policy attendees would probably also learn a lot about how to make their work interesting for data journalists, and thus be able to celebrate rather than whinge when talking about media. A start on that learning, and maybe ideas for people to invite might come from The Data Journalism Handbook (disclaimer: I contributed what I hope is the least relevant chapter in the whole book).

Someone asked how to move forward and David Carlson gave some conceptually simple and very good advice, paraphrased:

Adopt an open access data publishing policy at the inception of a project.

Invest in data staff — human resources are the limiting factor.

Start publishing and doing small experiments with data very early in a project’s life.

Someone also asked about “citizen science”, to which Carlson also had a good answer (added to by Jane Hunter and perhaps others), in sum roughly:

Community monitoring (data collection) may be a more accurate name for part of what people call citizen science;

but the community should be involved in many more aspects of some projects, up to governance;

don’t assume “citizen scientists” are non-scientists: often they’ll have scientific training, sometimes full-time scientists contributing to projects outside of work.

To bring this full circle (and very much aligned with the conference’s theme and Carlson’s first recommendation above) would have been consideration of scientist-as-citizen. Fortunately I had serendipitously titled my “open data workshop” presentation for the next day “Open data policy for scientists as citizens and for citizen science”.

Finally, “data citation” was another major topic of the conference, but semantic web/linked open data not explicitly mentioned much, as observed by someone in the plenary. I tend to agree, but may have missed the most relevant sessions, though they may have been my focus if I was actually working in the field. I did really enjoy happening to sit next to Curt Tilmes at a dinner, and catching up a bit on W3C Provenance (I’ve mentioned briefly before) of which he is a working group member.

…

I got to spend a little time outside the conference. I’d been to Taipei once before, but failed to notice its beautiful setting — surrounded and interspersed with steep and very green hills.

I visited National Palace Museum with Puneet Kishor. I know next to nothing about feng shui, but I was struck by what seemed to be an ultra-favorable setting (and made me think of feng shui, which I never have before in my life, without someone else bringing it up) taking advantage of some of the aforementioned hills. I think the more one knows about Chinese history the more one would get out of the museum, but for someone who loves maps, the map room alone is worth the visit.

It was also fun hanging out a bit with Christopher Adams and Sophie Chiang, catching up with Bob Chao and seeing the booming Mozilla Taiwan offices, and meeting Florence Ko, Lucien Lin, and Rock of Open Source Software Foundry and Emily from Creative Commons Taiwan.

Finally, thanks to Tyng-Ruey Chuang, one of the main CODATA 2012 local organizers, and instigator of our session and workshop. He is one of the people I most enjoyed working with while at Creative Commons (e.g., a panel from last year) and given some overlapping technology and policy interests, one of the people I could most see working with again.

#cc10: Party am 8. Dezember und T-Shirt-Contest

2012-11-09T06:46:23Z

Das Lieblings-T-Shirt in allen Ehren, aber es gibt kaum etwas langweiligeres als immer dieselben Sprüche auf Vorder- bzw Rückseite der Mitmenschen zu lesen. Creative Commons mit seinem Merchandise macht da keine Ausnahme. Darum ruft Creative Commons Deutschland anlässlich des 10. Geburtstags von CC, für den wir am 8.12.2012 eine Party in Berlin planen (alle Events weltweit übrigens im CC-Wiki) den großen

#cc10-T-Shirt-Contest

aus. Wenn Ihr etwas Ahnung von Design habt und schon immer Creative Commons unterstützen wolltet, ist das jetzt Eure Chance. Nun hat Creative Commons Deutschland nie viel Spenden erhalten, weil in der Regel direkt in die USA gespendet wird. Wir können also leider keinen finanziellen Gewinn ausschreiben, haben uns aber was anderes überlegt: Zu gewinnen gibt es neben der Nennung des eigenen Namens auf wahrscheinlich weltweit getragener Baumwolle zehn T-Shirts für Platz 1, fünf Stück für Platz 2 (natürlich mit dem jeweils eigenen Entwurf drauf) und für Platz 3 zusätzlich zum T-Shirt ein exklusives #cc10-Mixtape (zum Abspielen wird ein Kassettendeck o.ä. benötigt). Die Jury besteht aus dem erweiterten CC DE Affiliate Team (Das sind u.a. Markus und ich).

Teilnahmebedingungen sind:

1. Der Entwurf muss bis einschließlich 30. November gemailt sein an public BEI creativecommons.de, notfalls reicht bei großen Dateien ein Link zu einem Filehoster,

2. die Datei muss eine ausreichende Auflösung für T-Shirt-Druck haben und

3. unter CC-BY 3.0 de lizenziert sein.

Natürlich sollte Motiv/Spruch auch möglichst etwas mit CC zu tun haben. Die Verwendung des CC-Logos (Hier als Druckvorlage zu finden), das als Marke geschützt ist, ist für den Contest ausdrücklich zugelassen.

Anhörung zu Open Educational Resources: Antworten auf 35 Fragen

2012-11-06T09:29:32Z

Diesen Donnerstag findet auf Einladung des Bundesministeriums für Bildung und Forschung gemeinsam mit der Kultusministerkonferenz eine ganztägige Anhörung zum Thema “Open Educational Resources” (OER) statt (vgl. “Open Education: Milliarden in den USA, Fragen in Deutschland“). Insgesamt wurden 25 Personen aus Wissenschaft, Zivilgesellschaft und Verlagsbranche eingeladen und bereits vorab um eine Stellungnahme zu rund 35 Fragen gebeten, die mit der Einladung versandt wurden (DOC).

Im folgenden meine Antworten auf die 35 Fragen, die, wie ich an den Antworten der anderen Teilnehmer der Anhörung sehen konnte, weder vollständig noch unumstritten sind.

1.     Ausgangslage

a) In welcher Form haben Sie derzeit mit dem Themenfeld „Open Educational Resources“ zu tun?

Ich habe derzeit in mehrfacher Hinsicht mit dem Themenfeld „Open Educational Resources“ zu tun:

Einer meiner Forschungsschwerpunkte ist private Urheberrechtsregulierung mittels standardisierter Urheberrechtslizenzen (z.B. Creative Commons). Open Educational Resources sind in diesem Zusammenhang ein Feld, in dem diese Lizenzen besonders intensive Anwendung finden. Dabei lassen sich im Bereich von OER auch die Auseinandersetzung um die Verwendung verschiedener Lizenzversionen und –module (z.B. das NonCommercial-Modul bei Creative Commons) sehr gut beobachten.

Als Lehrender an einer Universität spielen für mich Fragen der Zugänglichkeit sowie Zugänglichmachung auch eine praktische Rolle.

Schließlich beschäftige ich mich publizistisch seit mehreren Jahren mit dem Thema, unter anderem als Herausgeber von Büchern mit Beiträgen zu OER (z.B. „Freie Netze. Freies Wissen., 2007; „Freiheit vor Ort: Handbuch kommunale Netzpolitik, 2011), als Autor eines White Papers zu „Digitaler Lehrmittelfreiheit“ sowie als Verfasser von Blogeinträgen (z.B. für netzpolitik.org, werkstatt.bpb.de).

b) Wie bewerten Sie die

Wirkungen des OER-Einsatzes bisher, die Potenziale,

Klar ist, dass OER bislang noch in den Kinderschuhen steckt, vor allem in Deutschland. In Ländern wie den USA, wo schon seit ca. 10 Jahren Gelder in die Erstellung und Zugänglichmachung von OER fließen, lassen sich jedoch bereits eine Reihe von Folgen beobachten:

Zugänglichmachung von Kursunterlagen gehört insbesondere an Spitzenuniversitäten wie MIT und Harvard mittlerweile zu guter universitärer Praxis, wird aber vermehrt zum Standard im US-Hochschulbereich.

Entstehung von Portalen zum Austausch von frei verfügbaren Lernunterlagen (z.B. www.oercommons.org)

Entstehung neuer Lehr- und Lernformen wie beispielsweise großzahlige, zertifizierte Online-Lernangebote („Massive Online Open Courses“, MOOC)

Entwicklung von neuen Geschäftsmodellen auf Basis von OER (siehe auch weiter unten Antwort zu 5c)

Quantitative Analysen der Auswirkungen von OER liegen bislang kaum vor, allerdings beschäftigt sich derzeit das EU-finanzierte Forschungsprojekt OEREU mit diesbezüglichen Fragestellungen.

Für Deutschland lässt sich diese Frage bislang nur hinsichtlich der Potenziale beantworten. Kurz zusammengefasst sind die Potentiale groß, aber bislang komplett ungenutzt. Zu den mit OER verbundenen Potentialen zählt u.a.:

besserer Zugang zu digitalen Lernunterlagen für sämtliche Akteure, inklusive die Möglichkeit zum Selbststudium und neuen Lernformen wie großzahligen und zertifizierten Online-Lernangeboten (MOOC).

bessere digitale Nutzbarkeit von Lernunterlagen, weil die Klärung von Rechten durch die Verwendung von offenen Lizenzen (z.B. Creative Commons) radikal vereinfacht wird.

bessere Vergleichbarkeit digitaler Lernunterlagen für Lehrende, Lernende, Eltern und Politik.

Einfachere Kombinierbarkeit verschiedener Lernunterlagen und damit verbunden die Verbesserung der Lernerfahrung.

Verbesserung der Qualität von Lernunterlagen durch mehr Möglichkeiten zu Feedback und Remix verschiedener Lernunterlagen. Damit verbunden ist das Potential für vermehrte didaktische Innovation.

Mehr qualitätsorientierter Wettbewerb, vor allem im derzeit oligopolistischen Markt für Schulbücher.

Zusammengenommen folgt aus diesen einzelnen Punkten das Potential, mittel- bis langfristig den Bildungserfolg ganz allgemein zu verbessern.

die Risiken und

Ein Risiko besteht darin, dass politische EntscheidungsträgerInnen in OER weniger eine Chance für bessere Bildung als vielmehr eine Möglichkeit zu Kostensenkungen erblicken. Die eigentliche Stärke von Open Education liegt darin, dass sich kurzfristig Zugang und Kombinierbarkeit, mittel- bis langfristig aber Qualität von Lernunterlagen und damit Lernen verbessern. Diese Stärke kann aber nur dann eingelöst werden, wenn weiterhin ausreichend Mittel in Erstellung und Verbesserung von Lernunterlagen fließen.

Herausforderungen,

die sich aus dem Einsatz von OER ergeben (können)?

Die größte Herausforderung besteht vorerst darin, überhaupt die Erstellung und den Einsatz von OER zu ermöglichen bzw. zu fördern. In Deutschland wird OER bislang von staatlicher Seite nur sehr spärlich überhaupt als Thema identifiziert. Konkret ergeben sich deshalb folgende Herausforderungen:

Bekanntheit und Wissensstand erhöhen: das Konzept von OER ebenso wie Methoden und Best Practice (Vgl. z.B. das OPAL Clearinghouse mit Best Practices im Bereich OER) im Umgang mit OER sind unter einschlägigen Zielgruppen (Lehrkräfte, Lernende etc.) noch relativ unbekannt.

Qualitätskontrolle und Standards: vor allem im Bereich dezentral erstellter OER gilt es, neue Formen der Qualitätskontrolle zu entwickeln (siehe unten, Antwort zu Frage 4b)

Nachhaltige Finanzierung: Mittelfristig erfordern OER eine Umstellung im Bereich der Bildungsfinanzierung, um Koordinations- und Zertifizierungsstellen für OER ebenso wie Erstellung und Überarbeitung von OER dauerhaft zu finanzieren.

Ganz allgemein folgt aus diesen Punkten, dass die Herausforderung darin besteht, weniger nur die Erstellung von Unterlagen („Resources“) in den Blick zu nehmen, sondern auf OER-Praktiken und Kompetenzen abzustellen.

c) Welche Bildungsbereiche (insb. Schule, Hochschule und Berufliche Bildung, auch nonformale und informelle Bildung) könnten profitieren, welche eher nicht?

Die bisherigen internationalen Erfahrungen zeigen, dass OER bislang vor allem im Hochschulbereich von wachsender Bedeutung ist und vergleichsweise einfach implementiert werden kann.

Ein zweiter Bereich, in dem sich OER stark wachsender Beliebtheit erfreut, ist der Bereich der nonformalen und informellen Bildung, vgl. z.B. die Khan Academy.

Der dritte Bereich, in dem in jüngster Zeit vermehrt Initiativen gestartet wurden, ist jener der Erwachsenen- und Weiterbildung, z.B. in Form der bereits erwähnten, zertifizierten und offenen Online-Kurse (MOOC).

In anderen Bereichen wie der Schule und der beruflichen Bildung ist zwar der potentielle Nutzen mindestens vergleichbar wenn nicht sogar noch größer, allerdings ist dieser Bereich traditionell stärker reguliert und gleichzeitig von größer organisationaler Dezentralität gekennzeichnet, weshalb hier größere Anstrengungen von Seiten der öffentlichen Träger erforderlich sind, um die Potentiale von OER zu realisieren.

2.     Technik
a) Welche technischen Anforderungen sind Ihrer Meinung nach Grundvoraussetzung für die Bereitstellung, Verwaltung, Weiterverarbeitung/-verwendung und Nutzung eines wachsenden OER-Bestandes?

Die Hauptherausforderungen für den erfolgreichen Einsatz von OER sind organisatorischer, finanzieller und rechtlicher Natur. Die technischen Anforderungen für OER sind verglichen damit gering und betreffen vor allem den Bereich der Vernetzung und Erfassung von OER-Beständen.

b) Welche dieser Voraussetzungen sehen Sie als bereits erfüllt an?

Zentral aus technischer Sicht ist, dass OER definitionsgemäß in offenen Formaten zugänglich gemacht werden müssen und demnach auch auf verschiedensten Endgeräten zum Einsatz kommen können. Diese Formate existieren, sie müssen nur genutzt werden.

c) In welchen Bereichen sehen Sie noch Klärungs- bzw. Forschungs- oder Entwicklungsbedarf?

Ganz allgemein gibt es noch Forschungs- und Entwicklungsbedarf im Bereich von Metadaten-Erfassung, Einbettung von Lizenzinformationen sowie Vernetzung verteilter Repositorien. Forschung findet hier im Bereich von Semantic-Web-Technologien statt. Das ist aber keine Voraussetzung für die Einführung von OER, sondern kann eher deren Effektivität und Potentiale in der Zukunft noch weiter steigern.

d) Bringen OER aus Ihrer Sicht besondere Probleme in Hinblick auf die technische Umsetzung des Datenschutzes mit sich?

Die Datenschutz-Implikationen von OER sind nicht größer als von sonstigen digitalen Lernunterlagen bzw. tendenziell sogar geringer. Da OER möglichst die Verwendung offener Formate und von Open Source Software vorschreibt, sind die Funktionalitäten transparenter als bei Closed-Source-Anwendungen, was die Nachvollziehbarkeit auch hinsichtlich datenschutzrelevanter Aspekte verbessert.

e) Wäre eine Distribution von Lehrvideos über Plattformen wie YouTube oder I-Tunes U sinnvoll?

Wichtig ist die Bereitstellung von Lernunterlagen in offenen Formaten und unter offenen Lizenzen. Ist das der Fall, ist die Verbreitung über Plattformen wie YouTube oder iTunes U ohnehin ebenfalls möglich. Umgekehrt ist das nicht notwendigerweise der Fall: Lehrvideos auf iTunes U sind nicht ohne weiteres auch auf anderen Plattformen verfügbar.

Zentrale Eigenschaft von OER ist also deren Plattformunabhängigkeit.

f) Halten Sie mobile Endgeräte (z.B. Tablet PC) mit permanentem (Internet-) Zugang zu den OER für eine notwendige Voraussetzung zur selbständigen, ortsunabhängigen Nutzung durch z.B. Schülerinnen und Schüler oder Studentinnen und Studenten?

Die Ausstattung von Schülerinnen und Schülern bzw. Studentinnen und Studenten mit mobilen Endgeräten ist sicherlich von Vorteil für die Einsetzbarkeit und Verbreitung von OER. Zentral ist aber auch in diesem Zusammenhang, dass OER definitionsgemäß in offenen, das heißt plattformunabhängig zugänglichen Formaten vorliegen.

Viele digitale Lernunterlagen lassen zumindest zeitweise auch ohne Internetzugang nutzen. Permanenter Internetzugang ist sicher keine Voraussetzung, aber gleichzeitig wegen der standardmäßigen WLAN-Fähigkeit mobiler Endgeräte sowie der Verbreitung von Smartphones (Tethering) ein Problem von abnehmender Relevanz.

3.     Recht
a) In wie weit sehen Sie die Musterlizenzen und Vorschläge der OECD (PDF) zum Umgang mit OER in Fragen des Urheberrechtes auf Deutschland übertragbar?

Das wichtigste bei der Lizenzwahl im Bereich OER sind zwei Punkte: Erstens sollte die Lizenz so offen wie möglich sein, um eine Rekombination von Inhalten zu erleichtern. Zweitens sollte auf Standardlizenzen oder damit kompatible Lizenzen (z.B. Creative Commons) zurückgegriffen werden.

Der Vorteil von Standardlizenzen wie Creative Commons ist, dass dafür auch an das deutsche Recht angepasste Lizenzversionen vorliegen und diese auch in Deutschland bereits hinsichtlich ihrer gerichtlichen Durchsetzbarkeit erprobt sind. Hinzu kommt, dass Creative-Commons-Lizenzen auf Besonderheiten des Europäischen Urheberrechts wie weitreichende Urheberpersönlichkeitsrechte Rücksicht nehmen.

Die Vorschläge der OECD sind deshalb durchaus auf die Situation in Deutschland übertragbar.

b) Bedürfte es darüber hinaus weiterer rechtlicher Vorkehrungen / Anpassungen?

Rechtliche Anpassungen zur Förderung von OER sind weniger im Bereich des Urheberrechts als vielmehr im Bereich der Regulierung hinsichtlich Erstellung und Finanzierung von Lernunterlagen (Zuwendungsrecht), insbesondere im Schulbuchbereich, erforderlich.

c) In wieweit ist das deutsche (europäische, Länder-) Zuwendungsrecht für eine Integration von OER anpassungsfähig?

Einer Anpassung des Zuwendungsrechts zur Berücksichtigung oder Förderung von OER ist erforderlich und sinnvoll.

d) Bringen OER aus Ihrer Sicht besondere juristische Probleme im Hinblick auf den Datenschutz mit sich?

Wie bereits oben angeführt drohen durch OER keine Datenschutzprobleme, die über herkömmliche digitale Lernunterlagen hinausgehen bzw. ist die Transparenz auf Grund der offeneren Formate und Schnittstellen tendenziell eher höher, die Nachvollziehbarkeit von datenschutzrelevanten Funktionalitäten besser gegeben.

e) Welche rechtlichen Voraussetzungen müssen geschaffen werden, um auch die Veränderung und Neuveröffentlichung von OER-Material zu ermöglichen und in wieweit ist dafür eine internationale Grundlage realisierbar?

Prinzipiell ist die Veränderung und Neuveröffentlichung von OER-Material bereits durch die Verwendung offener Lizenzstandards wie Creative Commons rechtlich möglich und benötigt keine weiteren rechtlichen Anpassungen.

Praktisch sind einer Veränderung und Neuveröffentlichung aber insofern enge Grenzen gesetzt, wenn die Unterlagen nicht gleichzeitig in offenen und editierbaren Formaten vorliegen. Offenheit bedeutet eben nicht nur Verwendung offener Urheberrechtslizenzen sondern auch offener Formate und Schnittstellen.

Diesbezügliche Vorschriften müssten vor allem im Rahmen des Vergabe- und Zuwendungsrechts bzw. konkreter Ausschreibungsbedingungen Niederschlag finden.

f) Welche Position nimmt OER Ihrer Einschätzung nach zu den modular aufgebauten Lizenzverträgen Creative Commons ein?

Allgemein hat sich die Verwendung von Creative-Commons-Lizenzen als Best-Practice im Bereich von OER etabliert. Bei der Wahl konkreter Lizenzmodule geht der Trend inzwischen klar in Richtung offenere Lizenzen, also CC-BY oder CC-BY-SA, die auch mit Inhalten der Wikipedia und deren Schwesterprojekten (z.B. Wikibooks) kompatibel und damit kombinierbar sind.

Vor allem die Verwendung des Lizenzmoduls, das kommerzielle Nutzung ausschließt („NonCommercial“ bzw. NC), wird in der Debatte um OER vermehrt kritisch diskutiert, weil sie Kombinierbarkeit und damit einen zentralen Vorteil von OER erschwert (vgl. zu diesem Themenbereich eine kürzlich von Creative Commons Deutschland, Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. und irights.info herausgegebene Broschüre: „Freies Wissen Dank Creative-Commons-Lizenzen“ (PDF)).

Gegen die Verwendung des NC-Moduls spricht nicht zuletzt, dass dieses vor allem für jene Einsatzbereiche gedacht ist, in denen die Möglichkeit selektiv-marktlicher Verwertung von Inhalten vorbehalten bleiben soll. Im Bereich öffentlich finanzierter Bildungsunterlagen ist die Verwendung dieses Lizenzmoduls aber größtenteils eher kontraproduktiv, weil kreative Nutzungsweisen erschwert werden ohne dadurch substantielle Erlösquellen zu erschließen.

g) Wäre eine Kooperation oder ein Nebeneinander verschiedenster Lizenzmodelle wie Public License oder GNU und GPL sinnvoll?

Die GNU GPL ist eine reine Software-Lizenz und sollte vor allem in diesem Bereich verwendet werden. Im Übrigen kann bei besonderen Anforderungen eine Doppellizenzierung von Vorteil sein, wenn damit der Pool an rekombinierbaren Lernunterlagen erhöht wird. Prinzipiell ist aber die Verwendung einer offenen Creative-Commons-Lizenz (insb. CC-BY) ausreichend.

4.     Bildungspolitische Potentiale
a) In wieweit sehen Sie in den Kosten für digitale Lern-Materialien derzeit eine relevante Hürde auf dem Weg zu sozial ausgeglichener Bildungspartizipation in Deutschland? Erwarten Sie positive Effekte für eine quantitativ bessere Lernbeteiligung unter der Bedingung weit verbreiteter OER?

Wie sich in den USA bereits am Phänomen offener, zertifizierter Online-Kurse (MOOC, z.B. unter www.saylor.org) oder Online-Vorlesungsreihen wie der Khan Academy zeigt, sind im Bereich von OER völlig neue Lernformen am entstehen, deren Zugänglichkeit nicht sozial exklusiv ist.

Was digitale Lerninhalte ganz allgemein betrifft, so ist ein zentrales Problem derzeit, dass diese in der Regel nur zusätzlich zu klassischen Lerninhalten – verbunden mit zusätzlichen Kosten – angeboten werden.

Trotz dieser Potentiale ist OER aber auch kein Wundermittel gegen ein sozial selektives Bildungssystem, dessen Wurzeln vor allem jenseits der Kosten für Lernunterlagen liegen.

b) OER sollen den Zugang zu qualitativ hochwertigen Lernmaterialien eröffnen. Wie beurteilen Sie die Möglichkeiten zur qualitativen Bewertung von OER-Ressourcen (z.B. z.B. peer review, Lernende)? Wie bewerten Sie die damit verbundenen Aussichten auf ein verlässliches Qualitätsniveau bzw. auf Kontrolle vor falschen bzw. manipulativen Lernressourcen unter OER-Bedingungen?

Hier gilt es zwei Dinge zu unterscheiden:

Veröffentlichung von klassischen Lernunterlagen unter freien Lizenzen: in diesen Fällen gibt es etablierte Verfahren zur Qualitätssicherung (z.B. Zulassung von Schulbüchern durch Kultusministerien), die auch für OER weiterhin Anwendung finden sollten.

Neue Formen der Aggregation dezentral von Lehrkräften erstellter oder weiterentwickelter Lernunterlagen unter freien Lizenzen: Bis zu einem gewissen Grad ist es schon heute so, dass Lehrende untereinander Lernunterlagen (z.B. Arbeitsblätter) austauschen. Durch die Verwendung freier Lizenzen wird nur die Aggregation und Aufbereitung derartiger Inhalte erleichtert. Inwieweit es sich lohnt, hier in Peer-Review und Zertifizierungsprozesse zu investieren, sollte im Rahmen von Pilotprojekten genauer untersucht werden.

Prinzipiell gilt aber, dass bei OER die Notwendigkeit von Qualitätssicherung durch Verlage, Kultusministerien und Lehrende selbst gleich bleibt.

Von Interesse in diesem Bereich sind die Ergebnisse des EU-Forschungsprojekts OPAL, das sich mit der Frage von Qualitätssicherung im OER-Bereich auseinandergesetzt hat.

c) Wie kann die Kompetenz der Lehrkräfte zur Qualitätssicherung von OER bei der Nutzung durch z. B. Schülerinnen und Schüler eingebunden werden?

Idealerweise gibt es Schulungsangebote für Lehrkräfte, bei der über vorhandene OER-Angebote und deren Nutzungsbedingungen aufgeklärt wird, so dass diese ihren Schülerinnen und Schülern diesbezüglich Empfehlungen geben können.

Abgesehen davon ändert sich allein durch OER das Verhältnis zwischen Lehrkräften und Schülerinnen und Schülern nicht grundlegend.

d) Welche Veränderungen für den Lehrbetrieb an Hochschulen bzw. Schulen würden Sie bei einer stärkeren Nutzung von OER erwarten?

Diese Frage lässt sich nicht für alle Disziplinen und Fächer gleichermaßen beantworten. In manchen Fächern, in denen klassische Vorlesungen einen großen Teil des Lehrangebots ausmachen (z.B. Rechtswissenschaften), ist bereits heute ein Trend hin zu stärkerer Inanspruchnahme von Fern- und Online-Lehrangeboten feststellbar. Im Hochschulbereich wird es also, unabhängig von OER, zu einer Ausdifferenzierung in online konsumierbare Vorlesungsangebote und interaktive, erfahrungsorientierte Lernangebote vor Ort kommen. Diesbezüglich wird sich die Arbeitsteilung innerhalb der universitären Lehre ändern. Ein verstärkter Einsatz von OER würde aber dazu führen, dass zumindest die Vorlesungsangebote auch zum Selbststudium verfügbar sowie besser untereinander vergleichbar wären.

Im Schulbereich würden OER den Lehrenden eine größere Freiheit bei der Auswahl von Lernunterlagen einräumen, die diese einfacher untereinander kombinieren und online für digitale Lesegeräte zugänglich machen könnten.

e) Welche Veränderungen kann der Einsatz von OER in der beruflichen Bildung erwirken, in denen Inhalte wie Lernmaterialien das Alleinstellungsmerkmal (Know How) eines Unternehmen bedeuten kann?

Alleinstellungsmerkmale von Unternehmen ist in den seltensten Fällen Know-how, das in Form von OER kodifizierbar und damit zugänglich machbar ist. Im Gegenteil, bei OER handelt es sich zum allergrößten Teil um nicht wettbewerbsdifferenzierendes Wissen. Eine bessere Verfügbarkeit dieses nicht wettbewerbsdifferenzierenden Wissens in deutscher Sprache in Form von OER könnte deshalb, insbesondere im internationalen Vergleich, die Wettbewerbsfähigkeit von Unternehmen stärken, weil diese ihre Anstrengungen auf die Vermittlung von wettbewerbsdifferenzierendem Wissen fokussieren könnten.

5.     Ökonomie

a) Welche Auswirkungen einer OER-Verbreitung ggf. durch staatliche Unterstützung sehen Sie für die einzelnen Bildungsbereiche sowie auf den Markt der Lernmaterialien und dessen Teilnehmer?
b) Wie bewerten Sie die Potentiale eines verstärkten Einsatzes von OER für die Budgets der öffentlichen Hand?

Kurzfristig sind mit einem verstärkten Engagement im Bereich von OER Mehrinvestitionen für den Aufbau von Infrastruktur und Kompetenzen erforderlich. Mittelfristig könnte ein verstärkter Wettbewerb aber leicht kostendämpfende Folgen haben.

c) Welche nachhaltigen Geschäftsmodelle sind für die derzeitigen oder für potenzielle neue Produzenten von Lehr-Lernmaterialien unter den Bedingungen von OER möglich? Sind Ihnen dafür bereits reale Beispiele bekannt?

Der größte Anbieter von OER-Textbüchern ~~ist~~ war bis vor kurzem das US-Unternehmen „Flatworld Knowledge“, das an Printausgaben sowie Dienstleistungen rund um seine Lehrbücher verdient.

AcademicPub wiederum lässt Lehrbücher von Professorinnen und Professoren auf Basis frei von verfügbaren OER und eigenen Lernunterlagen zusammenstellen.

Umstrittener ist das Geschäftsmodell von „Boundless“, das die Inhalte vorhandener, nicht-freier Lehrbücher mit OER-Materialen quasi nachbildet und kostengünstigere On-Demand-Printausgaben anbietet.

d) Wie sollte sich die Weiterentwicklung von OER-Material zu existierenden OER-Datenbanken wie http://www.oercommons.org/ und http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm verhalten?

Wesentliche Aufgabe von staatlichen OER-Initiativen ist die Aufbereitung Inhalten auf Basis allgemeiner und offener Metadatenstandards, sodass die Inhalte auch in bestehenden OER-Portalen eingestellt bzw. gefunden werden können.

Darüber hinaus spricht viel für die Etablierung eines öffentlichen deutschsprachigen OER-Portals, das als Wegweiser zu deutschsprachigen Inhalten dient.

6.     Sonstiges
a) Wie schätzen Sie den Bedarf und die Nachfrage für OER in Deutschland ein?

Der Bedarf an OER ist bereits heute, ohne nennenswertes Angebot, vorhanden, wie das OER-Barcamp und zahlreiche Blogs von Lehrkräften zum Thema zeigen. Es ist aber zu erwarten, dass der Bedarf mit dem Angebot an qualitativ hochwertigen OER-Angeboten massiv steigt, weil sich diese eben flexibler austauschen, kombinieren und vergleichen lassen als herkömmliche Lernunterlagen.

b) Welche Optionen bzw. Handlungsbedarf sehen Sie ggf. für eine Förderung von OER durch die öffentliche Hand in Deutschland?

Zur Förderung von OER durch die öffentliche Hand bietet sich ein kombiniertes Vorgehen in folgenden drei Bereichen an:

Machbarkeitsstudien auf Landesebene: Um die notwendigen rechtlichen und finanziellen Rahmenbedingungen für OER in allen Details zu erschließen gilt es in Form von Machbarkeitsstudien für jedes Bundesland zu untersuchen, welche Maßnahmen unter den gegebenen gesetzlichen Rahmenbedingungen möglich sind und wie bestehende gesetzlichen Hürden (z.B. im Zuwendungsbereich) für OER abgebaut werden können.

Pilotprojekte an ausgewählten Universitäten und Fächern: Parallel zu den Studien auf Landesebene könnten Pilotprojekte an ausgewählten Bildungseinrichtungen bzw. in ausgewählten Fächern durchgeführt werden. Die Vergabe dafür vorgesehener Mittel könnte in Form eines Wettbewerbs durchgeführt werden, was bei ausreichender Dotierung auch gleichzeitig zu einer größeren Bekanntheit des OER-Konzepts in Deutschland führen würde.

OER-Initiative auf Bundesebene: Nach Vorbild der Exzellenzinitiative im Forschungsbereich könnte auf diese Weise Anschubfinanzierung für Universitäten und Bildungsträger vergeben und so OER-Vorzeigeprojekte in Deutschland etabliert werden.

c) Welche Potenziale sehen Sie in einem abgestimmten multinationalen Vorgehen auf OECD- bzw. UNESCO-Ebene für die OER-Initiative und ihre (positiven) Effekte?

Es ist auf jeden Fall von Vorteil, auf möglichst einheitliche und möglichst offene, d.h. miteinander kompatible, Lizenzierung abzustellen. Diesbezügliche Initiativen sind jedenfalls zu begrüßen.

Die „2012 Paris Declaration“ zu OER der UNESCO ist jedenfalls eine gute Grundlage für ein koordiniertes Vorgehen in diesem Bereich.

d) In welcher Form und wo sollte der Zugang zu OER realisiert werden?

Diese Frage lässt sich so nicht beantworten. Jedenfalls wünschenswert wäre allerdings eine zentrale OER-Stelle auf Bundesebene, die als Kompetenzzentrum Beratung für Bildungsträger sowie mit einem Portal als Wegweiser zu verschiedenen OER-Repositorien dienen kann.

Wichtig ist aber, dass die offene Lizenz von OER – sofern sie nicht unter einer NonCommercial-Lizenz stehen – es auch Dritten ermöglicht, Aufbereitung von OER als Dienstleistung anzubieten. Mit einem größeren OER-Angebot werden derartige Dienstleistungen an Bedeutung gewinnen. Voraussetzung dafür ist es aber, zuerst einmal ein ausreichend großes OER-Angebot zu schaffen.

e) Welche Anforderungen müssten an einen zentralen Zugang zu OER für ganz unterschiedliche Adressaten gestellt werden?

Wichtig wäre, eine abgestufte Gliederung nach Bereichen (Hochschule, Schule, Berufliche Bildung, etc.) und Disziplinen/Fächern.

Innerhalb der Fächer können die Anforderungen dann stark variieren, weshalb auf dieser Ebene dann mit Verbänden der jeweiligen Disziplinen die genaue Ausgestaltung der jeweiligen Portale geplant und realisiert werden sollte.

f) In wieweit könnte ein (übergreifendes) Netzwerk geschaffen werden, um Universitäten, Lehrerbildungseinrichtungen und Lehrkräfte bei der Erstellung von OER zu unterstützen?

Wie bereits erwähnt ist die Einrichtung einer zentralen OER-Kompetenzstelle ein erster wichtiger Schritt, die sich in der Folge dem Kompetenzaufbau hinsichtlich OER innerhalb der jeweiligen Lehrerbildungseinrichtungen und Fachverbände widmen könnte.

Literaturempfehlungen

Folgende Literatur zum Thema Open Education Ressources könnte von Interesse sein bzw. bildet sie die Basis meiner Ausführungen.

Atkins, D.E./Brown, J.S./Hammond, A.L. (2007): A Review of the Open Educational Resources (OER) Movement: Achievements, Challenges, and New Opportunities. Report to The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Online: http://cohesion.rice.edu/Conferences/Hewlett/emplibrary/A%20Review%20of%20the%20Open%20Educational%20Resources%20(OER)%20Movement_BlogLink.pdf [14.03.2012]

Brandenberg, V. (2006): Rechtliche und wirtschaftliche Aspekte des Verlegens von Schulbüchern – mit einer Fallstudie zum bayerischen Zulassungsverfahren. In: Alles Buch: Studien der Erlanger Buchwissenschaft XVIII, Online: http://www.alles-buch.uni-erlangen.de/Brandenberg.pdf [14.03.2012]

Bretschneider, M./Muuß-Merholz, J./Schaumburg, F. (2012): Open Educational Resources (OER) für Schulen in Deutschland: Whitepaper zu Grundlagen, Akteuren und Entwicklungsstand im März 2012, Online: http://goo.gl/14Ikv [03.10.2012]

Dobusch, L. (2012): White Paper: Digitale Lehrmittelfreiheit: Mehr als digitale Schulbücher. Online: http://lehrmittelfreiheit.d-64.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/White-Paper-DigitaleLehrmittelfreiheit-D64.pdf [03.10.2012]

EFQUEL/OPAL (Eds./2011): Mainstreaming Open Educational Practice: Recommendations for Practice. Online: http://cdn.efquel.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Policy_Support_OEP.pdf?a6409c [05.10.2012]

Hofmann, B./Kampl. R. (2011): Gemeinsam Lehren und Lernen: Open Educational Resources in Universitäten, Schulen und anderen Bildungseinrichtungen. In: Dobusch, L./Forsterleitner, C./Hiesmair, M. (Hrsg.): Freiheit vor Ort: Handbuch kommunale Netzpolitik. München: Open Source Press, S. 77-105, Online: http://www.freienetze.at/pdfs/Hofmann-Kampl(2011)Gemeinsam-Lehren-und-Lernen_FvO.pdf [14.03.2012]

Iiyoshi, T./Kumar, M.S.V. (Eds./ 2008): Opening Up Education: The Collective Advancement of Education through Open Technology, Open Content, and Open Knowledge, pp. 232. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Jacobi, R./van der Woert, N. (2012): Trend Report: Open Educational Resources. Online: http://www.surf.nl/en/publicaties/Documents/trendrapport%20OER%202012_10042012%20(ENGELS%20LR).pdf

Pfeffer, T. (2007): Interview: „Die Veröffentlichung von Lehrmaterialien muss selbstverständlich werden“, in: Dobusch, L./Forsterleitner, C. (Hrsg.): Freie Netze. Freies Wissen. Wien: Echomedia, S. 90-96, Online: http://www.freienetze.at/pdfs/fnfw-kapitel3.pdf [14.03.2012]

Stacey, P. (2010): Foundation Funded OER Vs. Tax Payer Funded OER – A Tale Of Two Mandates. Online: http://edtechfrontier.com/2010/10/26/foundation-funded-oer-vs-tax-payer-funded-oer-a-tale-of-two-mandates/ [03.10.2012]

Wiley, D. (2010): Research on OER Sustainability and Impact, Online: http://opencontent.org/blog/archives/1596 [03.10.2012]

Soon-to-be-released: My 2012 Creative Commons project: post-rock themed digital music album

2012-10-24T18:20:05Z

My band mates, with a guest collaborator, started working on a few tracks around Jan this year. Through the usual (for us) way of passing ideas and MP3 files over email.

Last month, when it sunk in that 2012 would be the 10th global birthday celebrations for Creative Commons, we wanted our album to be a gift to the movement.

Our DIY digital album will be published over this weekend.

This evening, we completed the final piece of the musical project: the album cover.

Here are the designs I developed over two evenings:

1. "deca"

2. "TEN"

3. "DEKA"

A few hours ago, the band -- with our guest collaborator, urmymuse, who is from halfway around the globe -- have agreed on a majority vote on design No. 3, "DEKA".

The album has 10 tracks, for CC's 10th birthday this year, slated for October.

A 10-10-10 combo.

So what's with the title and "tens"?

The Backstory
My first album design looked like this (created two nights ago):

It was passable as a symbol or logo. But somehow it didn't quite cut it as an album cover. Looked too cold; too detached. The opposite of what our music represented.

So I wondered about the etymology for "decade". That led to my discovering the term "deca", which was Latin for "the combining form for 'Ten'": "decapod", "decasyllabic", "decathlon", "decametre"...

Multiples of ten.

Bingo!

But I wondered if it might be too subtle or indirect for people to catch on.

No harm in posting the question in Facebook. Kind of expecting zero comments, so I was really surprised to get plenty of good ideas and useful comments from my Facebook contacts. Thanks folks!

All things considered, "deca" was quite appropriate.

I used Keynote on my iPad to piece together a few ideas. Ended up using Keynote as my "photoshop"!

Within hours of the Facebook comments and doodling in the iPad, I managed to churn out design No. 1.

Emailed that off to Adrian, I-Ling and urmymuse. Explained the concept to them. And hoped they would agree. Or at least, no violent objections from them.

Adrian was first to give "deca" his approval. Next was urmymuse, who added that the Greek spelling (deka) was preferred but it wouldn't be something to "die in a ditch" for (LOL).

By that time, I also preferred DEKA over DECA. Particularly after considering the Facebook comments. For one, "deca" might lead to some people subconsciously associating it with "decay" or "decadence" -- unrelated words, no doubt but still might prove distracting rather than adding to the album's intrigued.

I churned out designs no.s 2 and 3, and emailed to the band. Promised this would be the last iteration (any more options and it would be counterproductive).

Our vocalist, I-Ling, liked DEKA too.

So that was that.

All ten tracks have been mastered, bounced; the uncompressed files sitting in my hard disk (backed up, for sure) waiting to be prepped with metadata (I use iTunes for that).

It'll be a public holiday this Friday. That would give me time to publish the album this weekend.

Musical Musings
The album will be pretty niche. Limited audience etc.

It's perhaps best described as "almost progressive meditative pop post-rock".

Whatever it might be called, it's our labour of love.

A musician friend once asked me if I composed music for others or for myself. I guessed as much that it was his polite way of saying my musical compositions didn't quite fit a certain accepted standard or norm.

It was an excellent question that he'd asked.

Made me reflect.

It reinforced in my mind that I choose to create music for myself.

That's not to say I'll refuse to learn and improve or accept constructive criticisms. For sure I'd like to perfect this particular craft.

But I don't have to set undue pressure for myself, on when I should "reach perfection". When much younger, I used to think that. For instance, I felt I needed to be able to reach a certain level of technical prowess on the guitar.

Decades later, my views have shifted. It's less about what I can make the guitar do.

It's not about one particular instrument anymore.

I'm interested in making music, using whatever skills and abilities (and equipment) that I have incrementally gained from each musical project; from creating each musical track.

If the world cares to listen to what I share, that's a bonus.

Web ramblinglibrarian.blogspot.com

myrightbrain.wordpress.com roughnotes.wordpress.com

British Columbia: Offene Lernunterlagen für die 40 populärsten Uni-Kurse

2012-10-24T06:31:02Z

Giulia Forsythe / CC BY-NC-SA

Nicht nur in den USA, wo kürzlich Kalifornien ein Gesetz zum Aufbau einer digitalen Lehrbuchbibliothek beschlossen hat, auch in Kanada investiert mit British Columbia (B.C.) eine Provinz massiv in die Erstellung offener Lernunterlagen. Am Rande einer Open-Education-Konferenz in Vancouver verkündete der zuständige Minister John Yap via Pressemeldung, dass für die 40 populärsten Kurse an tertiären Bildungseinrichtungen (Universitäten und Colleges) die Erstellung offen lizenzierter Lehrbücher in Auftrag gegeben wird (meine Übersetzung):

Die offenen Lehrbücher sollen erstellt werden unter Mitwirkung von Lehrkräften, Bildungseinrichtungen und Verlagen aus British Columbia durch eine offene Ausschreibung koordiniert durch BCcampus, einer öffentlich finanzierten Organisation mit dem Ziel höhere Bildung durch die kreative Nutzung kollaborativer IT-Dienste für jeden verfügbar zu machen. Lehrende werden weiterhin die Möglichkeit haben, andere Lernunterlagen bei der Entwicklung ihres Curriculums bzw. im Unterricht zu verwenden.

Die auf diese Weise erstellten Lehrbücher werden als E-Books kostenlos sowie auch in gedruckter Fassung erhältlich sein. Weil die Creative-Commons-Lizenz – vorgesehen ist die sehr liberale CC-BY-Lizenz - theoretisch jeder Druckerei den Nachdruck erlaubt, sind auch für die gedruckten Fassungen Wettbewerb und damit niedrige Preise wahrscheinlich.