Transition at Creative Commons Switzerland

Michelle Thorne, April 15th, 2008

From CC Switzerland:

The organization Openlaw, platform for law and Free Software, has filled the role of Legal Lead for Creative Commons Switzerland for several years. The tasks entailed, among others, the adaptation of Creative Commons in Switzerland and providing a point-of-contact for inquiries about the licenses.

Creative Commons in Switzerland will now be coordinated by Digitale Allmend, while Openlaw will be stepping down from its role at Legal Lead.

Personnel will be set along the following lines: Martin Feuz (Community); Philippe Perreaux (Legal Consultation); Simon Schlauri (Development of the CC Licenses)

Creative Commons Switzerland will be supported through Dr. Urs Gasser, Attorney, Professor at the University of St. Gallen. Within the framework of an extended support network, previous CC CH members Urs Gehrig, lic.iur (Basel) and Dr. Christian Laux, Attorney LLM (Zürich) will be readily available.

REMINDER: CC Salon LA, April 16 (This Wed) 7:30PM

Cameron Parkins, April 14th, 2008

Just a reminder that this Wednesday (4/16) at 7:30PM we will be returning to FOUND LA (Google Map) for another CC Salon LA!

Rex Bruce, director of the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, will be screening a video he directed that uses public domain imagery from the US Military (also playing at the Centre Pompidou). Holly Willis, Director of Academic Programs at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, will be presenting on art in Second Life, focusing on creators who are cognizant of the formal and ideological implications of virtual worlds.

Jack Lerner, Acting Director at the USC Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic, will give a talk on research he has been conducting in relation to music sampling that looks at defects in the market and proposes changes. Finally, we will be joined by multimedia designers Chris Weisbart and Michael Wilson who will explain how they are using open source technology in museums and will give a live demonstration of a holographic projection system they’ve recently built into an interactive exhibit.

We are super excited for the diverse group of panelists we have got together, so come out and join us for what is bound to be an enlightening evening. And yes, there will be free (as in beer) drinks!

Panel 4/18: New Media Artists and the Law

Cameron Parkins, April 14th, 2008

This Friday, April 18, at 7PM CC’s Creative Director Eric Steuer will be speaking on a panel titled New Media Artists and the Law at The Kirsch Conference Center in San Jose, CA. Hosted by California Lawyers for the Arts, Eric will be joined by Emily A. Berger, Intellectual Property Fellow with Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Joel Slayton, Director of the CADRE Laboratory for New Media, for a discussion of “the ways copyright laws are implicated in new media art and the challenges artists face in this evolving area of the law.”

The panel promises to be quite fascinating, with topics including “derivative works, best practices, defensible positions, reproduction and public display rights and the Internet, peer-to-peer file sharing, streaming, [and] fair use”. With three diverse backgrounds on hand, these issues will diverge and converge in unexpected ways that are bound to prove enlightening. All relative information below:

New Media Artists and the Law

April 18, 2008 at 7:00 pm PT

Location
The Kirsch Conference Center
60 South Market Street
Tenth Floor
San Jose, CA

2nd Blender Peach Open Source Movie Premiere and Economies of the Commons in Amsterdam

Jon Phillips, April 11th, 2008

If you haven’t been to Amsterdam or checked out what great work Paul Keller and CC Netherlands is doing, then I highly recommend you A.) get here when you can by jet, or B.) tap into their great projects on the net. In particular, I’m referring to the big premiere 2nd Annual Blender Peach Open Movie in Amsterdam last night. I had the great honor of speaking before the premiere which actually felt more like a warm-up gig — I took it on myself to get people pumped up for the film (laughing, chanting, etc). You can also see my slides here which debut a new style using the CC Sharing Creative Works Comics (which you may download now and translate, just as CC Netherlands has done and made availabe in a booklet here).

And finally, I spoke on a panel today called “Commons-based Peer Production” at the Economies of the Commons conference put on by CC Netherlands and others:

Strategies for Sustainable Access and Creative Reuse of Images and Sounds Online

International Working Conference
Amsterdam & Hilversum 10, 11 & 12 April 2008

This dossier documents and brings together background materials for the international conference Economies of the Commons. This public working conference and its side programs address the remarkable cultural, educational and societal significance of the new types of audiovisual commons resources that are currently being created on the internet. Sustainable public access and enhanced opportunities for creative reuse of these resources are the particular focus of this conference and this web dossier.

My panel and fellow panelists are described below:

described below:

After the lunch we continue with the second session about Commons-based Peer Production. How do new developments of creative reuse hold out against market-based production? With Felix Stalder (Open Flows), Jamie King (Steal This Film), Jon Phillips (Creative Commons) en Sebastian LÃŒtgert (oil21.org).

The panel came down to Ton Rosendaal from Blender Foundation describing his model for sustainability for Open film projects (something you will hear me describe in more depth coming soon) and Jamie King’s promise for creating a better voluntary donation system. I took the position as the realist on the panel to reel in the gradient between what commercial entities are presently doing to sustain content distribution (and production in some instances) with the approaches outlined to provide a path of realidad ;)

CC Licensing Guidebook for Government Agencies and NGOs

Michelle Thorne, April 10th, 2008

CC Taiwan has produced a lovely and informative 36-page guidebook to CC licensing for government agencies and NGOs. The document is available to download in Taiwanese Mandarin.

In other publication news, a translation of Lawrence Lessig’s book Free Culture is now available in Taiwanese Mandarin. The translator, Ching-Yi Liu, is a professor at the National Taiwan University and a former student of Lessig. A short introductory preface for the translated book was written by CC Taiwan Project Lead Tyng-Ruey Chuang.

To read more about CC-related activities in Taiwan, such their lively panel session at the National Digital Archives Program 2008 Annual International Conference, check out the CC Taiwan newsletter archives.

Cover image by CC Taiwan. CC BY SA http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/tw