openDemocracy

by Tony Curzon price at the iCommons summit 2007

You know the argument -- in the post-copyright world, musicians will find other revenue sources, like live performance. Well, if the same will apply to academics, you can be sure that Jonathan Zittrain will find his place in that economy. Try to get to see Jonathan live: as a scholar/showman cross between Seinfeld and Jeremiah, he creates a great event.

In his keynote on Friday, he recounted the epic of the witches that have been slain on the digital road to Oz. Closed systems, which grow only through central control, are out - success requires decentralisation.

Or does it? JZ flashed up Steve Jobs' comments on the iPhone: we don't want it to be a computer, with all the vulnerabilities that implies, says Jobs. The whole system should be under tight central control, else how can we bring you the services that you want: music, banking, payments, communications without eavesdropping -- or at least only ``trusted'' eavesdroppers.

The closed system is returning under the weight of malware. The attacks are destroying trust. We are fast depleting our innocence, and the world after the fall will be hard. SMTP will go like Usenet went.

The solutions? A moderation of the unbridled individuality of our behaviour. The iCommons has ``i'' and ``commons''. Making sure that we do become a herd that filters, shares and supplies micro-effort to the commong good. If we can do it for SETI, we can do it against malware ...the details are in Jonathan's the forthcoming book.

 

Felix Cohen

by Felix Cohen at the iCommons summit 2007

Lawrence Lessig appeared to backtrack, or at least clarify, a little on his 'two economies' notion in his keynote last night. While most of the the news and discussion was regarding his semi stand-down (and possible interest in working with Barack Obama?)

Rather than the two cultures being somewhat mutually exclusive, Lessig talked about the way that content creators can move between the two cultures; they should be considered as 'modalities' which authors are in at any time, or that apply to certain classes of people's work. I'm happier with this discussion than I was with what appeared to be two very separate pools of people; now we have a Venn diagram with a lot of crossover and dynamic change. And this makes a lot of sense to some Creative Commons advocates (even Tom Chance seemed to have slightly softened towards him last night). I can understand it, as I find myself moving between the two economies for my work. All of my academic and discursive work is published under a Creative Commons licence, but work that I do in outside consultancy (I design cocktail menus) is rarely if ever released under free licences.

openDemocracy

by Tony Curzon Price at the iCommons summit 2007

What is CC/iCommons? Lessig started answering the question during the keynote. It is:

And then he started telling us what it is not: ``It is not me, it is you!'' Before we knew it, we were listening to a near-farewell speech. For the next ten years, Larry wants to devote himself to the corruption of politics and public life by big money. Climate change ``knowledge'' has been on sale to the oil companies, for example, and the future of the world is being determined by $50,000 checks paid for friendly research.

As Becky Hogge suggested in an emotional question session, Larry is moving from fighting for the infrastructure of the commons to being an activist within the commons. We often think of Creative Commons as being about music, remix, mash-up and art. But one of the most important--I would say the most important--tasks of society is to ensure that there is a realm for the production of creduble knowledge and opinion. Larry is moving into that realm, it seems, and if he can bring to us his energy, creativity and intellect to the cause of creating Coalitions of Credibility (CC 2.0?), then I'm more optimistic for the public realm than I was before his speech.

Felix Cohen

Felix Cohen at the iCommons 2007 Summit

A long and exciting day at the iCommons summit today. Despite a late start (I can never get the hang of these pesky time zones!) this mornings workshop on supporting open content through membership campaigning was a success, and you can likely expect to see some of the ideas that we worked on being used in our next membership campaign! Following on from that, I had the chance to lunch with some fascinating people, including the leader of the GlobalLives project, who aim to record 24 hours of the lives of a representative group of people from all over the world and present it (under a Creative Commons licence of course). The project is very exciting, and you can look forward to further links between openDemocracy and the project. 

Felix Cohen

by Felix Cohen at the iCommons summit 2007 in Croatia

Tony and I arrived at the iSummit last night, and after a brief dip in the Adriatic ocean to get rid of the travel blues, headed to the roof of the fantastic Revelin fortress in Dubrovnik to mingle with our fellow Commoners. It's a busy, very international conference, and most of the people I found myself talking to were national Creative Commons representatives, who had been at the lengthy legal sessions that day to discuss translating the new Creative Commons 3.0 licences into their local languages and make sure that there were no issues within their jurisdiction.

openDemocracy

 

Does CC destroy free culture? Business models panel presentation.

I have a panel on business models this afternoon, and this is the presentation for it.

A simple argument:

- you need communities to make free culture, bothfor content and business ... both sense and cents

- but creative commons copying is a diffusing force, taking people away from the community

- solutions? technical , legal

openDemocracy

by Tony Curzon Price at the iCommons summit 2007 in Croatia

``What is the purpose of the iSummit?'', I asked as a disparate band of commoners jumped into a taxi to the centre of town. The question seems obvious: fortunate scholars have been flown in from around the world to an astoundingly beautiful Mediterranean medieval fortified town; the conference is professional, the drinks good and plentiful, the publications beautifully produced. This conference has been well funded. So to what end? ``When Heather [Heather Ford is the Executive Director of iCommons, the organiser of the iSummit] filled in the parts of the grant applications that asked for `measurable impacts', what do you think she wrote?''

openDemocracy

by Tony Curzon Price at the iCommons summit 2007 in Croatia

I was at iCommons Rio in June 2006. The habitual morning's bodysurfing on Copa Cabana was even more memorable than watching Brazil watching Brazil in the football world cup. But really memorable was the sense of a global movement coalescing around freedom of content, opened by Gilberto Gil humming his Bajia ode to freedom, and closed by Heather Ford telling us of the plans for the year ahead.

So what has happened in the IP world during that year? I sent out a broad invitation for 200 words on the significant events and here they are. Send me your own, and I will add them.

Jessica Reed

Ronaldo of CCBrazil warned us in his opening speech that Brazilians are very good at organising parties, and that he didn't want to hear any complaints that there were too many parties at iSummit. He was true to his word last night, as we descended on what might be described as a samba palace/museum.

 

Three floors to explore, a busy dancefloor and generous bar has left many of us slightly the worse for wear on the last morning, but Ronaldo doesn't want to hear about it. Just want to say congrats to Ronaldo and his team for showing us all such a truly brazilian good time.

Jessica Reed

The wi-fi in the hotel hosting the conference has packed up for a reason no-one can explain, so liveblogging may not be as live as we'd wish. I've popped next door to use the shakey connection in our hotel to report on this morning's opening panel on strategies for an "international commons".

Cory Doctorow opened with tales from WIPO with the simple message that just turning up at the organisation's negotiations in Geneva can have a powerful effect on what it does. The arrival of NGOs at WIPO is only a very recent development, and is already causing some seismic shifts. Even the simple act of writing down and blogging what is said at WIPO meetings produces responses from member governments and citizens, partially because the informal notes taken are more comprehensible than the secretariat's official-ese. The reps of developing countries are eager to hear the perspectives of NGOs, Cory says, because the only side they hear is from major right-holders bodies.

Jessica Reed

 The fascinating fight that is unfolding for me at the summit is the one
between the pragmatists---call the Commoners---and the fundamentalists---I'll
call them, for now, the Public-ists. (and maybe pronounce it ``Publik-ists").

Here is the essence of the fight: the Public-ists think that Creative Commons
licenses as we have them are destroying the public space in which, in practice, much production falls today and could. They also believe that with some activism this space could have a legal reality too. In many cases, offering CC licenses to creators makes them aware of
copyright where there once was, in practice, only community-based mores for
appropriate behaviour. Some of the CC licenses are really quite
restrictive---for example Non-Commercial, No Derivative, Attribution is very
explicit in limiting the ability of other users to make derivatives or make
money from a work. The very existence of the CC license, claims the
Public-ists, changes our attitude towards creations; they emphasise the role
of the individual as creator, they undermine the necessity of reciprocity and
dependency in creation. Even while releasing some copyrights, the licenses
reinforce a product-based, hit-oriented conception of cultural production. The
Public-ists would like to see reform of Copyright rather than work within its
confines and gradually make The Commons an adventure playground for lawyers
with as many licenses as joy-rides.

Mensheviks vs. Bolsheviks, Jacobins vs. Girondins, Commoners vs.Public-ists?
The inevitable pragmatist/fundamentalist tussle that marks a healthy reform
movement? Yes, but the divisions do seem like a waste of energy: there is only
a pragmatic way forward. As Lessig pointed out when confronted this morning by
the Public-ist Niva Elkin Koren,
the ``No Derivative" restriction can come about through utterly legitimate
reasoning: when Davis Guggenheim, a
documentary film maker who filmed LA public school children, he chose ``No
derivative" because he had a moral contract with his subjects to take a
specific perspective. A ``remix" of the film to other political ends would
have violated that moral engagement. So Lessig's gauntlet to the Public-ist:
``whose legitimate concerns are you going to refuse to cater for, and why?"

From here, Tom Chance took the discussion in a
great direction with a question about ``communities of use": it is in the
detail of how different communities create and use creations not only that a
mix of freedoms (and therefore rights and duties) should be sought, but
one should also not over-legalise communities. The science community, for
example, is self-policed in all sorts of ways when it comes to priority over
data, to the re-use of pre-publication working-paper material, etc. There is a
technology requirement to this: make the online communities, and they will
find para-legal policing mechanisms. The subtlety of this point was missed by
self-styled punk rocker Jenny Toomey---but then it is intrinsic to
that community to avoid these subtleties, no?

So, do we over-legalise by pushing for CC everywhere? well, we legalise areas
which were previously de facto anarchic; something is destroyed. Would it be
better to push for only Public Domain licensing? Much would never then be
produced at all. Would it be better to do nothing and let de facto anarchy
expand? That would not just be fundamentalist, but would allow huge scope for
copyright-based business models to populate that space.

Becky Hogge

 

I'm sat in the enterprise commons session, hosted by openbusiness, and the gloves are off. From warm, cosy ideas about sharing and freedoms and stuff, we're now in the land of markets and profit. I feel weirdly at home.

Jessica Reed

At the culture/media commons panel this morning, we heard from Andre Szajman, the president of what is surely the coolest music company in Brazil, Trama. Created in 1998 with a philosophy that "music is our oxygen, we believe that it can help the country to develop the social and political understanding and conscience", Trama has evolved into an extraordinary portal and undertakes a wide variety of activities.
It releases music by new and traditional Brazilian artists; built a digital download store two years before iTunes, and with no DRM; in 2003 launched a p2p promotion where you could win a prize if a certain mp3 was found on your harddrive; and is educating all its acts on the benefits of CC releases. It's also a music publishing company, offers tour management services, and is now the biggest indie distribution company in the country, working with other small labels and artists to distribute to retail outlets.

Becky Hogge

Jamie Boyle, a Creative Commons board member and professor at Duke law school, opened todays proceeding with a rousing speech pointing out the mistakes people make when thinking about the digital commons.

24 - 06 - 06

Comment...

Jessica Reed

The whole conference went out to a churrasco (bbq) restaurant last night, and indulged in the widest variety of grilled meats I've ever been in the same room with. And, yes, caipirinhas. Here's BoingBoing's Cory Doctorow, who "doesn't drink much", but if you find yourself in front of a caipi professional, what are you going to do?

 

Jessica Reed

A premature end to a terrific session on CC and the World Intellectual Property Organisation -- in some senses not too dissimilar from Tony's previous post about the Microsoft rep, but without any booing. WIPO director of copyright e-commerce Richard Owens set the stage, saying that he was pleased with the cooperation between CC and WIPO on issues of limitations and exceptions to rights in the digital context, and standardisation of DRM metadata. He also said the Development Agenda was underway with 110 proposals on the table, although he said nothing about US hostility to the DA's very existence.  A quick mention of the Broadcast Treaty also failed to acknowledge how contentious it is.

Jessica Reed

Martha Nalebuff seems like a nice woman. So why did the woman next to me in
the audience boo her, pelt her with paper, interject gasps of disbelief as
Martha spoke? Because Martha was here at iCommons to explain Microsoft's
decision to add a down-loadable module to Office that lets users easily insert
a Creative Commons license into their spreadsheets, presentations and texts.

Sounds innocent enough, no? Was Martha booed because there are crowds in which
Microsoft can just do no right, or is there substance behind the knee-jerk?
Gilberto Gil, 60's Bahia icon turned Culture Minister of Brazil, even

Jessica Reed

Ronaldo Lemos of CCBrazil, Larry Lessig, Heather Ford of iCommons, Jimmy Wales wikipedia founder. 

Becky Hogge

Nathaniel Stern is the iSummit's artist in residence, and, unsurprisingly, his photos are much better than mine. This one of Lessig and Joi Ito captures the energy of the first session - the local press were all over the panel, with lights blaring. Who would have though copyright could be so rock and roll?

 

Jessica Reed

This followed the keynote panel, and the room was packed. There were several questions from Brazilian reporters in Portuguese - good to see some local media represented. Here's one of Q and As, too much going on around me to get it all down right now:

What are the biggest obstacles to CC taking-off in developing questions?
Gil - This is a cultural question. In developed countries culture is something that's been spread, news, info is available to the whole of society or considerable parts of it. In developing countries, we have so many other problems, difficulties in spreading information is one of them anyway.
Lessig - I agree. In developed countries like my own we have the technology but we need to fight the mentality of proprietary control. In developing countries there's a strong attitute towards sharing, but not the technology. We're working with MIT on its cheap laptop plan in this area. Technology is a simple problem, if expensive. In my country the harder task is changing the mentality.

Becky Hogge

Now Creative Commons has got so big, it seems like they're having a brand problem. To solve this, they've created CC international, which focuses on "porting" the licences to other legal jurisdictions, and iCommons, which "spreads the message" of open content.

Jessica Reed

This image is taken from the cover of the 1991 Gilberto Gil album Parabola Camara that he spoke of in his beautiful speech. It shows his daughter carrying a straw basket shaped like a satellite dish. For a speech at a conference with a strong theme of media/comms and developing countries, it barely requires elaboration.

Gil also spoke of the Afro-Brazilian martial art capoeira in relation to cultural flows - the term 'camara' is what capoeiristas call each other, meaning 'comrade' or 'friend'. Gil's point about capoeira is that it has spread around the world without being part of a government's cultural policy or a culture industry business model. "It was decentralised, and like a virus spread thru all continents. This is more efficient than top down forms of behaviour that to tell nations what they must continue to be."   

Becky Hogge

We're having a bit of trouble uploading photos to the blog right now, but I'm uploading all my photos onto Flickr. There's a nice little group of photos tagged iSummit from other delegates too.

Becky Hogge

Even though, as he said at the beginning of his talk just now, Larry Lessig is not accustomed to speaking for just fifteen minutes, he managed to cram in quite a lot.

23 - 06 - 06

Comment...

Jessica Reed

Lessig, Gil, Ito are all in the house. Room buzzing with different languages.

Becky Hogge

The iCommons summit is about to start. Already I have bumped into some familiar faces from the UK and beyond:

Jessica Reed

5:00 am, cleared customs at Rio; sleepy, excited to be here for the first
time, I follow a well-dressed man who wants to be my taxi ... until, in the
empty lot, I think I should probably not be getting into an unmarked, unmetered
limo. I say: "Sorry. I want an official taxi." "I am official", he protests,
showing me a plastified card saying: "Taxi Especial." Well, I don't tell him
that "Especial" was not top of my list of priorities this morning.

Paula, young, professional, Australian, who has been following another well-dressed man,
catches my eye and says to me: ``Oh!  That's what I want too. I think I'll
stick with you." We've wasted 5 precious minutes of these guys' time - just
the time when other passengers, less paranoid than us, might have followed
through with the transaction. I apologise again, and he grudgingly points me
to the rank.

Anything to do with iCommons?

A bit. The "grey economy" taxi driver has a real problem of trust to
overcome. The official, regulated, oligopolised taxis offer me, the neophyte
here, the great advantage of a sense of quality control, of recourse, of being
able to go after someone if things go wrong. In a way, this is what
branded - usually copyright - material does too: "it won't waste your time,
offend your sensibilities, take you off limits, because the brand, like the
taxi medallion, was expensive to establish and could be quickly revoked."

(That is also what is wrong with it: quality "control" will also restrict,
level, stifle, etc. The standard product is made worse just for being
standard).

The taxi medallion has its use - although I'm all for the cartel-buster in
theory if not in this particular case in practice - and the media brand will
always have one too. Can we reproduce the function of the brand - the
shorthand for the content, the believable signal - without strong (copyright)
ownership of the product? Yes, we will -- there are digital communities that create permanent value without strong ownership (my own fav - slashdot). But there aren't that many examples, especially outside the tech space.