A (kind-of) farewell

Filed under: General — Heather Ford @ 3:42 pm

Chris Armstrong has left the LINK Centre and the Commons-sense project for the London School of Economics where he and his wife will be studying for the next two years. Chris has worked as the head researcher on the Commons-sense project and been an incredible support to ccSA in our first year.

Although Chris was born and lived in Canada for most of his life, he has, in fact, become more African than many of us – his incredible knowledge of African music just one example of the way that he has embraced life here in South Africa.

This is only a “kind-of” farewell, because Chris will continue to update and work on the Commons-sense encyclopedia as we move towards publishing the first edition at the end of this year. We hope that he will stay involved in our work as he goes on to write his PhD and become famous.

Hamba kahle for now, Chris. If you come back, we might just give you the Creative Commons car that all our loyal friends receive ;)

ccSA at the Intel Innovation in Education conference

Filed under: General — Heather Ford @ 12:39 pm

Kerryn McKay will be speaking about Creative Commons and education at Hilton College in the KZN Midlands tomorrow morning. Hilton College is hosting the ‘Intel Innovation in Education‘ conference. From the looks of the conference program, this is a great set of practical workshops and inspiring projects to learn from!

Non-Commercial licence criticisms

Filed under: General — Heather Ford @ 9:50 am

There is a great debate going on at the NewMedian blog around why noncommercial licences aren’t good for online media.

Online publishing business models debated at the Highway Africa 2005 conference

Filed under: Press — kerryn @ 11:39 am

Creative Commons SA was invited to address Highway Africa 2005 conference-goers on the second day of the conference at a seminar entitled Online Publishing Business Models. Other speakers included Elan Lohmann from News24 and Herman Manson from media.toolbox

The seminar offered audience members different viewpoints regarding sustainable online publishing models. Creative Commons, represented by Heather Ford and Kerryn McKay, argued for the inclusion of open content in online business models and presented a case study of the HSRC Press illustrating the success of this model. The HSRC Press adopted the model towards the end of 2001, and it has proven not only to create financial benefit for the HSRC but also to enhance and expand the HSRC ‘brand’ thus ensuring sustainability of the organisation.

Open Source, the daily newspaper of the conference, covered the seminar in an article entitled ‘Online publishing business models: is there a solution?’. The article outlined the three viewpoints presented, from the traditional online publishing model of News 24, which makes revenue from subscription and advertising, to media.toolbox which creates revenue from syndication feeds and Creative Commons’ case study of the open content model. The article concluded with a quote from Herman Manson who reminded the audience that there is no single ‘right’ business model for online publishers, stating that ‘there are as many models as there are objectives’.

The HSRC Press case study which was presented is part of a larger Open Content Business Model project that is being run collaboratively between Creative Commons UK, Brazil and South Africa. The project aims to investigate and record sustainable online business models that incorporte Creative Commons licenses into their open content models. The objective of the project is to create a usable resource for entrepreneurs, artists and producers of creative content to assist them in setting up and maintaining their enterprises. The project will be formally launched on 8 October in the United Kingdom, at The Tate Gallery in London.

Buys on free speech on the SA internet

Filed under: General — Heather Ford @ 12:49 pm

Reinhart Buys has written a nice piece in Media Toolbox’s latest newsletter summarising recent technology judgements and what they mean for freedom of expression on the internet in South Africa.

ccSA live from Grahamstown

Filed under: General — Heather Ford @ 12:28 pm

Kerryn and I are in Grahamstown this week for the annual Highway Africa conference. We’ll be presenting tomorrow on our open business model project along with Elan Lohman (News24), Herman Mansen (Media Toolbox), Matthew Buckland (M&G Online) and other major media organisations from around South Africa. Check out the latest news from the event that draws participants from over 20 countries around Africa on the Creative Commons-licenced website, www.highwayafrica.ru.ac.za/hana/. Said Eddie Funde, SABC Chair, in his address: ‘This is an important conference. It is critical for African media to define its image, its direction because if we’re empty as who we are and where we are going, someone will decide these things for us.’

Another victory: Telkom drops Hellkom suit

Filed under: General — Heather Ford @ 4:39 pm

As expected, ‘Telkom has dropped its threatened R5 million lawsuit against Hellkom.co.za with costs and without conditions, allowing the satirical site to continue its basting of the telecommunications giant’ reports ITWeb. The reasons given? ‘Strategic reasons’ according to a Telkom spokesman. More likely the victory by Laugh It Off case in the Constitutional Court in May this year.

Kerryn McKay joins ccSA

Filed under: Announcements — Heather Ford @ 4:03 pm

I’m very pleased to announce that Kerryn McKay has joined the team at Creative Commons South Africa. Kerryn is employed as a researcher on the Commons-sense project here at the Wits University Link Centre and now also volunteers for ccSA. Kerryn holds a Bachelor of Journalism from Rhodes University (seeing a pattern here, anyone? ;) , majoring in Journalism & Media Studies and English. She has worked in the advertising and publishing industries, and has also held the position of marketing researcher at an online marketing company which operates within the international e-commerce arena. Welcome, Kerryn! We are very, very lucky to have you.

ICDL in Africa on board with Creative Commons

Filed under: General — kerryn @ 2:17 pm

ICDL in Africa (International Computer Driving License) has offiically licensed their training material under the Creative Commons license.

The non-profit organisation, which was established in South Africa by the Computer Society of South Africa, has the objective to promote and administer the license in sub-saharan Africa. More than 4 million people worldwide, and to date 100 thousand people in South Africa and Africa, have used the qualification to verify their competence in core computer skills and IT knowledge.

Its important that the training material is easily accessible so that all members of the community can use them in order to take the test. The Creative Commons license is an appropriate vehicle for ensuring the accessibility of the material. For those of you who will be using the material, and taking the test, best of luck!

ccMixter lands in SA

Filed under: Featured Content, General — Heather Ford @ 10:09 am

gil

If you’ve been listening to Yfm this week, this will be only the second time that you’re hearing it. ccMixter, the awesome music sharing software developed by Creative Commons in the US, has just been developed for South African musicians. The site is being launched on the back of a Yfm competition sponsored by the Go OpenSource campaign to find the hottest remixers in Jozi. It’s an awesome concept: get 26 samples from DJ Fresh and a few cutting-edge SA bands and get young musicians to try their hand at remixing them. And what’s more: it’s 100% legal.

As most electronic musicians and DJs will tell you: getting your hands on free, legal songs to sample is not an easy task. ccMixter tries to solve some of these problems getting SA bands to form a remixing community that sample each other’s work and the work of international musicians. Already, one member of the brand spanking ccMixter international has been signed by a major record label. We’re hoping that ccMixterSA will follow with some great success stories.

This is another grand experiment in many ways. I’m interested to find out whether people will actually be able to tackle the South African bandwidth fiasco to download the samples. We’re making them available on the Freedom Toaster that will sit in Yfm’s studios – but will that be enough? And will Audacity, the free music editing software that people can download from the site, be powerful enough to produce new sounds from the thousands of musicians that the recording industry turns away every day?

If you’ve interested in participating, come to the Yfm studios on Software Freedom Day (10 September) in Rosebank, Johannesburg to find out more. Or go to ccmixter.co.za to download the samples.