‘Imagine a world where absolutely everything is owned – and sold to those who can afford it. Every person would be a market. There would be nothing freely available in the public domain. Knowledge and culture could only be learnt if you paid for it.’
Guy Berger has written a great article on a session at the World Summit on the Information Society predicting a society where the commodification of knowledge has reached the extreme.
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.
Probably our most high-profile article yet, this great piece by Alistair Otter about Lawrence Lessig’s visit to South Africa and the HSRC case study has done wonders for ccSA. Ironically, you can’t get the whole story online unless you’ve paid a subscription fee, but you can email me (heather at creativecommons.org) if you want a scanned copy – that’s fair use, naturally 
‘When the musicians David Byrne, Paul Westerberg and The Beastie Boys allowed their music to be included on a CD given away with the November issue of Wired magazine, they were in no doubt that their songs would be “pirated” by fans. In fact they encouraged it.’ See this link if you’ve subscribed.
Wairagala Wakabi, Highway Africa News Agency, Johannesburg
Creative Commons (cc), the growing global movement that aims to relax restrictions on the fair use of intellectual property, launched its South African chapter at a festive inaugural event in Johannesburg last night.
More >>
by Alistair Otter, Tectonic Magazine
Creative Commons, the growing global movement to relax restrictions on the fair use of intellectual property, launched its South African chapter in Johannesburg this week.
Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig, speaking at the launch event, described Creative Commons as recognising the need for sharing works and cited several examples of how CC was being used to develop new artistic products. He said Creative Commons turned thousands of consumers into creators of knowledge in world dominated by the consumer culture.
Yesterday Lessig opened the “Towards an African Digital Information Commons” conference at Wits University’s LINK centre with a brief introduction to the philosophy underpinning the Creative Commons sense as well as a biting attack on the US government’s support and propogation of the Trips (Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights) Plus agreements.
Lessig described how there were many creations that were “non rivalrous”. These include digital works of art and writing that can be widely distributed without depriving the original creator or owner of the product.
“The problem is that most policy makers are opposed to the commons. They are convinced the commons are evil.”
In the US, he said, legislators had created a scenario where “sampling” (re-using or extracting) music for use in another musical work without a licence has been declared piracy. “The problem is that the process to get a licence to sample a piece of music is costly and very difficult, making it a non-option for most musicians. The message sent out is ‘get a licence or do not sample’.”
“These ‘costly’ elements protect the powerful,” he said.
Lessig said that challenge is “to get these people to recognise that the commons has its place”.
He joked that advocates of the commons were “commonists”, something very different to communists, although they were sometimes mistakenly thought of as the same. “The move to the commons is in fact a move away from regulation.”
Lessig closed the session with a strongly-worded attack on the Trips Plus agreements being proposed and advanced by the US and other European nations. “There is something deeply unethical and contradictory in what the US government is doing it pushing the Trips Plus agreements.
“And the US now finds itself in a contradictory position where it supports the free market when it concerns intellectual property but not when farm subsidies are concerned.”
This article is licenced under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License and was first pubishled in Tectonic Magazine.
The Highway Africa News Agency’s Emrakeb Assefa talks about the African Digital Information Commons primer
http://allafrica.com/stories/200505270997.html
‘The “Digital Information Commons: An African Participant’s Guide” was launched yesterday at LINKS Centre here in Johannesburg in a bid to popularise the Creative Common (cc) movement on the African continent.
Chris Armstrong, LINK Centre Commons-sense Project researcher said that the document is a ‘living’ document developed as a Wiki, a paper which in the spirit of what creative commons allows digital commons participants around the world “to edit, amend, build on and improve its contents as a ‘living’ content.”
The final version is expected to be published at the end of June 2005. The Guide is a collaboratively-authored document developed to stimulate inputs and during and after the “Commons-sense: Towards and African Digital Information Commons” set up as a living document.
Describing the global public information domain or ‘information commons’ as a giant swimming jellyfish, which is alternatively flaring open and then shrinking as it travels through oceans of content, Armstrong said that the Guide is aimed at providing useful information to people who wish to find out more about copyright and Creative Common licenses.
He said, “For every Linux, a Microsoft; for every on-line collaborative Wikipedia a giant multinational Bertlsmann publishing firm,” and explained that the guide attempts to point to alternative ways of doing things.
As an “African” guide, the document is designed for use by people living in Africa. It is also a “participant’s” guide to the global information commons – not a “user’s” guide so that more and more African organisations and individuals can become active in not only using the global store of digitally-held information, but also in contributing to it.
The basic conditions for “Digital information commons” include: the notion that it should be ‘free’ in so far as you don’t have to be rich to have access to it; it is built and maintained by the community acting for the benefit of all, i.e. not for the private interests’. Moreover, it needs to be of significant depth, breadth and variety if it is to have any value for the community as a whole; that it needs to be accessible – people need to know where to find it – in order for it to be constructive. It should also allow reuse and adaptation either commercially or non-commercially in order to advance the flow of knowledge and information.
The open content movement, driven to a great extent by the legal and cultural minds associated with the Creative Commons project, emphasizes the plain-language licensing of content online to make it simple for users to understand their usage rights. It seeks to encourage users to not merely access and use but also to “adapt” (make derivatives) and even to make commercial use of the content in some cases, in order to enhance the flow creativity and free cultural production.’
San Francisco, USA, and Johannesburg, SOUTH AFRICA, May 27, 2005 – Creative Commons, a non-profit organization that offers free copyright licenses and tools to creators to make their works available on more flexible terms, today unveiled a localized version of its innovative licensing system in South Africa.
With South Africa offering Creative Commons licenses tailored for the specifics of the legal system in South Africa, Creative Commons licenses and tools are now available a total of 18 jurisdictions. The organization already provides copyright licenses specific to Australian, Austrian, Brazilian, Belgian, Canadian, Croatian, Dutch, English & Welsh, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, U.S., Taiwanese and Spanish law, thanks to a global network of artists, lawyers, and technologists.
Staff at Creative Common’s offices in San Francisco and Berlin worked with Project Leads Heather Ford and Andrew Rens as well as the LINK Centre at the University of Witwatersrand to adapt the standardized licenses for use in South Africa. The Association for Progressive Communications (APC) supported by the Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (Osisa) played an important role in raising awareness around Creative Commons as well as supporting the lengthy consultation process with local legal practitioners, academics and civil society organizations in the months leading up to the launch.
The ccSA licenses went live at a local Johannesburg event addressed by Creative Commons CEO & Chairman, Lawrence Lessig, local band, 340ml and an interactive display of local Creative Commons licensees. With 11 official languages in the country, the South African human-readable code has been initially translated into Afrikaans and Southern Sotho with more translations planned for later this year.
Rens, a former Wits University law lecturer, has been involved for the past 12 months on developing the legal code for the licence. Ford joined Creative Commons during her fellowship with the Reuters Digital Vision Programme at Stanford University and returned to Johannesburg last year to coordinate Creative Commons projects in the region.
Said Ford, “We’ve been working with local communities for almost a year on incorporating cc licenses into their policies so it’s been a real treat to see the surge in momentum around the official launch of Creative Commons South Africa. We’ve been able to celebrate and share stories of the local pioneers and their communities who have benefited from using Creative Commons tools as more people are recognizing the importance of providing legally-enforceable mechanisms for sharing content. It’s a first for Africa, and we think that there is enough practical evidence of local success to see this movement growing regionally.”
The launch of the South African Creative Commons licenses occurred in conjunction with a conference sponsored by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) entitled “Commons Sense: Towards an African Digital Information Commons.” Around 150 people from around Africa and the world gathered together in Johannesburg to discuss the concept of an “African Digital Commons” and the role of Creative Commons and other open content projects in stimulating its growth and success. Creative Commons CEO & Chairman, Lawrence Lessig presented at the conference on the topic of the “Global Momentum towards the Commons.” Project leads from Creative Commons Brazil, Ronaldo Lemos, and Creative Commons India, Lawrence Liang, also presented on the topic of “Open Content for the Developing World.”
According to Ford, “This conference was a one step towards developing a practical, working knowledge of how authors, artists, librarians, musicians, educators, governments, civil society, academics and journalists can contribute towards the emergence of a Digital Information Commons in Africa. It made us realize how vibrant the African open content landscape is, and how important it is for us to synergise our efforts. Creative Commons is a perfect tool for gathering together the threads and coordinating a vision of Africa’s valuable contribution to the Commons. We believe that this is just the beginning of some of Creative Commons’ most critical successes for the developing world.”
About the LINK Centre
The LINK Centre is the leading research and training body in the field of information and communications technology (ICT) policy, regulation and management in Southern Africa.
LINK focuses on capacity building in the public sector and development arenas through quality training, applied research and consultancy services necessary to maximize the benefits of the Information Society and the Knowledge Economy. In addition to hosting the South African chapter of Creative Commons, LINK is a founding partner in Research ICT Africa!
About Creative Commons
A nonprofit corporation founded in 2001, Creative Commons promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works — whether owned or in the public domain — by empowering authors and audiences. It is sustained by the generous support of the Center for the Public Domain, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Omidyar Network Fund, and the Hewlett Foundation.
Contacts
Andrew Rens (San Francisco)
Legal Lead
Creative Commons, South Africa
Heather Ford (Johannesburg)
Director
Creative Commons, South Africa
Neeru Paharia (San Francisco)
Executive Director
Creative Commons
Christiane Asschenfeldt (Berlin)
Executive Director
iCommons
Razina Munshi has written a great piece for the local Business Day on the recent Commons-sense conference and the launch of Creative Commons South Africa.
Article by Andrew Rens and Heather Ford, published in De Rebus, December 2004 edition (’news’ section) about the Creative Commons South Africa licences.
SABC2, Saturday 11 December, 2004: Creative Commons was featured in the ‘Go Open’ program on open source software sponsored, in part, by the Shuttleworth Foundation and other go open partners. The series should soon be available from the program website.
Weblog