Informal Meeting with CC Artists from the Philippines - Drip

One of the presenter at the second Asia Pacific Creative Commons Conference, “The Commons Crossroads: Defining the Roadmap for Creative Commons in Asia and the Pacific”, Drip, will be performing in Hong Kong at the HK Live monthly event on Sat, 7 Mar 2009.

On the Sunday after the performance, the band would like to share how they made themselves famous and collaborated with other musicians worldwide through licensing their works under Creative Commons and distributing them using different online tools such as ccMixter.

Date: 8 Mar 2009 Sunday
Time: 2:30-4:30pm
Venue: Whiskey Priest - 1/F, 12 Lan Kwai Fong, Central

Grow your own media lab (the graphic novel)

Text by James Wallbank
Pictures by Michael Tesh
Design by Scott Hawkins
Access Space, 2008
ISBN 978-0-95500-913-6
Access Space is an open access media lab based in Sheffield. Access Space encourages people to learn how to use hardware re-used from local companies and Free Software from the GNU project and others. This saves money and builds skills. Those skills can then be shared to build a self-reliant and sustainable community around the lab.

Since being founded in the year 2000 Access Space has thrived where many community and government schemes have failed. This has drawn attention from groups eager to understand and reproduce its success. This has led to the Arts-Council-funded study "Grow Your Own Media Lab", of which the final report is the graphic novel of the same name "Grow Your Own Media Lab (The Graphic Novel)" or GYOML for short.

GYOML is a 114-page A5 perfect-bound book. The cover is a vivid black and yellow composition. Part Principia Discordia, part Emigre, it will look equally at home in gallery bookshops and alternative press outlets. Curious browsers will be hard pressed to resist taking a look. Inside, the book is black & white throughout with an introductory text followed by alternating pages of titles and comic-book illustrations of case studies.

Most books that use a Creative Commons licence either don't specify the licence or use one of the more restrictive licences. You'd be surprised how many cheerleaders for Free Software and Free Culture have restrictive licences on their books. Kudos to Access Space for getting the licence right (the copyleft "Attribution-ShareAlike" licence) and making sure that it's explained clearly in the book's front matter. This ensures that GYOML continues the Access Space ethos of sharing cultural and technological wealth in a principled and practical way.

The comic-book illustrations by Michael Tesh are in fanzine style, a characterful and evocative aesthetic for a small press publication. I found myself smiling at the clear inner thoughts of some of the people Tesh depicts, and if you meet one of Access Space's personnel after seeing his depictions of them you'll feel you already know them. What makes Tesh's art the perfect illustration for the case studies is that he is an Access Space regular.

Rather than providing an instruction manual for using software, which the book's introduction rightly points out would quickly become outdated, GYOML presents a series of case studies of users of the lab and the situations that they encounter. The case studies include a shy teenager, a nervous work placement, a mature student and a refugee dissident, all people learning from and contributing to different aspects of the running of Access Space. This illustrates the value of Access Space's approach and explain how, and more importantly why, to recreate it.

Despite not being a software manual there is a surprising wealth of technical and administrative information delivered surprisingly painlessly mixed in with the case studies. Such as how and why to use computers that businesses will pay you to take away from them, how and why to use Free Software, and how and why to make a server to keep users' work safe if one of those reclaimed computers breaks down. The names of Free Software operating system and art software is mentioned, as is how to learn more about them, so it is easy to find out more. And I didn't know how to crimp an RJ-45 ethernet cable before reading GYOML. Now I do.

For all the talk of "grass roots activism" and "alternative governance" on mailing lists, in universities, and at conferences there is often a disconnect between the rhetoric of technological radicalism and actually doing anything in society. We can learn a lot from Access Space's determination to get their hands dirty and to use technology as a means to the end of empowering people. A few years ago I helped out at Remix Reading's open access lab, which was inspired to adopt Access Space's way of working, so I can say from personal experience that running a lab is a rewarding experience.

GYOML is an effective and persuasive exposition of the virtues of Access Space's way of doing things. It is inspirational, unpretentious and informative. We need more like Access Space, and GYOML shows us how to do it. Let a thousand media labs bloom.

Creative Commons community outreach

The creativity of Asia's people will be supported and shared thanks to a new long-term strategic partnership between the DotAsia Organisation (DotAsia, www.registry.asia) and Creative Commons (CC).

DotAsia, the not-for-profit registry operator for the ".Asia" Internet top-level domain, plans to commit US$100,000 to Creative Commons in support of its cause, outreach and community efforts in Asia. In addition, DotAsia will contribute time and effort into assisting in the coordination of events, activities of CC's regional chapters and various other socio-technical initiatives, such as a next generation copyright registry project.

The partnership will be announced by the CEO of Creative Commons, Mr. Joi Ito, and Mr. Edmon Chung, the CEO of DotAsia, during the launch ceremony next Saturday afternoon (Oct 25) for Creative Commons Hong Kong (CCHK) at the HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity, Kowloon, Hong Kong. For more details about the launch event visit: http://hk.creativecommons.org.
.....

Free Culture and free society: Lecture by Lawerence Lessig

The Inaugural Lee Shu Pui Leung Wai Hing 利樹培梁蕙卿 Distinguished Lecture on the Media
Friday, October 24, 2008
Time:
5:00pm - 6:30pm
Location:
Wang Gungwu Theatre, Graduate House
Street:
The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam Road
City/Town:
Hong Kong, Hong Kong

PLEASE REGISTER AT http://hk.creativecommons.org/events/oct24-lecture/


About Prof. Lessig:

Professor Lawrence Lessig is the world’s foremost authority on copyright and intellectual property issues, a visionary seeking to reconcile creative freedom with marketplace competition. A leading authority on cyber law, he has focused his scholarship on the problem of how law should govern the exchange of information and ideas in a digital age. He is also a strong advocate of social institutions that would unleash the creativity impulses at all level of society.

Professor Lessig is the founder and co-director of Stanford law school’s Center for Internet and Society, chair of the Creative Commons project, and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He has taught at University of Chicago Law School and Harvard Law School. After completing his legal studies, Professor Lessig clerked for Justice Antonin Scalia, of the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Richard Posner of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Professor Lessig is the author of Free Culture (2004), The Future of Ideas (2001), Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999) and Code 2.0 (2006). He chairs the Creative Commons project, and serves on the board of the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Public Library of Science, and Public Knowledge. He is also a columnist for Wired.

For more information about Creative Commons:
* Creative Commons website http://creativecommons.org/
* Creative Commons Hong Kong website http://hk.creativecommons.org/

Digital Artists' Handbook

The Digital Artists Handbook is an up to date, reliable and accessible source of information that introduces you to different tools, resources and ways of working related to digital art.

The goal of the Handbook is to be a signpost, a source of practical information and content that bridges the gap between new users and the platforms and resources that are available, but not always very accessible. The Handbook will be slowly filled with articles written by invited artists and specialists, talking about their tools and ways of working. Some articles are introductions to tools, others are descriptions of methodologies, concepts and technologies.

When discussing software, the focus of this Handbook is on Free/Libre Open Source Software. The Handbook aims to give artists information about the available tools but also about the practicalities related to Free Software and Open Content, such as collaborative development and licenses. All this to facilitate exchange between artists, to take away some of the fears when it comes to open content licenses, sharing code, and to give a perspective on various ways of working and collaborating.

The digital artist handbook is brought to you by folly and has developed out of ongoing consultation with artists working with technology, which has shown a need for removing the barriers for artists to use digital tools. The project is supported by Arts Council England.

From August 2007 until January 2008, the editors of the Handbook were Marloes de Valk and Aymeric Mansoux of GOTO10.

Dwnload PDF

中國內地推行C.C的現狀及對香港的啟示

Before our real discussion on internet copyright / copyleft. We need a bit of warm up reading here.
中國內地推行C.C的現狀及對香港的啟示
撰文：小櫻的Kero .

作為一個新穎的授權模式，C.C似乎有希望能夠解決一直以來爭吵不休的「網上侵權」問題，它以「部分版權保留」的運作模式，允許一定程度上的再複製、傳播和平行創作，可以說是在普世狂吹「版權絕對化」風之下的一塊牆壁，同時也回應了不少網民。最近的版權條例在眾多BLOG友、ACG迷等群體中引起了很大的迴響，有人提出研究香港版C.C的可行性。在這裡允許我就內地推行C.C的現況作一個簡單的介紹，希望能起到一個拋磚引玉的作用。...

More about HK

公開民間諮詢會：保護產權=保護創意？

時間︰ 四月一日(星期日) 下午二時半
地點︰ 中環夏愨道12號美國銀行中心，香港中文大學專業進修學院100 室
主持︰ 葉蔭聰 (知識共享成員、獨立媒體(香港)執委成員)
講者︰

莫乃光先生 (香港互聯網協會會長)
鄧傑先生 (台灣聯合報系法務專員、中華民國維基媒體協會理事長)
群智基金會代表 (國內活躍於知識分享及網絡上開放協作議題之組織)

報名︰ 請電郵閣下之姓名、聯絡電話及人數至 openknowledgehk@gmail.com。
(亦歡迎即場 talk-in)

官方網頁：http://www.openknowledgehk.net/

簡介：

香港政府於一月初推出「在數碼環境中保護知識產權」 的諮詢文件，強調「政府致力建立一個健全的版權保護制度，為創意產業的持續發展提供有利環境。」可是，整個諮詢文件，主要只考慮版權持有人的利益，缺乏互聯網創作人及使用者的聲音。

互聯網最大的影響是打破消費者與生產者的角色，很多用戶都會於互聯網上創作（例如把文章、照片、音樂創作與混音、影像等內容上載）；網民於論壇上發表評論，形成一個公民參與的空間；亦有很多教師，透過互聯網教學。可是這次諮詢文件卻沒有考慮這些使用的需要，亦沒有評估傳統媒體主導的產權觀，對這個公共空間和創意空間所帶來的負面影響。

此外，這次諮詢中所提出的多個諮詢項目，對未來香港的數碼資訊業、創意工業、教育事業和言論空間有深遠的影響。我們希望藉著這次民間諮詢，讓公眾能對數碼環境的創作、文化教育事業有更多的瞭解，可以在諮詢期完結前，向政府提交意見。

這次諮詢會我們分別請來了國內群智基金會(Social Brain Foundation)代表，談如何發展一個有利創意和教育的產權觀，以及台灣聯合報系法務專員∕中華民國維基媒體協會理事長鄧傑，談台灣推廣 creative commons的經驗。互聯網協會香港分會主席莫乃光會以其專業知識，評論港府的諮詢文件。此外，主辦單位亦會發佈「知識共享(Open knowledge)宣言」行動，以民間群策群力的方法，推動開放知識的實踐。