Communia -

Public Domain Day 2009 in Poland

Bernardo Parrella — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:17:42 +0100

In Poland, the Coalition for Open Education (KOED - Koalicja Otwartej Edukacji) has celebrated the Public Domain Day 2009 with a press conference held in Warsaw on 30th December 2008 and a range of web-based actions.

KOED is a newly formed partnership including two Communia member organizations: the Interdisciplinary Center for Modelling at University of Warsaw (ICM UW) and the Nicolaus Copernicus University Library (NCU). [5jan09]

Can you imagine a world without copyright?

Bernardo Parrella — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 22:56:01 +0100

A pan-European, critical-media project, Mag.net, has released its first collection of original essays (available online under Creative Commons), titled: "Experiences in Electronic Cultural Publishing".

As stated in its introduction, this production "represents some of the most important media for the critical reflexion of culture and art in an age strongly influenced by digital technologies and their social repercussions."

The Sharing Knowledge section includes several essays on such topics as "Creative Commons in context", "Tales of the Commons Culture" and particularly "Imagining a world without copyright", a paper by Joost Smiers & Marieke Van Schijndel.

Here are a few excerpts:

"...every artistic work - regardless of whether it concerns a soap opera, a composition by Luciano Berio, or a movie starring Arnold Schwarzenegger - derives the better part of its substance from the work of others - from the public domain.[20dec08]

4th Communia Workshop: Zurich, 23 Jan 2009

Bernardo Parrella — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:14:06 +0100

The 4th Communia Workshop will take place in Zurich at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) on Friday the 23rd of January 2009.

The Workshop is dedicated to discussing the 1st year review of the Communia project and planning our future actions. In both plenary and parallel sessions, we will also work on the Working Group projects and initiatives - including but not limited to: map the public domain, write a new mission statement for Communia, formulate specific policy statements, organize public domain day, etc. [6dec08]

NonCommercial study questionnaire extended to December 14

Luca Leschiutta — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 14:30:03 +0100

Creative Commons is conducting a study on the meaning of “NonCommercial” and you can weigh in by answering a detailed questionnaire on the subject. They have extended the deadline for participation to December 14 (originally December 7) [10dec08]

"The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind"

Bernardo Parrella — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 01:51:48 +0100

Yale University Press has just published a new book: The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind by James Boyle, Faculty Co-Director of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain. This is a great introduction for the public at large about the idea of the public domain, also detailing how it is being tragically eroded by our current copyright, patent, and trademark laws.

Our music, our culture, our science, and our economic welfare all depend on a delicate balance between those ideas that are controlled and those that are free, between intellectual property and the public domain. In a series of fascinating case studies, Boyle explains why gene sequences, basic business ideas and pairs of musical notes are now owned, why jazz might be illegal if it were invented today, why most of 20th century culture is legally unavailable to us, and why today’s policies would probably have smothered the World Wide Web at its inception. [5dec08]

Report on Amsterdam workshop

Bernardo Parrella — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 01:28:52 +0200

The workshop - co-organized by the Institute for Information Law (IViR) at the University of Amsterdam, Knowledgeland and Waag Society, under the perfect supervision of Lucie Guibault, Paul Keller and Peter Troxler - gathered about 70 participants from throughout Europe.

The event started with a fascinating discussion between two worldwide leading thinkers of the public domain: Professor James Boyle (Faculty Co-director of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School, USA) and Professor Bernt Hugenholtz (Director of the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam). Their conversation focused on the history of copyright and "droit d’auteur", defining differences and common points between the philosophies framing both concepts, toward more than one definition of the public domain.[24oct08]

Open Access Day

Luca Leschiutta — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:36:43 +0200

The first international Open Access Day will be held on 14 October 2008. The founding partners are SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), Students for FreeCulture, and the Public Library of Science.

The aim of the celebration is to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access, including recent mandates and emerging policies, within the international higher education community and the general public. Open Access Day will invite researchers, educators, librarians, students, and the public to participate in live, worldwide broadcasts of events.

There is a webpage dedicated to that event with all the information.

If you plan to organize any event at your institution you can use that site to spread information about it.
[09/24/08]

'The Limits of Intellectual Property' @ 2008 Ars Electronica Festival

Bernardo Parrella — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 03:25:41 +0200

Under the banner of “A New Cultural Economy – The Limits of Intellectual Property” the 2008 festival aims to co-author the preamble to a new open knowledge-based society. [09/06/08]

EC's 'forward looking package' ignoring pivotal copyright law studies

Bernardo Parrella — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:59:47 +0200

Prof. Bernt Hugenholtz, Director of the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam (IViR), wrote an open letter about the European Commission’s “Intellectual Property Package”. Addressing two major studies on the impact of EU copyright law and policies produced in 2006 and 2007 by the IViR, Prof. Hugenholtz states his "complete surprise" in discovering that such studies "have been almost entirely ignored in the so-called 'forward looking package' on IP", recently released by the EC. [08/28/08]

COMMUNIA conference 2008 Report

Bernardo Parrella — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 20:55:51 +0200

Held at the University of Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium, under the perfect organization of a local team coordinated by Tom Dedeurwaerdere (Louvain University) and María José Iglesias (Namur University), the First COMMUNIA Conference attracted almost 100 attendees from all over Europe and even someone from the United States and Brazil. Here is a detailed report of the two-day event. [08/01/2008]