Friday, May 27, 2005
An African guide to Creative Commons
By Emrakeb Assefa
JOHANNESBURG--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.
JOHANNESBURG--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.
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