Lessig

So last year today was the event at the NYPL with Jeff Tweedy. In my continuing effort to tinker with podcasting like technology, I've synchronized the slides with the audio from that event. The file is available as a torrent.

(How to use a torrent)

Also available on:

YouAre.TV: Who Owns Culture?

(Very cool re YouAre.TV: Built in CC licensing in the upload engine).

Google Video: Who Owns Culture?

YouTube.Com rejected the video -- too long.

You know about Creative Commons, and Creative Commons licenses. Key to the CC strategy was to port Creative Commons licenses into jurisictions across the world. More than 30 countries have now launched CC licenses; another fifty in the works. As of the launch of Malta last week, this is CC world:

The green countries have already launched. The yellow countries will launch in the next six months. And the red countries are still, well, red.

This project of porting CC licenses we originally called the "iCommons Project." But last year, we renamed the project Creative Commons International. iCommons became its own (UK-based) non-profit. In June of last year, we held the first iCommons Summit in Boston. In June of this year (23-25) we'll hold the second -- in Rio.

The aim of iCommons reaches far beyond the infrastructure that CC is building. The aim of the iSummit is to bring together a wide range of people in addition the CC crowd - including Wikipedians, Free Software sorts, the Free Culture kids, A2K heroes, Open Access advocates, and others -- to "to inspire and learn from one another and establish closer working relationships around a set of incubator projects." iCommons has a separate board from Creative Commons -- Joi Ito is its chair -- and its ultimate mission (in addition to this annual moveable feast of commons conversation) will be determined by the conversation that will continue in Rio.

The event will be extraordinary. Gilberto Gil will perform. Jimmy Wales will inspire. Joi Ito will direct. The only thing I can promise about me is that this year, I won't be thrown into the pool.

So come. Or if you can't, help others come by donating to the scholarship fund, or at least put our ‘donate button‘ on your website.

Mathias Klang from the fantastically cool freculture country of Sweden (see my favorite, atmo.se, and very interesting (though you know my ambivalence about this word), Piracy Party) is publishing his PhD dissertation on Disruptive Technologies. He needs a cover design. So he's running a competition. If you're talented (or maybe even not!) and would like to help a PhD (which will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license), check out the competition here.

Yochai Benkler's book, The Weath of Networks, is out. This is -- by far -- the most important and powerful book written in the fields that matter most to me in the last ten years. If there is one book you read this year, it should be this. The book has a wiki; it can be downloaded as a pdf for free under a Creative Commons license; or it can be bought at places like Amazon.

Read it. Understand it. You are not serious about these issues -- on either side of these debates -- unless you have read this book.

Their text (borrowed):

Harvard Free Culture presents Sharing is Daring, a showcase of new & derivative artworks released under flexible licenses that allow for sharing & remixing. The exhibition will feature a range of graphic, photography, video, and multimedia works by: ~ Abram Stern ~ Matt Vance ~ Elton Lovelace ~ Brian Zbriger ~ Suburban Kids with Biblical Names ~ Shanying Cui ~ Ben Sisto ~ Tim Jacques ~ Rebecca Rojer ~ Greg Perkins ~ Ryan Sciaino ~ David Meme ~ Matt Boch & Claire Chanel ~Selections from the 100 Second Film Festival ~

Opening night is Thurs., Apr. 27, 2006 at 8pm at the Adams Artspac, Harvard University, Plympton at Bow St., Cambridge, MA. (map)

Food and drink will be served.

The show will run from April 27 - May 6. For more information, go to SharingIsDaring or contact here.

About Harvard Free Culture

Harvard Free Culture is a student group dedicated to promoting cultural participation and open intellectual property policy in the digital age. It seeks to reach out to artists, creators, technologists, and policymakers alike to address these issues and promote access to culture and knowledge. More information is available at Harvard Free Culture.