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Report from Free Culture 2008

September 23, 2008 at 12:31 pm · Filed under Community, Conference, News, Research ·Tagged , ,

It is finally done… after much delay and a couple of suggestions and corrections by iSummit participants, I managed to publish online a report from Free Culture 2008, the research workshop I helped organize during the iSummit in Sapporo, on the themes of sharing, online freedom and collaboration, commons-based peer production and Creative Commons licensing. Click here to go to the report on the commonsresearch wiki, which also contains the program of the workshop. The report is pretty comprehensive and leaves little else to say, but if you’re reading this let me just say that I feel lucky to be part of a community of people who are willing to dedicate what precious little time they have to helping set up this workshop. I think this has a lot of potential and we’re already starting to plan for Free Culture 2009!

If you’re reading this for the first time and have no idea what it is all about, the wiki contains a lot more information. The whole idea basically started from a few of us (mostly CC-affiliated academics) thinking that we need a forum to exchange our ideas and findings on research pertaining to aspects of the digital commons. Then one thing led to another, and in what I think would make an exemplary case study of online collective action, we managed to set up Free Culture 2008 and generated enough interest to get everyone talking about a follow-up conference in 2009 (which, like the 2008 event, will not be limited to just CC-related topics). I will post more on these plans as soon as they start to take shape.

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CC Singapore

September 22, 2008 at 4:59 pm · Filed under Community, News ·Tagged ,

We recently announced the launch of Creative Commons in Singapore, at an event hosted by the ISEA conference at NTU and through an official press release from Creative Commons.

This means that soon Singapore-based authors/creators/institutions with an interest in sharing their content more openly with the rest of the world will be able to use Creative Commons licenses tailored to the legal tradition and language of Singapore, so as to ensure that the license terms will be easier to understand and interpret correctly. It also means that we have one more reason now to start building a community of like-minded people with a common interest in the role of ownership, intellectual property and “openness” on the Internet and more specifically in the context of Singapore and the region. 

Now the CC Singapore licenses are not online yet due to some technical issues, which we hope to resolve very soon. But in the meantime, Ivan Chew, whom I met at a recent event of the Lien Centre for Social Innovation at SMU, has taken the initiative to create a much needed blog for CC Singapore, a place to post announcements, meet and discuss CC in the context of Singapore. The blog is already off to a great start, so do take a look at it and post any questions or comments relating to Creative Commons in general, and its introduction in Singapore in particular. See you there!

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iSummit and Free Culture 2008

July 24, 2008 at 11:47 pm · Filed under Community, Conference, News, Research ·Tagged , ,

While Singapore is bracing itself for the local launch of Creative Commons (ok, perhaps I’m exaggerating a bit, but it is an important milestone), Sapporo is getting ready to welcome the largest international annual event of the Creative Commons and related communities: the iSummit. This year we are organizing for the first time a research workshop during the iSummit, the First Interdisciplinary Research Workshop on Free Culture (or Free Culture 2008 for short), whose detailed program can be found on the Commons Research Wiki I set up for this purpose. All submissions to the workshop were peer-reviewed and the extended abstracts (in some cases also full papers) are published on the wiki.

If you’ve already registered for the iSummit, then good for you, I think you’re in for a treat. If not, then hmm… tough luck, I think registration is closed now but there will be plenty to follow online, through the iSummit website (see link above), the icommons main community website, the research wiki (see above) and even on Second Life (for more info on how to follow the proceedings and get involved remotely  keep checking the main iSummit website. So, here goes, all the info you need in a short post, as I need to get my slides ready for Sapporo! That, and a million other things as usual, but I won’t complain here, this is meant to be a joyous post after all.

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CC Singapore launch is nigh!

July 24, 2008 at 11:28 pm · Filed under Community, Conference, News ·Tagged , ,

More great news this week. Creative Commons Singapore will finally launch localized versions of the CC licenses, and the official launch event will take place this Sunday, July 27, at the School of Art, Design and Media of NTU (map), at 1:30pm. Make no mistake, this is not just about the licenses and not just for lawyers. This is the first opportunity to promote a wider dialogue on the value of intellectual property and how digital distribution and Creative Commons are changing the game, giving more power and options to both established, ‘old-school’ creators of new media content as well as the millions of amateurs and pro-ams who post music, video, text and photos on the Social Web. So, do make the long trip to NTU and join us in our effort to get Singapore on the CC bandwagon. 

The event will take place under the auspices of ISEA 2008, a huge digital arts event and conference taking place in Singapore this year, and although the conference is for registered participants only, the CC launch (and the ensuing panel on copyright) will be open to the public. Just come to the ADM School at NTU and you will be guided from there, to find the exact venue. I do not know for sure which room the event will take place in and what the capacity will be, so if you want to get a seat it might be wise to come a bit early. 

More specifically, the launch of the Singapore CC licensing suite will take place at 1.30 to 1.45 pm, and will be graced by the presence of Creative Commons father (and for all who know him, an awesome speaker), Lawrence Lessig. The launch will be followed by a panel on Copyright and the Creative Commons, organized by CAPTEL and the CC Singapore team (which includes yours truly). The panel will end at 3:15 pm, at which point we will have to leave the premises probably as the rest of ISEA is, as I already mentioned, not open to the public (unless you have a ticket). Lessig will give a keynote later in the day for the ISEA conference, but to attend that you would need to have a ticket for the day for ISEA – you may be able to get one from their website if you want to get more Lessig (and I’m told the entire ISEA conference will be extremely interesting, so it’s probably worth it anyhow. 

See you there!!!

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New home :)

July 24, 2008 at 10:41 pm · Filed under News, Personal ·Tagged

So, here is me coming out about my new (professional) home… just this week I joined the Communications and New Media Programme at the National University of Singapore. Those who care to read this blog will know that I came to Singapore about 2 years ago, with a visiting appointment at the School of Information Systems of Singapore Management University. The time at SMU was great, intensive and very productive. It helped me launch the CC-Monitor project and make a few contributions to the research and practice of commons-based peer production.

Given that I quite liked Singapore and needed to find a more long-term home for my work with a good fit with my research interests I came in touch with the folks at CNM, then one thing led to another, and now I’m sitting at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, my new home away from home. It’s quite a change, to be sure, and my roots are still in CS/IS, but as the Internet becomes increasingly “social”, getting more involved with the social sciences feels like a natural progression. CNM in particular is a unique place that blends computer science and the social sciences in its mission to promote the study and development of communications and new media. 

I could go on and on about all the interesting new possibilities that this move is opening up, but I will leave it at that for now and move on to more news… this blog hasn’t seen updates in a while and there’s a lot to share…

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DMR=no-DRM?

October 17, 2007 at 12:34 pm · Filed under Business, Media, News ·Tagged , ,

So I just read this yesterday: According to this post on Ars Technica, DRM-free iTunes Plus downloads will be priced at 99c instead of $1.29. Is this a result of competitive pressure from Amazon’s new MP3 store (available only in the US) which sells only DRM-free music from EMI and others at lower prices? Hard to believe, as Amazon’s share in the MP3 market must be negligible and their site leaves much to be desired, but it could be that Apple is proactively dropping their prices on iTunes to maintain their pole position. Most likely I would guess that they have found their pricing at $1.29 was too high.

But if all this is true, it will mean that iTunes will offer DRM and non-DRM versions of the same songs, for the same price!

Something is wrong here, there is probably some transition going on, where, if any of this is true, Apple is reconsidering their pricing. They have two options: Either they drop the DRM versions entirely for those labels and artists who favor the DRM-free format, or they must price DRM and non-DRM versions differently. A subscription model for DRM songs would be an alternative.

And of course if they do price all DRM-free downloads at the standard price of 99c they ought to offer a free upgrade to all those faithful iTunes buyers who paid 99c to get the DRM versions!

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iTunes, EMI, Universal and Warner

July 3, 2007 at 12:51 am · Filed under Media, News ·Tagged , ,

So, recently EMI made what is probably a historic decision. The ENTIRE EMI CATALOG will henceforth be available on the iTunes music store in two versions: One with DRM, as usual, and one DRM-free, with a higher bitrate and with a higher price tag. The decision is historic as it is not every day that a major label decides to drop DRM (or at least experiment with wide distribution of non-DRM’d music). It will be interesting to see where that takes them and whether more labels will follow in their footsteps. BoingBoing among others reported on the story.

From a related cnet article:

“Higher-quality music files, which will play on any computer and any digital-audio player, will not replace the copy-protected EMI music currently sold through iTunes. Rather, they will complement the standard 99-cent iTunes downloads and will be sold at a premium: $1.29 per song.

Consumers who have already purchased EMI tracks containing Apple’s FairPlay copy protection will be able to upgrade them to the premium version for 30 cents, EMI said. Full albums in DRM-free form can be bought at the same price as standard iTunes albums.”

Well, not all is bright and rosy on iTunes. Apparently Universal is considering moving out of the iTunes store! More on this (though not much more, as the reasons behind this move are not so clear) also from BoingBoing. Also, Warner is apparently known to be pro-DRM and are not happy with Steve Jobs’ recent calls for DRM-free music.

One thing’s for sure… the shakeup of the music industry we’ve been witnessing in the past few years is far from over. As a consumer I’m personally hoping for more EMI-like announcements, though labels will certainly weigh the pros and cons very carefully.

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