Monthly Archives: April 2006

iCommons Summit, Rio de Janeiro, 23-25 June, 2006

The past few years has seen the burgeoning of a number of initiatives
aimed at opening the fields of creativity, science and knowledge in
communities around the world. Practitioners from these movements
currently identify themselves as falling within a particular community
– ‘free and open source software’, ‘open access’, ‘open content’ and
‘open science’, amongst others – but they share key processes and
values whose common elements are yet to be fully realized.

This year’s iCommons Summit aims to bring together, in a creative,
stimulating and cooperative environment, the pioneers from these
communities – to inspire and learn from one another and establish
closer working relationships around a set of incubator projects. With
participation by commons communities from Creative Commons, Wikipedia,
Science Commons, Ubuntu, A2K and others, this year’s Summit is set to
be one of the most exciting events for creative and knowledge commons
pioneers from around the world. Continue reading →

[QUT Law Faculty](http://www.law.qut.edu.au) and the [ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation](http://www.cci.edu.au) invite you to discuss this vital question in [Second Life](http://www.secondlife.com/) Virtual World at 2pm, Wednesday 26 April 2006 – World Intellectual Property Day (Australian Eastern Standard Time).

The rapid pace of technological change we are experiencing requires us to be aware of the balances inherent in copyright law; we must attempt to provide adequate protection to copyright owners, while allowing for a rich culture of experimentation and innovation.

Join us for a discussion of the current context, covering fair use/fair dealing, blogs, mash-ups, parody, and much more.

Speakers include:
- *Richard Neville* (Futurist)
- *Toby Miller* (UC Riverside, QUT Vice Chancellor Distinguished Visitor)
- *Professor Brian Fitzgerald* (QUT)
- *Professor Mark Perry* (University of Western Ontario)

The discussion will be held in [Second Life](http://www.secondlife.com/), a massive online multiplayer virtual world created by Linden Labs, at Pooley Stage, Pooley (251, 16, 55), at 9pm Server Time on Tuesday 25 April 2006.

Hope to see you online soon.
Continue reading →

last night cory doctorow, of boingboing and electronic frontier foundation fame, gave a public lecture right here in brisbane as part of the ideas festival. naturally he was going to talk about something tech/internet related. but despite the predictablity of topics, it was a very good lecture.

he gave a fantastic overview of drm and the horrific potential future should the large ip holders – companies, collecting societies and the likes – get their way.

he talked about the lastest swag of measures being pushed by major ip owners in the drm war: broadcast flags. this marks the broadening of the drm concept beyound the internet and into any form of digital content (ever wondered why the DTV push is on?). built-in restrictions that tell your digital technology what it will allow you to do. for example, some programs on DTV won’t be able to be stored on a hard disk, or will automatically delete after expiration of a defined period. doctorow even when to far as to say that some digital technology will shut itself off to ensure contravention does not occur. he cites a child’s first steps as an example, saying imagine your child is taking thier first steps across the lounge room. you’re recording with your digital camera and as you pan past the television the camera recognises a broadcast flag which restricts copying the images on screen, and the camera shuts itself off.”

so how much freedom will new technology really give us? Continue reading →