Au revoir from Rosemary

Frankly, it’s impossible to keep up. Take four passing comments from the shoals of commentary – these in the Financial Times – in the last couple of months:
From ‘Traditional media may face extinction‘ by Mike Scott,
“The media sector is in the midst of a technological revolution that is undermining traditional business models. The rise [...]

Goodbye!

This blog was first created following the publication of Unbounded Freedom: a guide to Creative Commons for cultural organisations, which was published in September 2006.  Initially we had only planned to keep the blog live for a couple of weeks to enable a discussion around the issues and ideas in the book.  However, the amount of [...]

Let’s Copy America

The world’s biggest computer companies are being threatened by a host of new start-ups powered by open-source software, strings of inexpensive computers, and ‘mash-up’ websites which combine information in innovative ways. So argues Peter Day on Radio 4’s ‘In Business’ this Sunday after talking to some of the rising stars of the new wave computing [...]

Tie me up, tie me down?

This Xmas, I was disappointed to discover that one of my favourite movie directors, Pedro Almodovar, has been heading up an all-star cast in a ‘culture comes first’ campaign to defend EU artists’ levies on private copying. See euobserver on this and a wider ‘gloves-off’ debate on EU regulation entitled ‘Creative rights focus’.
Since I have [...]

Gowers reports

Andrew Gowers, commissioned by the British government to map the next generation’s intellectual-property framework, reported his findings and made his recommendation this Wednesday. See Becky Hogge’s interview with Andrew Gowers on openDemocracy.
There’s some more detail at Intellectual Property Watch…

We Are Smarter Than Me, We Think

There was an interesting story in the Wall St.Journal last week with the headline, ‘U.K’s Pearson Tests The Group Dynamic For a ‘Wiki’ Book’. I don’t know if they are given to hyperbole, but William M.Bulkeley, filing the report, thinks that this ‘could shake up the book industry’:
‘Publishing giant Pearson PLC is joining with two [...]

Open Shakespeare

“I’m sure there will be others out there who will do it differently and perhaps better. For me that is the big benefits of openness; it allows many minds to address the same problem.”
I like the sound of these guys – Rufus Pollock and colleagues. They are trying to free up Shakespeare. It is not [...]

Trying to oblige

Caroline Michel wants more answers to the challenge of compensation for creativity in the sharing economy. Here is a new partnership in the exchange of open business models that might interest her:
http://www.openbusiness.cc/2006/11/03/digital-pioneers-and-openbusiness-partnership/

Honourable mention?

The Bookseller has a two-page feature devoted to creative commons licensing this week, entitled ‘Creative with copyright’.
In it, Unbounded Freedom, my guide to creative commons thinking for cultural organisations commissioned by the Counterpoint unit of the British Council, comes in for a certain amount of stick. Where my work is not the subject of discussion, [...]

2.0 new ways of being and doing

Joi Ito(see below  in Bulgaria) – has been interviewed by The Japan Times Online. He has lots of interesting things to say about democracy and the net – also this on what he can learn about leadership from the video game, World of Warcraft ( WoW):
‘Video games have always been kind of stigmatized, and they [...]