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 of the internet, mobile phones, multi-channel television, social networking and other phenomena have had a huge impact on content, advertising, brands, and the way all of these are delivered… It is not content that is king, as Bill Gates said in 1996, Mr Ricketts suggests. “Historically, the channels have controlled content - now the customer is in charge. But no-one knows what the customer will do…”…

From ‘User revolt forces Digg copyright retreat‘ by Kevin Allison,
“The power of internet users was demonstrated on Wednesday when a popular news website said it would ignore requests to remove stories featuring a code that can be used to crack copy protection on high-definition video discs. The decision by Digg.com, a “Web 2.0” site that relies on users to act as editors of news stories, came after users rebelled by voting for stories featuring a 32-digit key that can be used to hack HD-DVD copy protection…
Kevin Rose, Digg’s founder… wrote to users on Digg’s weblog: “You’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company…we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”

From ‘MySpace cedes editorial control to users‘ by Matthew Garrahan
“MySpace, the social networking site owned by News Corp, is close to launching a news aggregation service that will allow its 160m members to rank news stories and headlines in order of importance and relevance.
The service, which could be announced as early as Thursday, effectively cedes editorial control of news selection to the MySpace user base and is the latest example of the company’s attempt to diversify into new areas…
“The response from advertisers so far has been fantastic,” said Brian Norgard, co-founder or Newroo, a news aggregation service that was acquired by News Corp last year and integrated with MySpace…”

From ‘GPL sparks openness debate in tech sector‘ by Richard Waters
“In future, if the latest compromise over the GPL is adopted, anyone with the technical competence will have the right to crack open a television set-top box or any other gadget that employs the software and add new capabilities and features to the device themselves.
“This is serving notice on all the consumer electronics makers,” said Mark Radcliffe. “They will have to give people the alternative of replacing the software [in their devices] and tell them how to do it.”…
The battle is central to the broader question of intellectual property rights in the internet age. It concerns an approach to licensing software that, over the past decade, has come to be seen as the model for an open approach to letting people share ideas over the Web.”

As an IBM document reputedly puts it, “Today, innovation is a dual-value proposition: a balanced foundation of open and proprietary collaborations”. James Boyle can turn his attention in the FT’s New Technology Forum to the hints of a different, ‘copy-friendly’ business model in every one of the businesses - recording, film, publishing and software industries - that not so long ago, as he put it, were so eager to ‘ have their cake and make your cake illegal’.

Meanwhile as ever, it is the sheer creativity of the users, customers - ‘what used to be called the audience’ - that is most impressive. Here are some examples from South Africa, Catalonia and Spain, Dubai, and of course, Brazil.

So, as an impressive victory was scored for politics and the US public space last month by an eclectic group who successfully called for US Presidential debate video footage to be ‘placed in the public domain, or under a Creative Commons license..’, it was simply the icing on the cake to discover in the first Reith lecture that Jeffrey Sachs has decided to christen his new way of solving the world’s problems, ‘Open Source leadership’ - which I look forward to hearing much more about:

‘We are entering I believe a new politics, and potentially a hopeful politics. I’m going to call it open-source leadership. If Wikipedia and Linux can be built in an open source manner, politics can be done in that manner as well. We are going to need a new way to address and to solve global problems, but our connectivity will bring us tools unimaginable even just a few years ago. I’m going to try to explain how this can be done, how without a global government we can still get global co-operation, how initiatives like the Millennium Development Goals can be an organising principle for the world — though there is no single implementing authority — and how it is possible to coalesce around shared goals.’

So it seems as if the openness debate is well and truly launched out there. It has been extremely interesting trying to map its contours so far. Where it is all going to end - no-one can possibly tell. For now, I’m happy to bow out. To everyone who has taken an interest in this blog - thank you and best wishes.

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 exciting debate it  generated meant that we wanted to keep it going for longer.  Now, six months later, we have taken the decision to finish the blog.  Rather that deleting it, we would like the discussion to remain online as a record; an interesting  snapshot of the thinking around Creative Commons and intellectual property rights in 2006, which moves in new, exciting and challenging directions every day.  Thanks to everyone who has joined in.

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 revolution. He bemoans the conservatism of British business leaders compared to their American counterparts, in failing to recognise these developments. You can listen to the programme.

Another good American idea is the Californian website, Onthecommons.org which has noticed that, ‘The majesty of the commons is being neglected’. David Bollier expands on that thought in an Onthecommons’ Essay:

‘ We do not have well-developed language and narratives for asserting the value of free, un-metered exchanges of information, which is increasingly the norm on the Internet. Conventional economics regards sharing and creative transformation as either worthless or a form of piracy. The commons is a useful antidote to this intellectual limitation because it gives us a new story to explain how social communities generate their own distinctive value – value that is economic, social and creative all at the same time.

The commons “tears the curtain” away from normative assumptions, revealing that market exchange is not the only source of value-added activity in societies. The commons can be at least as productive. But first, we need to name that social process if we are going to value it and preserve it.

To talk about the commons, then, … can begin to challenge market-based narratives that refuse to acknowledge some elemental realities of human instinct and social life. For example, copyright law sees value only in property-encased creativity; the public domain is regarded as a wasteland. Real estate developers regard open spaces and wilderness as unproductive land, lacking in value until the magic hand of property enlivens it. Companies ascribe value to people (“human resources”) only to the extent that they contribute to “the economy” as workers or consumers.’

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 personally expended quite a lot of effort in showing how even this original genius might be seen as standing on previous giants’ shoulders, I do hope he’ll reconsider and instead of being on the wrong side of history here, go into an alliance with his audiences against DRM constraints. I would like to point him to one of those ‘forward scoping’ articles in a recent FT about how ‘entertainment industry executives’ are discovering ‘distribution’.  Apart from anything else, his films are so pre-eminently remixable…

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…

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 top business schools to create a business book authored and edited by a “wiki” — an online community dedicated to writing.
The effort is inspired, in part, by the best-known wiki-produced work — Wikipedia, a not-for-profit online encyclopedia. Despite occasional hiccups, Wikipedia is increasingly regarded as a reliable source for information, aided by community-enforced rules that it can’t contain either personal points of view or original research….
The wiki book, produced by a community of business experts and managers, will be called “We Are Smarter Than Me.” It will explore how businesses can use online communities, consumer-generated media such as blogs, and other Web content to help in their marketing, pricing, research and service.’

We Are Smarter Than Me won’t pay businessmen and consultants for their response to not much more than a series of chapter headings - but will reimburse a team of ghostwriters to turn their thoughts into a 120-page business book aimed at the fast-growing airport bookstore market for sale next autumn at $25.99. An Authors Guild spokesman was predictably scathing about this ‘wiki…about wikis’, arguing that, ‘Readers generally look for a strong, consistent author’s voice, which isn’t something a wiki can really provide.’

But the man who thought the idea up - Barry Libert, a former McKinsey & Co. consultant who is CEO of Shared Insights Inc., a Woburn, Mass., company - is convinced that the big community collectively will select solutions that are better than the answers provided by individual professors or consultants. Many companies have started using wikis internally and with partners for product development. How will they motivate their major contributors? Authors’ names will be printed on the book cover and on the web site, and as the MIT partner commented, “If you really are an expert in this area, you wouldn’t want to be left out.”

We Are Smarter Than Me is not however to be confused with another initiative which was bruited abroad on Start the Week last week - We-Think, described thus:

‘ a new form of creativity is being born, one based on participation… People can combine their ideas and skills without a hierarchy to co-ordinate their activities. Charles Leadbeater’s new book is called We-Think: The Power of Mass Creativity, but it is not published until June 2007. However, the author is attempting to put his ideas into practice: a draft of the book is available on the web and readers’ comments will be incorporated into the final version.’

It’s a fascinating read.

Meanwhile Charles Leadbeater last week also made an effort to sort out some of the ideas of Mick Hucknall from Simply Red. Mick went on record to say that yet another extension of the copyright term for bands like Simply Red was true socialism. This was a novel approach, to say the least. The ensuing debate was lively. See Peter Bradwell’s Friday Rant for some of the goss…  It is very early days for the reversal of the trend of lengthening terms, and hopefully the debate will now gather pace, and be taken seriously.

“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 an easy matter…

‘Considering the age of Shakespeare’s works, one might assume that all of it would be automatically in the public domain. Pollock explains the complexity at work, where at least three factors are at play: anyone can take a public domain work and, with modifications, release it as a proprietary work; if an old work is only now being published for the first time, it may still be in copyright; and scans of a public domain work may be copyrighted in places outside the US, particularly in Europe.’

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/

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, the ‘flagship feature’ covers some very important topics in ways I don’t at all disagree with. Many interesting thinkers are cited - Tom Reynolds, Chris Anderson - author of The Long Tail, Cory Doctorow, Yochai Benkler - in fact I can recommend the rest of this introduction to CC unreservedly. It looks as if the debate is moving on.

But just to return to my small effort - a couple of thorough readings have left me uncertain about the content of the disagreement. In my first mention, I am described as ‘hold[ing] up CC licenses as a viable alternative to copyright’, and the following suggestion is attributed to me:

‘that existing copyright law stymies creativity in the digital age by restricting use and barring communication between creators and their audience.’

This is a pretty exact summary of my main argument, so it was initially rather disappointing to find that Paul Carr, editor-in-chief of The Friday Project - described as ‘the first UK publisher to have made an entire work available for free under a Creative Commons licence’ - thinks that my ‘thesis is “utter nonsense…”‘

Any dismay soon turns into confusion, as Paul Carr continues on the subject of Creative Commons licensing, ‘Publishers certainly shouldn’t be scared by it…’ he says. Apparently he ‘tends to disagree that giving away free content damages sales’ and concludes his argument, by ‘urging publishers to “give away as much as you can”, as he believes that the more online visibility an author’s work has, the more their audience will grow.’

Hang on - isn’t this to argue, as I do in Unbounded Freedom, that in the digital age the recognition of property not just as exclusive ownership, but also as distribution - which is a characteristic of cultural commons thinking as reflected, for example, in Creative Commons Licenses - lifts some significant barriers to ‘communication between creators and their audiences’.

What Carr seems to object to in Unbounded Freedom, and he is joined in this objection by Caroline Michel, m.d. for the William Morris Agency who so adroitly defended her side of the argument at the launch of my booklet - is that I am suggesting that people should give away their work for free - period. But this was not my argument and I went out of my way to emphasise the fact. Please see a few examples below if you wish - there could be many more. Forgive my self-indulgence, but it is hard to believe that people have actually read this rather short book…

The second reference to Unbounded Freedom is made by Caroline Michel: she refers to parts of what I have written as “completely astonishing”.

Well, I dare say, some parts of what I have to say do seem astonishing. But I think this is only a marker of how complacent people who rely on intellectual property rights have become as copyright term is extended and extended again, regardless of the wider public interest - and how far we have drifted away from the enabling balancing act that copyright law was originally intended to serve.

One last quote from me:

In cultural commons thinking the value of intellectual property is predicated on the right to distribute rather than the right to exclusive ownership. If this stops us in our tracks, or strikes us as at the least counter-intuitive, it is because ‘intellectual property’ as the right to exclude is so deeply embedded in our ways of thinking and our institutions. Part 1 traces the ‘Rise and Rise of IPR in Britain and the USA’ to show how this came about, and to flag up some of the moments in that inexorable process in which a balance of interests was threatened and what was about to be lost, signalled; or an alternative path was glimpsed.

Some examples from Unbounded Freedom of how this is obviously not about ‘free beer’…

On the core insight of cultural commons thinking: It turns out that what makes for success is not whether money is exchanged or whether laws are challenged. What makes cultural commons thinking the basis of a gathering social movement worldwide, is the perception that it is the mutually enabling relationship that matters most. These licenses make it easier to share. Those whose innovating energy have begun to transform the centre from the edge – who we might think of as the new authors – are people who have understood this. And they are also its beneficiaries.p36.

On an Open Access publishing success: But success here was not about a decision to give content away free – either of control or of good financial sense. It was a commitment to contributing to a ‘free culture’ – as in ‘free speech not free beer’ as Richard Stallman famously formulated it - that could support and protect its innovators and creators. This was achieved in several characteristic areas of transformation: an overall approach which began by asking how technology could best serve the highest ambitions of the organisation as a whole; the move away from a proprietorial concept of authorship; and most importantly, the opening up of content to enable a much wider range of services to users and a much broader user involvement. The key question to be addressed was how to open up content, so that it could be updated, changed and enriched, through a more creative relationship to clients and partners. p.46

On Creative Commons Licenses: The most share-lite license allows others to download your works and share them, provided they mention you and link back to you: but it does not allow them to be changed or used commercially in any way. Share-alike, on the other hand, lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses: all new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. p.34

On Creative Commons thinking in Brazil: For Brazil, the Creative Commons project is a tool empowering creators and artists to license their creations so that society as a whole is entitled to exercise some rights over their work. It is a ‘tool for intellectual generosity, as well as for the emergence of open business models’. It is the artist or creator who decides, on a voluntary basis, which rights she or he wants to reserve, and which rights he or she wants ‘society to be free to exercise’. The mindshift is profound.p.28

On successful, large-scale peer production projects: Given the large-scale connectivity we have to day, and diverse human motivations, Benkler concludes, ‘it turns out that some combination of true believers, people who play around, occasional contributors, and people paid to participate at the interface of peer production and markets sustain these projects.’ p.23

On the sharing economy: Experts assert that the rise of the sharing economy does not force a decline in market-based production, since it draws on impulses, time and resources that otherwise would have been spent in consumption. However commons-based peer production now competes over taste, social behaviour and the ability to solve problems with those who produce information goods for which there are socially produced substitutes. Wikipedia poses a challenge to other online encyclopedias and may well come to be seen as an adequate alternative to Britannica as well. But the real challenge is to explore the many ways in which the two economies can reinforce each other. Rather than investing in expensive copyright protection systems, information may be commodified through tried-and-tested methods, but only if due respect is paid to the creative and generative social character of an active user community. Increasingly, as Richard Barbrook announced in The Regulation of Liberty, information exists as both commodity and gift, and as hybrids of the two. The passive consumption of fixed pieces of information now co-exists with the participatory process of ‘interactive creativity’. One strategy can, for example, be used to enter the market, and another one adopted once you are established. p.23

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 are kind of a working-class entertainment. When I go to my WoW guild, my raid leader is a night-shift nurse. We have bartenders. We have unemployed people, lots of military folks, policemen — there is a community made up of a very diverse set of people. And what’s interesting is that every single MBA who has tried to take the leadership role in the guild has failed. Leadership in these kinds of situations is much more about listening, and leadership is not exclusive to people in the leading class. It kind of translates into, say, understanding how open-source projects work, or how Firefox might be managed. This may all sound like a very long, elaborated excuse for playing lots of World of Warcraft. (Laugh) But I can learn a lot of things in places where typically people don’t think there is learning.‘

Meanwhile, here is Matt Hanson at the Leeds Film Festival explaining why his Cinema 2.0 project is on a CC license:

‘I’ve been involved in producing VJ and remix cinema projects. I like the idea of sampling other work, and doing it legitimately. So this is a digital community project as I want to give something back to the community by opening it up for free sharing and non-commercial use, as well as commercial sampling.

There’s a huge opportunity in more open content that Hollywood and the music industry haven’t realised or been able to move toward because their business models are predicated on something else.

As consumers we are all becoming used to creating our own media, and viewing it how we want. As such personally I don’t want to cripple my media with bad DRM and punish viewers/users of my material.‘

But Matt hasn’t given up entirely on auteurs… Nicole Wistreich interviewed him for netribution:

http://www.netribution.co.uk/2/content/view/1000/2/