Sunday, June 25, 2006

Day 3 keynote session


International role of Creative Commons with Cory Doctorow, Jimmy Wales, James Love, Glen Otis Brown and Nhlanhla Mabaso.

Cory Doctorow: WIPO development agenda, the experience of EFF at WIPO. There should be a stronger institutional representation of Creative Commons at WIPO level, as at the moment it has been silent. Cory mentioned the many different activism options at WIPO, little things can make a big difference: note taking, blogging, providing information for national delegations. Praise for informed and active national delegations like Brazil and India.

Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia in developing countries. Wales specified the multi-language approach, only one third of articles are in English, and there are many languages represented. Wales is now one of the voices of "what the internet thinks". He talked about the international aspects of interest for Wikipedia, particularly Chinese articles. Wikipedia is social innovation, not technical.

Nhlanhla Mabaso: excellent points about technology in developing countries, and how mobile phones are the technological innovation of choice in the developing world (I thoroughly agree).
Social hardship can provide new oportunities and new ideas on how to solve the problems faced by developing countries, from Linux server clusters to open technologies. There is some nervousness of authors and creators about licensing with CC, but they can be overcome with education. Technical solutions are taken for granted in developing countries.

Glen Otis Brown (Google): CC and Google are "birds of a feather" to abuse a very commonly used phrase around this ocnference. He described several new projects at Google with CC relevance, and some tools that are even distributed under CC licences. He talked about Ad-sense, is it commercial use? Can it help people make money from CC content?

James Love: CC is just part of a larger movement, the Access to Knowledge movement that encompasses FLOSS, access to medicines, open access, patent reform, etc. He stressed that WE are not a bunch of communists. FTA's and drug companies, trying to get the industry on board is another way of working towards access to medicine.

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