commons

Island Summer

Its time for the annual summer move – We have rented a small cottage on the local island of Asperö (population 450 people) where we shall be for the next four weeks. The island is small (only about 1 square kilometre) but still manages to have a varied nature â?? including a nature trail through a leafy area, lots of swimming places and a small sweet-water lake.

Asperö (the scale is 500m)

The best thing about the island is that there are no cars only mopeds built for transport rather than speed.


the moped

this type of moped is called â??Flakmoppeâ?? in Swedish which literally translated means loading platform moped â?? sounds much better in Swedish. As you can imagine the pace is much more relaxed on the island. So I am looking forward to a long relaxing summer on the islandâ?¦ even if I do have some short trips (Barcelona & Amsterdam) and some writing (Military Violence, Free Software) planned the main idea is to have a relaxing holiday-time.

Posted on by mklang

The Death of Memory

OK â?? so articles that begin with the title â??The Death ofâ?¦â?? have a tendency to be alarmist. Despite this the recent news that Dr. Martin Luther Kingâ??s estate is about to auction off his papers (10 000 papers) creates thoughts in this direction. (via On the Commons)

The main fear is that the collection of sermons, speeches and papers that King wrote between 1946-1968 (including drafts of  â??I Have a Dreamâ??) will be bought by an investor and then sold off in pieces to the highest bidders. The economics of this is totally logical it will raise the most money. The downside is that this amazing collection will be spread making research difficult, and maybe impossible. As part of a collection a small note written by Dr King is a valuable addition. Taken on itâ??s own it is worth little and can be maltreated and eventually lost â?? as history has often shown.

This is indeed a death of memory.

The second part of the death of memory concerns the digitisation of communications. Since the dissemination of computers there has been a dramatic rise in communication and creativity. The general impression is that more and more people are writing and creating different forms of creative works. In addition to this more of our photographs are stored on digital storage devices. What are the implications of the shift to digital storage devices?

Cuneiform writing on clay tablets can still be read today after over 4000 years. Through this we have been able to read the Hammurabi code of law and the Gilgamesh epic and legends. (UPenn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology). Older books have a relatively long life expectancy in particular those printed on paper made from cloth rags. â??Ordinaryâ?? paper is less enduring and in particular modern paper since the acid remains in paper made between 1850 and 1950 cause this paper to slowly disintegrate (actually a slow burning acid fire) (Wikipedia).  Microfilm and Microfiche have a life expectancy of 500+ years but in reality this is substantially lower due to wear and tear by users.  Magnetic tape, Videotape, Magnetic disk and Optical disk will last less than 30-40 years.*

Stored digital photos will not be recovered from dumpsters and garage sales (Swapatorium) since they will have become unreadable as well as deteriorated.

All information storage forms require that the reader be able to understand the data. In the case of cuneiform tablets it is necessary to understand the written language. In the case of technologies such as tapes and microfilm it is also necessary to maintain functioning equipment that will be able to read the stored data. In the case of digital equipment it is necessary to save both the hardware and the software.

A good way to begin to understand the magnatude of this problem is to look at the â??Mother Tonguesâ?? chart of the development of computer languages that shows the rise and fall of programming languages.

Who will save the hardware, software and knowledge to be able to auction my collected works stored on several decaying computers? Even if someone eventually would want to read itâ?¦

* Rothenberg, Jeff. ‘Ensuring the Longevity of Digital Documents’, Scientific American (Jan 1995): 24-29.

Posted on by mklang

Academic Publishing and Copyright

The Science Commons has released three “Author Addenda” which are amendments that authors can attach to the copyright transfer form agreements they receive from publishing companies. The purpose is to ensure that the authors retain enough rights to publish their works online.

Every Science Commons Addendum ensures the freedom to use scholarly articles in teaching, conference presentations, lectures, other scholarly works, and professional activities. They differ in the following ways:

Want more information? Read the Background and FAQ.

Posted on by mklang

Hello Denmark

Denmark has launched Creative Commons license! Here is an excerpt from the press release:

On June 10, the Danish versions of the Creative Commons licenses were
launched in Copenhagen at a ceremony held in Politikens Foredragssal. At
the event, hosted by Copenhagen Business School, Professor Lawrence
Lessig (Chairman and CEO of Creative Commons) gave the keynote
address. The ceremony was sponsored by Copenhagen Business School, Bender
von Haller Dragsted law firm (www.bvhd.dk) and IBM Denmark (www.ibm.dk).

Says Dr. Thomas Riis, â??The Creative Commons licenses will benefit the
cultural life in Denmark. Creators and users of everything from music,
weblogs and homepages to paintings and books will profit from the
licenses.â?? Dr. Jan Trzaskowski adds that â??the licenses make it much easier
and faster to exchange creative works, which falls perfectly in line with
the vibrant cultural life in today’s Denmarkâ??.

Creative Commons Denmark.

Posted on by mklang

14th European Conference on Information Systems

Tomorrow the 14th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) begins. This is the biggest annual European IS conference and this time it has the additional bonus of being in my hometown. I have been accepted to the track on â??Open Source, Open Access and the Open Information Societyâ?? with a paper entitled â??Informational Commonsâ??.

The venue: The School of Economics and Law

The conference tracks include: Communities and New Forms of Organizations – eBusiness – eGovernment – Enterprise Systems – Grand Challenges of System Development – Human Computer Interaction – Information and Knowledge Management – IS and Organizational Change – IT in Tourism and Travel – Living in, and Coping with, the society – Mobile Communication, Telematics and Ubiquitous Computing – New Technologies, Innovation and Infrastructure Development – Open Source, Open Access and the Open Information Society – Philosophy and Epistemology of IS Research – Strategic Management of IS and IT – The Economics of IS

A harbour view near the opera

The programme (including a list of all papers) can be found here.

Posted on by mklang

Will blog for cash (and even for free)

Actually I am sceptical to the idea of making money from blogging. In a previous post on the Blogburst I reported about the downsides of commercial feeds (they eat your broadband, usually you dont get more readers, and payment is virtually nil). Obviously there are the exceptions to the rule. In the same way as Madonna makes money from selling records is an exception from the thousands (hundreds of thousands?) who never will.

Dont get me wrong – I am not against money per se. I just dont believe that I will make money directly from my blog. Despite this, I found this news interesting.

Scoopt, the world’s first commercial citizen journalism photography agency, has just launched ScooptWords to help bloggers sell their content to newspapers and magazines. Within the Scoopt interface, you can easily add a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license to your blog right alongside a Scoopt commercial badge. Use the CC license to tell people how your work can be used non-commercially; use the ScooptWords badge to let editors know that your writing can be purchased for commercial use. There’s so much great blog content being created every day — it’ll be very exciting to see how it helps change the way newspapers and magazines are created.

(via Creative Commons)

The attempts to create commercial forms of citizen journalism are fascinating to watch. Again we see the new social uses of media threatening the established business models. Blogs will not kill print media but they will force print media news to adapt to a new reality.  As usual in situations such as these there will be commercial winners and losers.

Posted on by mklang

Freelancers & Copyright

My last post was an attempt to blog via mail but it was less than successful since all that was posted was the header. I obviously have a lot to learn in this area. The post was supposed to include this text:
Today I am attending the Nordic Seminar for Freelance Journalists. This year it is being held in Kungälv at a conference center with a great view of Bohus Fästning (Bohus Fortress). The whole event is between Friday and Sunday but I am here to talk about Creative Commons licensing for the intellectual property slot on Friday afternoon.

Bohus Fortress

The IP block begins with a discussion on recent caselaw which is followed by a presentation called the archaeology of copyright. After a short coffee break I will present Creative Commons licenses and the session closes with a presentation of the Nordic and European Union rules of Copyright. This sounds like an interesting way to spend the afternoon even if it seems like summer has finally arrived.

It will be interesting to hear first hand from the point of view of freelance journalists their views on copyright and hopefully we will even discuss the influence such technology as blogs.

I was concerned that the freelance journalists would not take well to CC but I could not have been more wrong. Their major concern is that their work can be (and often is) “stolen”, in addition to the need to be better at negotiating for payments for the online use of their work by their print media customers.

They often spoke of their concern for their reputation and themselves as trademarks – in particular their concern that online publication in forms that they could not predict may seriously damage their future work.

We had a very good discussion and the response was positive.

Posted on by mklang

CC Newbie Tech Litt

The idea of the publisher In Pictures is to provide basic computer litterature with plenty of pictures. Their primary audience is the beginner in the area.
They have now released 22 computer books under a Creative Commons Att-NC-ND 2.5 license.

The library includes books on software such as Windows XP, Mac OS X Tiger, Microsoft office, Openoffice.org, Dreamweaver 8 and Photoshop. In addition to programming basics such as MySQL, PHP and PERL.

Posted on by mklang

Download Jazz

Música Lliure II contains some great jazz played by (mainly) Catalan artists is online for download. It is licensed under the Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license. Here is the blurb from the CC log:

Música Lliure II is a terrific new CD of Creative Commons-licensed jazz music by Catalan artists like Elisabet Raspall, Karion, Ismael Duenas, Joan Diaz, and La Orquesta de la Muerte (with a bonus contribution from Brazilâ??s Gilberto Gil). Produced by FOBSIC and Enderrock, the disc is available for free with the current issue of blues and jazz magazine Jaç. As with its predecessor, Música Lliure, the songs on Música Lliure II are available for free download at culturalliure.cat. Check it out!

Posted on by mklang

CC future obstacles

Sometimes when I present Creative Commons people nod and say that its great that the project exists and I must be happy that its all over. So they are partly right. Of course I am happy that we have brought the licenses to Sweden but its not over.

I dont mean that we have to cope with improvements and updates and attempts to remove all the little bugs that tend to follow all projects. Nor do I mean the time spent presenting and discussing CC.

What I mean is that CC is just in its infancy the potential for development and growth is just amazing. Did you know that we are trying to develop lots of applications to help others use CC?

photo: adamhenning (CC by-nc-sa)

Are you a developer with time on your hands? No, I didn’t think so 🙂 but take a look at the CC developers section and become inspired to help.

Posted on by mklang