Hi all,
First off, thanks for putting on the stand in the centre. There's a photo of it at: http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=64562 and some feedback from people at: http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=64561 By the way, I love the IFSO logo and your poster looks great.
In addition to the free software workshop, which we'd love your involvement with, there are a couple of other sessions that are closely related to free software.
On Tuesday at 6pm, there is a Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) campaign information session. I don't know that much about CRIS, but they seem to be mostly composed of academics and mainly involved in lobbying the international bodies. For example they had a large presence at theWSIS in Geneva and the person giving the workshop, Sean O Siochru, was there as a delegate. This could be quite interesting for ye as I know that there are major issues with the EU and patent laws at the moment. He should be quite well-informed about that issue.
I was talking to Malcolm and suggested that we hold a workshop on intelectual property rights and software related issues on Thursday at 6pm. I can confirm that this spot is available if IFSO people are up for it. There should be a fair few people interested. In particular, people from Indymedia Ireland would be very interested in learning more about the various forms of copyleft licences (eg GPL, LGPL, BSD, Creative Commons) and issues related to them. By Thursday there should also be a fair few international media activists in town with interesting contributions to make. There should be a couple of people who took part in the WeSeize counter-summit in Geneva and there will be people from Indymedia UK there too who recently participated in the netstrike agains the patent laws and should have some interesting input. We could probably persuade Sean to take part too and gather an interesting cross-section of people who are interested in issues related to intellectual property rights - from "street-activists" to UN lobbyists.
Let me know if you are interested, either by email or when you see me at the centre.
cheers chekov
I love the IFSO logo and your poster looks great.
It looks like people are big fans of the GNU with harp logo. I think we might want to get an official okay from FSF / FSFE / the GNU project that we can use the GNU image in this way. Ciaran, you have personal contact with some of those folks. Perhaps you could ask them?
On Tuesday at 6pm, there is a Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) campaign information session.
I will go along to this.
I was talking to Malcolm and suggested that we hold a workshop on intelectual property rights and software related issues on Thursday at 6pm. I can confirm that this spot is available if IFSO people are up for it.
I'll be able to go. We should prepare some material on the work we've been doing. The two main strands are Copyright and Patents. I did some work on the copyright law, so I'll try to put together a summary of what went on there. Can someone else volunteer to write up our patent work? I can do that too, but I haven't been as involved recently. We might also want to have some notes on the Enforcement directive about which I know nothing.
people from Indymedia Ireland would be very interested in learning more about the various forms of copyleft licences (eg GPL, LGPL, BSD, Creative Commons) and issues related to them.
Can someone tackle this? I don't know much about the BSD and Creative Commons license.
Let me know if you are interested, either by email or when you see me at the centre.
If I get some positive replies to this e-mail, I'll get in touch with Checkov and confirm we'll do the workshop.
Thanks,
Malcohol.
(I'll be at the indymedia centre in about 30 minutes.)
It looks like people are big fans of the GNU with harp logo. I think we might want to get an official okay from FSF / FSFE / the GNU project
I'll ask FSF out of courtesy but I'm sure it'll be grand.
On Tuesday at 6pm, there is a Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) campaign information session.
I will go along to this.
I'll be there too. I haven't met Seán [0] in person before, but he's a clued in fellow with high level lobbying experience (UN & WIPO level IIRC), so it should be worth hearing what he's got to say.
I was talking to Malcolm and suggested that we hold a workshop on intelectual property rights and software related issues on Thursday at 6pm. I can confirm that this spot is available if IFSO people are up for it.
I'll be able to go.
yup, I'll do that too.
people from Indymedia Ireland would be very interested in learning more about the various forms of copyleft licences (eg GPL, LGPL, BSD, Creative Commons) and issues related to them.
Can someone tackle this? I don't know much about the BSD and Creative
I can do this one.
[0] In January, Seán Ó Siochrú sent a very interesting quote to the public wsis-pct list, but due to FSFE's mailman misconfiguration which doesn't archive Georg's or Seán's mails, it's not available anywhere, so here it is:
Geoffrey Yu, Assistant DG in charge of Copyright, WIPO. (from 'Public Awareness of Copyright" paper delivered at European Copyright Revisited, International Conference, Santiago de Compostela, 16 -18 June 2002)
[Quote] First the message. For it to go over well, I recommend downplaying the reference to 'rights'. The term itself is perfectly acceptable, but in daily usage, it has a negative connotation of rights without corresponding obligations and has a [sic] 'us' against 'them' implication. This won't do, therefore, as we want to win the public and consumer to our side. Unfortunately, we cannot turn the clock back and find a new term in place of 'copyright' but we can at least down-play the term 'rights'. The WIPO Performance and the Phonograms Treaty (WPPT) is about the protection of performers and phonogram producers. The word 'right' is happily missing in their titles. And we should take out cure from them.
Within the copyright community such as we are today in this room, it is fine to refer to artists, composers, performers and enterprises as 'rights holders'. But it is poor public relations to employ the same terms when speaking to politicians, consumers, users and the public. With them, we must use the terms devoid of legal jargon, terms, which are at least as neutral or better still, inclusive, conveying meanings with which the public can identify. So 'rights holders' should become painters, writers, sculptors, musicians. What goes down well today with general audiences are terms like 'culture', creativity', 'information' , 'entertainment', 'cultural diversity', 'cultural heritage', 'reward for creativity', ' cultural enrichment'. And when we talk to youngsters, terms like 'fun', 'hip', and 'cool' will find an echo. We must find the right slogans too. At WIPO we coined a slogan for a Geneva cultural festival that we sponsored which went "Soutenons les artistes et respectons leurs creations."
In the same way, in our public outreach messages, it is better to avoid terms like "copyright industries". To call music making and movie-making "copyright industries" is to cast a business which is about people, imagination, fun, and creative energy in a money-centred, legalistic light. It is like calling car-making a patent industry. If we must use the term "copyright" for brevity's sake, let us call the industries "copyright-based industries".
To sum up, what I would suggest is we down-play business and economics when speaking to the public and stress more the human, creative, inspirational angle. [unquote]
Malcolm Tyrrell wrote:
Checkov Feeney wrote:
people from Indymedia Ireland would be very interested in learning more about the various forms of copyleft licences (eg GPL, LGPL, BSD, Creative Commons) and issues related to them.
Can someone tackle this? I don't know much about the BSD and Creative Commons license.
The Creative Commons people recently did a competition to see if some "aspiring filmmakers and flash artists to create a short film that explained the mission of the Creative Commons." The winning entries explain the ideas behind the Creative Commons Licenses very well indeed, and in true Creative Commons spirit, are available to download from:
http://creativecommons.org/getcontent/features/movingimagecontest
There's also a very informative, if slightly lengthy article called "Giving It Away (for Fun and Profit)" that gives you more information, if you're hungry for that sort of thing.
http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,608619,00.html