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home · blog · an update from heather ford: wrapping up 2007
An update from Heather Ford: wrapping up 2007
| Jimmy Wales and Larry Lessig announce that Wikipedians will be able to go 'CC'., by linoleum jet |
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In my last letter for the year, I look back at 2007’s biggest news, and what to look forward to in 2008.
2007 saw some major successes in the open education movement. The Cape Town Open Education Declaration was launched with the goal of accelerating the international effort to promote open resources, technology and teaching practices in education. Yale started an open courseware initiative; MIT Open CourseWare passed the 1,800 courses mark, and SELF (Sharing Knowledge about Free Software) – a project to develop premium training and educational materials about Free Software and Open Standards – was launched at events in the Netherlands, Sweden, Bulgaria, Argentina, Mexico, India and Spain.
On the issue of license compatibility, Wikipedia Founder and iCommons Board Member, Jimmy Wales, announced a historic move by the Wikimedia Foundation that will give Wikipedia the right to choose to migrate to Creative Commons. The announcement was made at the fourth of 50 Parties that bring together Wikipedians, Creative Commoners, iCommoners and other free culture lovers – this time in the San Francisco Bay Area.
In other major news of the year, Creative Commons was sued and then the lawsuit voluntarily dismissed by the plaintiffs of a lawsuit against Virgin Mobile. The plaintiffs are the parents of a student whose image in a CC-licensed photograph was used by Virgin Mobile in an advertising campaign and the photographer who took the original picture of the student and posted it on Flickr.
In one of the year’s great CC stories, the Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), a public radio and television broadcaster belonging to Germany’s national broadcasting consortium ARD, announced that they would begin to use CC licenses for some of their programs.
On the public domain front, audio book company, LibriVox released their 1,000th public domain audio book, and Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency and Creative Commons Canada – in partnership with Creative Commons Corporation – announced a ground-breaking project to create an online, globally searchable catalogue of published works that are in the Canadian public domain. Another major boon for the public domain came in September when COMMUNIA – coordinated by the NEXA Research Center for Internet and Society of the Politecnico of Torino – was launched as a three year project funded by the European Commission to conduct high-level policy discussion and strategic action on all issues related to the public domain in the digital environment.
But looking at the major news headlines doesn’t do justice to the incredible work being done by the researchers, social entrepreneurs, bloggers, developers, artists and creators to broaden the world’s critical understanding of how intellectual property should serve innovation, cultural understanding and equality throughout the world. This is especially true in the developing world – where resources for major projects by government, academia and social enterprises are limited, and where open content activists are often isolated and under-valued.
In January next year, as COMMUNIA meets in Torino, and Asia Commoners meet in Taipei, and iCommons volunteers meet in Johannesburg, lets start to think how to grow our understanding and celebration of such a diverse movement that connects us in a way that is historic and offers major opportunities for global solidarity.
Best wishes,
Heather
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other letter update 2007 2008
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A key change at iCommons
If you're not part of the iCommons mailing list, take a look at the letter that Heather Ford, Executive Director of iCommons, sent to the list yesterday:
Dear friends,
At the 2 August iCommons Board Meeting, the board decided to make some difficult but necessary changes at iCommons. It has become clear over the past months that our vision for iCommons is different from the... more
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