Talk Details

Beyond Software: Creative Commons

Name Volker Grassmuck

Organisation Humboldt University / Wizards of OS

Website http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/Grassmuck / http://wizards-of-os.org

Scope General

Topic FOSS Advocacy

Type talk

Abstract The Commons is a material or immaterial resource owned and maintained by a group of people. As a property concept it precedes capitalist private property. With respect to intellectual property, it comes to full bearing with the digitization of media. Free software (like the operating system GNU/Linux) and free content (like the online encyclopedia Wikipedia) show what open collaborative communities can achieve. Their social contract takes the form of a copyright license: the GNU General Public License (GPL) for software and, more recently: the Creative Commons licenses for content.

Pre-requisites None

Profile Volker Grassmuck is a media researcher at the Helmholtz Center for Cultural Technology of Humboldt University Berlin. His main area of interest is the digital revolution, intellectual property and free knowledge. Previous areas of research include artificial intelligence, garbage, the history of media and identity discourses in Japan, and the knowledge order of digital media. He is also the project lead of iRights.info and of the conference series "Wizards of OS", a freelance writer and an activist. As co-initiator of privatkopie.net he is campaigning to promote user rights and freedoms in the ongoing copyright reforms. His publications include "Freie Software zwischen Privat- und Gemeineigentum," Bundeszentrale fuer politische Bildung, Bonn 2002.