[Commons-research] Draft report from Free Culture 2008

Giorgos Cheliotis gcheliotis.lists at gmail.com
Wed Sep 17 13:23:11 EDT 2008


Excellent, yes, we should invite other communities to participate -  
the more the merrier, especially since the general plan is to make  
this a larger research event.


On Sep 18, 2008, at 12:39 AM, philipp schmidt wrote:

> Hi Giorgios:
>
> Thanks for writing the report, and also for doing most of the work to
> make the workshop happen. Even though I could not attend many of the
> sessions this year, I agree that it was a success and am confident
> that it will grow from here.
>
> Please add my name to the list of people who are committed to helping
> organise the next one. As you know, I am in favor of a more "open"
> approach to paper submission and review and thinking about how this
> could be done in more detail - within this group - is something I look
> forward to.
>
> I just came back from WikiSym, where we had very similar conversations
> about creating an inter-disciplinary community of researchers and I
> invited everyone to participate in the 2009 Free Culture Research
> Workshop rather than trying to set up more smaller events. ;-)
>
> Best regards - P
>
> On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 6:17 PM, Giorgos Cheliotis
> <gcheliotis.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Dear all,
>> here is a report I wrote for the research workshop. Please take a  
>> look at it
>> and let me know quickly in case you find that I have misrepresented  
>> anyone.
>> I wrote this in a hurry and based on my own recollection of events.  
>> As long
>> as you don't find anything seriously wrong with it, iCommons will  
>> post it
>> online. If anyone is kind enough to do some proofreading as well, I'd
>> appreciate it.
>> Best,
>> Giorgos
>>
>> Report from Free Culture 2008, a.k.a. the Research Lab of iSummit  
>> 2008
>> by Giorgos Cheliotis, based on personal recollection and the notes of
>> Prodromos Tsiavos
>> Every year the iSummit attracts several academics from different
>> disciplinary backgrounds with a common interest in the promotion  
>> and study
>> of free cultural or 'commons-based' practices. This year we  
>> organized the
>> First Interdisciplinary Research Workshop on Free Culture, or Free  
>> Culture
>> 2008 for short, as one of the iSummit 'Labs', to provide an  
>> opportunity for
>> academics, researchers and practitioners to present their findings  
>> and learn
>> form each other.
>> By any measure Free Culture 2008 was a success. The workshop was well
>> attended (15-40 participants per session) considering how many
>> presentations, discussions and meetings were taking place in  
>> parallel during
>> the summit. But it is not about the numbers. Many of the presenters
>> expressed their gratitude for the organization of the workshop and  
>> their
>> appreciation for the quantity and quality of the constructive  
>> feedback they
>> received during the summit. In keeping with the spirit of the summit,
>> sessions were attended by a wonderful mix of researchers,  
>> practitioners and
>> 'amateur scholars' who engaged in discussion and constructive  
>> criticism on a
>> very open and egalitarian basis.
>> But the workshop did not start at the summit, it started much  
>> earlier,
>> before everyone could fly to Sapporo. The workshop's highly
>> interdisciplinary academic committee reviewed extended abstracts  
>> submitted
>> by researchers from around the world and the chairs selected about  
>> half of
>> the submissions for presentation at the iSummit, based on the  
>> results of the
>> peer review process. Over 90 reviews were written in a very short  
>> timeframe
>> and this was already a first success for the workshop and a first  
>> big step
>> towards guaranteeing that the presentations would meet certain  
>> criteria of
>> quality and methodological rigor, as expected by the research  
>> community.  We
>> are greatly indebted to the academic program committee for their  
>> stewardship
>> of the workshop.
>> Given the more academic nature of the research workshop as opposed  
>> to other
>> iSummit labs,  it was organized mostly around formal presentations of
>> ongoing research, with the addition of a free-for-all speed-geeking  
>> session
>> and a concluding open discussion session. The sessions were as  
>> follows:
>>
>> Session 1: Perspectives on Free Culture
>>
>> Herkko Hietanen (Helsinki Institute for Information Technology)  
>> started off
>> the presentations of the workshop with " Honey I Took Out The Trash:
>> Curbside Recycling Motivations and the Free Culture Movement", an
>> exploration of the relationships between the environmental and the  
>> free
>> culture movements. Christopher Adams, an independent scholar from  
>> Taiwan,
>> presented a more theoretical perspective on free culture and its  
>> relation to
>> the native American tradition of potlatch with "Sovereignty of Free  
>> Culture:
>> Georges Bataille and the Accursed Share". Leah Belsky (Yale Law  
>> School)
>> presented her work with Yochai Benkler and Byron Kahr on the study of
>> well-known communities and indie music labels employing different  
>> forms of
>> commons-based production methods, titled "Everything in its Right  
>> Place:
>> Social Cooperation and the Production and Distribution of Creative  
>> Works".
>> Finally, Jeong Min Choi (Seoul National University) presented her  
>> work with
>> Jisuk Woo and Seo Woo Choi on the clampdown of the entertainment  
>> industry on
>> Korean file-sharing users and the effects that lawsuits have had on  
>> users'
>> subsequent behavior, "How the Korean Entertainment Industry's Move to
>> Directly Sue Individual Internet Users Influences the Users'  
>> Attitudes and
>> Activities".
>>
>> Session 2: Applications and Challenges of Free Cultural Practices
>>
>> Prodromos Tsiavos (London School of Economics and Public Policy)  
>> started the
>> next session with his presentation titled "The Museum as a  
>> Cathedral and a
>> Bazaar: Tracing Flows of Rights in the UK Cultural, Memory and  
>> Education
>> Sector", a work in progress on the utilization of commons-based  
>> approaches
>> by UK cultural institutions and individual artists. Eric Johnson  
>> (University
>> of North Dakota Law School) took over to present "Copysquare and  
>> Konomark:
>> New Ways to Be Friendly With Your Intellectual Property", two  
>> proposals on
>> new ways for authors to indicate their pro-sharing attitude and  
>> license
>> content for use in various media formats. Finally, Wolf Richter  
>> (Oxford
>> Internet Institute) presented his work with Irene Cassarino on the
>> application of an open licensing model for the production of a  
>> collaborative
>> film, in "Lessons Learnt From Implementing an Open Licensing Model in
>> Distributed Film Production – The case of "A Swarm of Angels"".
>>
>> Session 3: Online Communities and Social Networks
>>
>> Philipp Schmidt (UNU/MERIT and the University of Western Cape)  
>> kicked off
>> the third session with a presentation of the methodology he is  
>> using for a
>> survey of Wikipedia users, whose results should be out soon, in  
>> "Wikipedia -
>> First Results From the Official Survey and Some Thoughts on  
>> Motivation,
>> Distribution, and Quality". Then Alek Tarkowski (University of  
>> Warsaw)
>> presented an analysis of data he has collected on Flickr users and  
>> the
>> licenses they use, in "Social and Cultural Practices with Free  
>> Cultural
>> Works. Case Study of the Flickr Web Service". Chih-Kang Cheng (Yuan  
>> Ze
>> University) took over the podium to present a case study of the  
>> most popular
>> online community in Taiwan, which is a BBS, in "The Study of Sharing
>> Behavior in BBS platform in Taiwan – a Case Study of Virtual  
>> Communities in
>> PTT". Giorgos Cheliotis (National University of Singapore) closed the
>> session with his presentation of preliminary results on a study of
>> collaborative remixing in the ccMixter online community, titled  
>> "Remix
>> Culture: An Empirical Investigation of Creative Reuse and the  
>> Licensing of
>> Digital Media in Online Communities".
>>
>> Session 4: Speed-Geeking and Poster Session
>>
>> This was a free-for-all session with some invited posters and the
>> opportunity for anyone to walk in and present their ideas relating  
>> to the
>> themes of the workshop. In a less formal setting than in other  
>> sessions,
>> Prodromos Tsiavos (London School of Economics and Public Policy)  
>> presented
>> some results of his work on the self-organization of the Creative  
>> Commons
>> volunteer community and with a special focus on the patterns that  
>> emerge
>> from online interactions on mailing lists. Koichiro Hayashi  
>> (Institute of
>> Information Security) presented a proposal for a platform for the
>> registration, tracking and enforcement of CC licenses on any type  
>> of digital
>> content. And Kim Tucker (Meraka Institute) talked to us about his  
>> proposal
>> for a new license that will solve some of the incompatibilities  
>> between the
>> CC BY-SA and the GFDL licenses.
>>
>> Session 5A: Quantifying the Digital Commons
>>
>> Juan Carlos De Martin (NEXA) in "Geospatial Context Extraction for  
>> Creative
>> Commons Licensed Digital Contents" provided an overview of the  
>> methodology
>> utilized by researchers of the NEXA center at the Technical  
>> University of
>> Torino, including Elias Carotti and Davide Bardoni, to crawl the  
>> Web for
>> CC-licensed content and extract geospatial information about the  
>> location of
>> the author utilizing information retrieval methods. Then Ben  
>> Bildstein
>> (Queensland University of Technology) presented his study of  CC  
>> license use
>> in Australia and the lessons derived from this study on how to best  
>> collect
>> data on CC use, in  "New Methodologies for Quantifying Licence- 
>> Based Commons
>> on the Web".
>>
>> Session 5B: Perspectives on Freedom and the Commons in East Asia
>>
>> First HyoJung Sun (Seoul National University) presented her work  
>> with Jisuk
>> Woo and HyunSoo Na on the role of user-created content in Korean  
>> politics
>> with "Influence of the UCC Regulation during the Political Campaign  
>> in Korea
>> on Free Culture". Then, instead of Han-Teng Liao's (Oxford Internet
>> Institute) scheduled presentation which was unfortunately cancelled  
>> due to
>> the presenter's inability to travel to the workshop venue, Cynthia  
>> Jimes
>> (ISKME) presented an overview of research activities at the  
>> Institute for
>> the Study of Knowledge Management in Education in " "Travel Well"  
>> Open
>> Educational Resources: A Presentation of Ongoing Research", joint  
>> work with
>> Lisa Petrides and Anastasia Karaglani.
>>
>> Session 6: A Research and Action Agenda for Free Culture
>>
>> This was the most important session for the future of research on  
>> free
>> culture. The aim of the session was to (a) identify future  
>> directions that
>> would be ripe with research challenges but also promising to yield  
>> insight
>> that would be useful to the practice of free culture advocacy, and  
>> (b) make
>> an assessment of the workshop and decide whether to repeat it and  
>> in what
>> format.
>>
>> The session started with a discussion of potential areas of  
>> research, where
>> the collection of more data and the visualization of this data for  
>> intuitive
>> exploration and communication of findings was proposed as one  
>> potential area
>> of focus. Action research was also mentioned as a methodology that  
>> would be
>> relevant in the context of practice-inspired and practice-informed  
>> research.
>> Global-scope studies and comparative studies across multiple  
>> jurisdictions
>> were also favored by some participants as areas needing much more
>> development. But the discussion quickly turned to practical issues,  
>> such as
>> how to organize a network for continuous communication and  
>> collaboration
>> among interested researchers and whether we should plan a journal  
>> special
>> issue, or a special track in an existing research conference.
>>
>> Participants tried to propose solutions to the perennial problem of  
>> engaging
>> in interdisciplinary collaborations while at the same time being  
>> respected
>> in one's own scientific community. There was some consensus that we  
>> should
>> not attempt to create a new discipline, but that we nevertheless  
>> need venues
>> and opportunities to engage in cross-disciplinary dialogue and do  
>> research
>> across disciplinary boundaries, as the phenomena that interest us  
>> the most
>> tend to cut across multiple dimensions of the Internet, including  
>> law, IT,
>> economics, communications, media studies and policy (just to name a  
>> few).
>>
>> The most concrete and positive outcome of the entire workshop was the
>> unanimous agreement of all participants to the idea of repeating this
>> gathering on an annual basis. Epitomizing the positive assessment  
>> of this
>> year's proceedings was Lawrence Lessig's proposal to help find a  
>> venue for
>> the workshop next year and also to help turn it into a larger and  
>> more
>> substantive academic conference, a proposal that was greeted with  
>> enthusiasm
>> by the rest of the participants in the session.
>> The rest of the discussion focused on what the envisioned  
>> conference should
>> look like, in light of the lessons we learned from Free Culture  
>> 2008. It was
>> tentatively agreed to raise the bar for participation at the  
>> conference next
>> year by requiring that presenters submit a full paper at some stage  
>> in the
>> process (this year it was optional and selection was based solely on
>> extended abstracts). This, along with having more time dedicated to  
>> research
>> presentations and research-focused discussion will help ensure that  
>> next
>> year's event will be more focused and session participation will be  
>> more
>> consistent, which will be essential to building rapport and promoting
>> genuine dialogue among participants.
>> Some participants also voiced concerns with respect to the conference
>> potentially attaining too much of a traditional academic character  
>> and
>> losing the relative spontaneity and participatory nature of the  
>> iSummit. It
>> was therefore suggested that we maintain some slots for open  
>> discussion and
>> seek to synthesize perspectives and findings in the form of panels  
>> or by any
>> other means, instead of focusing only on single-person presentations.
>> Finally, several potential publishing venues were brought up but it  
>> was
>> agreed that it is somewhat premature to be concerned with this at  
>> the moment
>> and we should rather focus our energies in planning Free Culture  
>> 2009. The
>> following participants registered their interest in assisting with  
>> the
>> organization of next year's conference (in no particular order):
>> Wolf Richter
>> Lawrence Lessig
>> Juan Carlos De Martin
>> Alek Tarkowski
>> Leah Belsky
>> Ben Bildstein
>> Christopher Adams
>> Rachel Cobcroft
>> Prodromos Tsiavos
>> Giorgos Cheliotis
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
>
>
>
> -- 
> (Jan) Philipp Schmidt
> University of the Western Cape, South Africa
> United Nations University MERIT
> E: phi.schmidt at gmail.com
> B: bokaap.net
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