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  • From: "J.C. De Martin" <demartin AT polito.it>
  • To: cc-europe AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Cc-europe] Fwd: Creative Commons International - letter from the jurisdiction project leads
  • Date: Fri, 27 Jun 2008 23:19:38 +0200

Dear All,

Since I won't be able to attend the CC Europe meeting on Sunday,
a couple of comments for you to ponder, if you wish.

I find the reply quite constructive, with several interesting leads to explore.

I did not particularly like, though, this specific passage:

"Part of the answer will come from increased staff attention to making sure
that network consultation and notification is routine on important matters.
That we are committed to, _within the constraints imposed by manageability,
fundraising and time-pressure_." (emphasis added).

I'd rather prefer, in fact, that consultation and notification had the same
status as any other major CC HQ activities, not just something that it is
performed only if time allows.

Best, see you in Louvain!

juan carlos
(from canada)





Paul Keller wrote:
Dear all,

most of you will have seen this, but there are a couple of people who are on this list and who are not in the cc of the response to the letter. looks to me that our letter has come at the right moment and i guess this will give us lots to discuss on sunday at the meeting. i would furthermore suggest that we use this list to discuss about the letter among us and the cci list to reply to their response 'in public'

all the best & looking forward to see most of you in louvain,
paul

Begin forwarded message:

*From: *"James Boyle" <boyle AT law.duke.edu <mailto:boyle AT law.duke.edu>>
*Date: *27 June 2008 03:17:50 GMT+02:00
*To: *"Paul Keller" <pk AT kl.nl <mailto:pk AT kl.nl>>,"Joichi Ito" <jito AT neoteny.com <mailto:jito AT neoteny.com>>
*Cc: *"Lawrence Liang" <lawrence AT altlawforum.org <mailto:lawrence AT altlawforum.org>>, "Bodo Balzas" <bodo AT axelero.hu <mailto:bodo AT axelero.hu>>, "Ariel Vercelli" <avercelli AT bienescomunes.org <mailto:avercelli AT bienescomunes.org>>, "Patrick Peiffer" <Patrick.Peiffer AT bnl.etat.lu <mailto:Patrick.Peiffer AT bnl.etat.lu>>, <iwillbe AT chol.com <mailto:iwillbe AT chol.com>>,<cwang AT cn.creativecommons.org <mailto:cwang AT cn.creativecommons.org>>, "Marcus Bornfreund" <marcus AT creativecommons.ca <mailto:marcus AT creativecommons.ca>>, <ahrash AT creativecommons.org <mailto:ahrash AT creativecommons.org>>, "Catharina Maracke" <catharina AT creativecommons.org <mailto:catharina AT creativecommons.org>>, "Mike Linksvayer" <ml AT creativecommons.org <mailto:ml AT creativecommons.org>>, "Melanie Dulong de Rosnay" <mdulong AT cyber.law.harvard.edu <mailto:mdulong AT cyber.law.harvard.edu>>, "Francois Dechelle" <francois AT dechelle.net <mailto:francois AT dechelle.net>>, <claudio AT derechosdigitales.org <mailto:claudio AT derechosdigitales.org>>, "Pedro Olivera" <poliveira AT fcee.ucp.pt <mailto:poliveira AT fcee.ucp.pt>>, "Ronaldo Lemos" <rlemos AT fgv.br <mailto:rlemos AT fgv.br>>, "Severine Dusollier" <severine.dusollier AT fundp.ac.be <mailto:severine.dusollier AT fundp.ac.be>>, "Andrew Rens" <andrewrens AT gmail.com <mailto:andrewrens AT gmail.com>>, "carolina botero" <carobotero AT gmail.com <mailto:carobotero AT gmail.com>>, "Maja Lubarda" <maja.lubarda AT gmail.com <mailto:maja.lubarda AT gmail.com>>, "Henrik Moltke" <moltke AT gmail.com <mailto:moltke AT gmail.com>>, <renata.avila.pinto AT gmail.com <mailto:renata.avila.pinto AT gmail.com>>, "Herkko Hietanen" <herkko.hietanen AT hiit.fi <mailto:herkko.hietanen AT hiit.fi>>, "Jimmy N. Soriano" <jns AT i-manila.com.ph <mailto:jns AT i-manila.com.ph>>, "Alek Tarkowski" <a.tarkowski AT icm.edu.pl <mailto:a.tarkowski AT icm.edu.pl>>, "Gisle Hannemyr" <gisle AT ifi.uio.no <mailto:gisle AT ifi.uio.no>>, "Shishir K. Jha" <skjha AT iitb.ac.in <mailto:skjha AT iitb.ac.in>>, "Mathias Klang" <klang AT ituniv.se <mailto:klang AT ituniv.se>>, "Bogdan Manolea" <bogdan AT legi-internet.ro <mailto:bogdan AT legi-internet.ro>>, "Prodromos Tsiavos" <p.tsiavos AT lse.ac.uk <mailto:p.tsiavos AT lse.ac.uk>>, "Marinos Papadopoulos" <marinos AT marinos.com.gr <mailto:marinos AT marinos.com.gr>>, "Tomislav Medak" <tom AT mi2.hr <mailto:tom AT mi2.hr>>, "John Hendrik Weitzmann" <jhweitzmann AT mx.uni-saarland.de <mailto:jhweitzmann AT mx.uni-saarland.de>>, "Sanna Marttila" <sanna.marttila AT taik.fi <mailto:sanna.marttila AT taik.fi>>, "Ignasi Labastida" <ilabastida AT ub.edu <mailto:ilabastida AT ub.edu>>, "Veni Markovski" <veni AT veni.com <mailto:veni AT veni.com>>, "Florian Philapitsch" <florian.philapitsch AT wu-wien.ac.at <mailto:florian.philapitsch AT wu-wien.ac.at>>, "Nena Antic" <advocat_studio AT yahoo.com <mailto:advocat_studio AT yahoo.com>>
*Subject: **Re: Creative Commons International - letter from the jurisdiction project leads*

Dear all -- Joi and I promised a more thorough response. It is attached -- and included as text below. We view this as merely the start of a conversation -- we'd love to hear your thoughts.
Warm regards, Jamie and Joi
__

Dear Colleagues, At our most recent board meeting - June 19-20 - we presented your letter to the CC board. The reaction to your suggestions was entirely positive. The board already had on the agenda a discussion of ways to increase both the focus on CC's international network and to improve our strategic planning and intra-CC communication. Your letter fit nicely into both and there was board consensus around the following points.

*1.) We want better information flow internationally, more transparent decision making processes, and a greater attempt to get input from our global network on key decisions facing CC. * We don't see one simple solution however. On large policy shifts or new initiatives the answer is clear, but as one tries to get more responsive beyond that there are real difficulties of implementation in terms of staff time, speed of response and so on. Part of the answer will come from increased staff attention to making sure that network consultation and notification is routine on important matters. That we are committed to, within the constraints imposed by manageability, fundraising and time-pressure. We would like your feedback as our attempts move forward. (Obviously Catharina has worked really hard on this already. She deserves our thanks. Some of you have also mentioned as good beginnings Mike Linksvayer's recent work, for example, or the kinds of discussions that happened at the iSummit's around moral rights or database rights.) We try to use electronic tools as best we can. But clearly things could improve further. We want to make the board more geographically diverse (right now the only non American citizens are Joi and me) a task that is complicated by a pressing need to recruit board members who have considerable financial resources as part of CC's attempt to build towards permanent sustainability. The ones who have resources and are interested in CC have tended disproportionately to come from the US – just as almost all of our funding comes from the US. But of course, managed the right way, increasing diversity could help solve that problem.
What is the bottom line? I think you will find in the future that Joi and I will more frequently reach out to you collectively and individually for your advice. In the long run, I'd like to have the Chair or CEO send out a brief six monthly report on strategic goals to the country leads for them to comment on and make suggestions. Right now Joi and I are running as fast as we can just to fundraise and manage the transition as Larry moves back to the board. We certainly want to make sure that major initiatives or themes are both run by the network first and then communicated to you in the final form before anyone in the public sees them. We will do our best to make it easy for jurisdictions to do planning and fundraising around those themes. But we do not have some grand structure that would solve the problem at a stroke - more like a commitment to a continuing process. This leads to the second point...

*2.) We want more focus on our global network - and in ways that go beyond license porting: * As an organization, our network coordination has often flowed well out of the pursuit of particular tasks - for example, porting the licenses. The result has been a network with far greater capabilities than porting alone. We should probably learn from that experience. The board would like to start a conversation with the CCi network and in particular with the jurisdiction leads about projects beyond porting that could be pursued globally or regionally - serving the public interest and helping to raise money internationally by making greater use of the fabulous network of professionals that we already have. Here are two examples of such projects that have come up recently - one from within ccLearn and the other more general. We use them only as illustrations; you might have other ones to suggest and we are sure you would have useful tweaks to these thought experiments.

** Explaining copyright and open licensing to educators: There has been considerable interest in explaining copyright, its limitations and exceptions and the ideas of open licensing to educators and students - groups who have particular need for the information. Misinformation abounds, the existing resources are dense and hard to understand, and have frequent national or regional gaps. If funding could be procured to support it, might groups within the CCi network be interested in producing materials explaining those issues for each country in the network? We might start with some pilot projects, collaboratively producing high quality research, developing some designs and improving human readability - good graphics, interactive tools, high production values - and then getting other countries in the network to "port" the materials into their own legal system - something which would require considerable research and adjustment and might generate interesting research and publication opportunities for those who were interested.

** Developing tools for identifying, marking and tagging the public domain: The rules about what materials are in the public domain - indeed the very existence of the idea of the public domain - vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, often raising a big barrier for librarians and archivists, but also for citizens. Might CCi jurisdictions be interested in beginning an international effort to explain the rules about when works pass into the public domain, and even to provide templates that would allow volunteers within particular countries to identify and then mark or tag works that are in the public domain?

I pick these examples simply to give some concreteness to the discussion, and because I think they are fundable (a key criterion) not to suggest they are the only ones. All of you might come up with better ones – and then we could talk about what made sense to do with the CC brand; what globally, and what regionally. The question this letter poses is whether the people in the CCi network think it might be interesting to pursue the general idea of CC global and regional projects (whatever those projects might be) further: not so much starting with a grand structural plan for the organization, but starting with particular worthy - and collectively chosen - projects out of which a more global (or regional?) structure might begin to coalesce. The benefits could be considerable. Better coordination and information flow, possibilities to raise funds both within our own countries and internationally, public service in solving problems that relate to CC's core mission, increased prominence and focus on the CCi network and jurisdictions, research opportunities, network building. The difficulties would be considerable too, but the question is whether it is worth beginning the discussion. If there was interest, we might think about arranging some meetings on the subject. Jamie cannot be in Sapporo but Joi and other board members and staff will be. Perhaps the discussion could be pursued further then?

So if we could sum up: we wholeheartedly agree with the basic thrust of your letter, but in addition we would like to go further by exploring the possibility of particular global or regional projects involving the jurisdictions. These projects would be worthy for their own sake, but the hope would be that they are also the kind of concrete tasks around which the structure of a more truly global CC might accrete in an organic and webby kind of way.

These answers are only beginnings of course, and one we would like to discuss more widely and beyond this group, but they do indicate the lines along which we are thinking. We look forward to your feedback.

Warmest regards,

Jamie and Joi
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