Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand discussion

[Danyl Strype <strypey AT disintermedia.net.nz>]

Kia ora koutou

Just wondered if anyone has come across Wikimapia? It's a
user-editable mapping project, built on geo data from Google Maps:
http://wikimapia.org

They are using a CC Non-Commercial Share-Alike license for uploaded
content, which is a shame, because it means their content is
incompatible with Wikipedia. I wonder if they could be convinced to
re-license? It depends on what drives such projects to use a NC
clause. It could be simple caution, wanting to use a more restrictive
license to test the waters of libre licensing.

It could also be an ideological opposition to perceived profiteering
on the commons? Anticapitalist writers like CrimethInc have criticised
free culture projects like Wikipedia as a way of ripping off workers
by getting them to volunteer, while the laissez faire nature of the
license covering the materials they develop allows businesses, even
huge corporations, to sell them for profit, without having to pay the
workers at all, let alone guarantee them a living wage or decent
working conditions.

To me this is one of the major roadblocks to widespread adoption of
libre licensing. If it isn't seen to improve the balance of power
between creative workers and employing institutions, and especially if
it is seen as tipping that balance in favour of institutions, there's
not much motivation for adoption by independent creative workers like
artists, musicians, writers, researchers etc

Just musing...

BTW Get yourselves a stack of the gorgeous new glossy CC leaflets (is
there a .pdf somewhere Jane?) Jane has stacked up in her office. I
handed a bunch out at a permaculture workshop in the weekend and they
were snapped up.

-- 
Danyl Strype
Community Developer
Disintermedia.net.nz/strype

"Business would like to be the definition of what is thinkable and
what is reasonable, and what's desirable. And anyone who doesn't agree
they would of course say is radical."
http://www.pigdog.org/interviews/stallman/interview_with_stallman2.html

"Allowing the university to be turned into the tool of business is
allowing it to be corrupted."
http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/Stallman.xml

- Both quotes by Richard Stallman