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  • From: "Aurelia J. Schultz" <aurelia AT creativecommons.org>
  • To: ccafrica AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [ccAfrica] Notes from the Global Summit Africa Regional Meeting
  • Date: Tue, 27 Sep 2011 15:13:40 -0700

Greetings All,

I hope this email finds everyone well.  Here are the notes from the Africa Regional Meeting at the Global Summit.  Those who were able to participate already have this information.  There's a general request from CC HQ for the notes to be posted on the public wiki.  If you were present at the meeting and would prefer the notes not be shared publicly, please let me know by Monday, October 3rd.

Other notes, videos and slides from the Summit can be accessed through http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Global_Summit_2011#Event_coverage.

Warm Regards,
Aurelia

Notes from Africa Regional Session

 

Addressing three questions from Cathy:

  1. What is your vision for CC for the next 10 years?
  1. What is your vision for your region?
  1. What is your vision for the Affiliate Network?

 

Participants:

Max Kaizen - CC South Africa

Tobias Schoenwetter - CC South Africa

Kelsey Wiens- CC South Africa

Dorothy Gordon - Ghana

Abbas Mahmood - Kenya

Stamenka Uvalic-Trumbic - formerly with UNESCO working on OER in Africa

Erik Hofer - Director of Office of Enabling Technologies at University of Michigan

Dick Kawooya - CC Uganda, via Skype

Charles Batambuze - CC Uganda, via Skype

Aurelia Schultz - CC HQ, Africa Regional Coordinator

 

 

Vision for CC

 

Max:

 hybrid model

Freedom fighting part has ben done

Showing CC licenses as applicable to life, sustainability and capitalism

 

Tobias:

Vision doesn't clearly enough show that CC licenses are applicable to offline world

Sharing is missing from the vision, the concept of Ubuntu that is so important in many African cultures

 

Dorothy:

Echoed that offline is missing

Sharing is important, needs to be in context, creative industries are battling infringement of their works by Western artists

Creative industries resisting CC because think it's a Western idea to steal their rights more

 

Max:

That’s (what Dorothy said) is why the hybrid is so important

 

Stamenka:

Has seen the same fears of CC that UNESCO found with OER, a question of "what's the real agenda," skepticism

Need to be clearer about benefits

Get to the government to explain benefits

 

Tobias:

CC doesn't work without copyright law; not understood by the Global South

Need ground work about copyright law with information about CC

This is done in some other places but not in Africa

Offline workshops are needed

Need to move away from English-only

At least translate the CC deeds

 

Dick (via Skype chat):

Aurelia I have to agree with that previous speaker (Dorothy?).  In Africa it's important to understand the context. In many countries people are only beginning to hear  about let alone understand copyright. This is a challenge but also a moment of great opportunity since CC can easily be part of copyright  awareness campaigns

 

Charles (via Skype chat):

In Uganda we did some work on CC and our experience shows businesses can adopt new licenses or even businesses models if it makes profit sense. Based on our interactions with business, I  like to see businesses with dominant CC driven business  models

 

Vision for CC in Africa

 

Abbas:

Challenge to convince lawyers about CC

Tried to meet with lawyers but they did not show up

 

Dorothy:

Solution is to find legal associations

Have a good standard presentation to be part of those meetings

 

Max:

Interesting having people from WIPO here

Credibility hack

 

Dorothy:

There are some people within WIPO who don't know about CC

 

Stamenka:

Important to continue to dialogue with WIPO

Shows need for awareness raising

Same thing at IGOs

 

Max:

Make CC included, not a fringe element

 

Tobias:

Certain pegs are needed to present about CC

Education is one of these

Lawyers can come on board after the movement's going

WIPO is changing a bit but does have a history of copyright protectionism

UNESCO is a nice counter-variation

 

Stamenka:

Openness, sharing, education is mission of UNESCO

Sometimes education experts are familiar with legal issues

 

Dorothy:

Never going to have an education expert switch to become an IP attorney

Reaching out to legal fraternity is important because that's who people go to when they are creating or starting a business

Agree with Max that blended business models matter

Have a training package on how to make CC licenses work for you as an artist

 

Erik:

Need to educate about use of CC licensed material as well

U Mich has a search program for people trying to find OER

 

Charles (via Skype chat):

 My view is  rights holders are probably the most important in the equation. I think our actions must also be directed more at rights holders.  once the rights holders demand for cc licenses then contract lawyers, state policy etc would follow suit.

 

Dick (via Skype chat):

Meantime we need to move forward and port licenses across the continent. We cannot create awareness about something that doesn't exist locally...

 

Aurelia:

Version 4.0 will be international, localized through translating

 

Dick (via Skype chat):

Ok will be interested in looking at the international license and how it addresses local statutory nuances...

I remember discussing the pros and cons of an international license with Frances Pinter sometime back. We both agreed that sometime an international license can only be a template as a basis for a local license...but will wait to see the natural of this license...

 

Tobias:

Need African case studies on the website

 

Max:

Need African stories and the local relationship

Need people to know the information's out there

Create info points were people can engage

Example of "The Question Box"

Need to provide a practical way to get in

African countries can leapfrog and create something entirely fresh

 

Tobias:

Africa isn't always behind; sometimes it's ahead

Lots we can lead on

Example of Wikimedia and oral citations in Africa

 

Vision for the Affiliate Network

 

Dorothy:

Engage more national teams

Currently less than 2% of African countries have CC teams

What's the new model with porting gone?

 

Aurelia:

Still planning to have legal and public leads

Legal leads doing legal research and being part of translation of licenses

Focus on public outreach

Country ownership through translations

 

Tobias:

Raised concern about loss of ownership without porting at Global Congress meeting in DC a few weeks ago

Paul Keller talked about legal leads putting energy into 4.0 development

 

Dorothy:

Perhaps a solution is to get together in Africa network of lawyers to contribute to 4.0 development

 

Kelsey:

Better sharing across the continent

 

Dorothy:

Regional pages and sections on the CC website would be great

 

Max:

Learn from other regions like Arab region

Perhaps something other than text, like video is the key for Africa

 

Dorothy:

CC Should finance a project for anyone under 25 to come out with a CC product

Give a topic to celebrate 10th anniversary

Set an age limit

Advantage in Africa is demographic

Do judging online

Prize and award at an event

 

Max:

Gets young people using the licenses

Miss out by not giving prizes and recognition

 

Dorothy:

Need to have tutorials on the site about how to participate

 

Erik:

And give examples for previous works and they have to be global

Promote African works

 

Max:

So many great stories, art and music that can be shared with the world to replace the current single story people get

 

Tobias:

A word of caution

See good possibilities of Africans working together but not sure there is an "African voice" in terms of law related to license versions

 

Dorothy:

That's ok

Need to mitigate against "this is some North American idea" stigma

 

Dick (via Skype chat):

Very good point about Africans being involved in the international license among other stakeholders

 I can't speak for the Ugandan affiliate. Charles and Moses are doing the work but a vision for that network might be evolving into an East African body given the geopolitical realigning taking place. I suspect Paul (Tanzania) and whoever represents Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi will get kb board. These other countries can adopt the international license under that organizational or institutional framework? Charles thoughts?

 

Charles (via Skype chat):

agree. the rights holders I have interacted with from the rest of East Africa appear to be keen on CC and business models. Affiliates in our case would also do joint activities to promote the license. we need some more  projects the test cc business models- the idea of seeing is believing!

 

 

Aurelia:

CC just did a poster contest for the Summit, most submissions were Asian

CC is also currently running a video contest about explaining OER

Most affiliates don't know about these contests - how do we get the word out?

Also, region can run it's own contests and then ask CC HQ to promote

 

Max:

Arab region is so successful. What are they doing?

 

Aurelia:

Arab region focuses a lot of culture and not a lot on the legal stuff

Spent a day agreeing on Arabic translation of key CC terms

 

Dorothy:

Identify champions to convert

 

Max: credibility hack


--
------------------------
Aurelia J. Schultz (Miss), Counsel
Creative Commons 
+1 415 501 0257
Skype: aurelia.schultz

Please note: the contents of this email are not intended to be legal advice nor should they be relied upon as, or represented to be legal advice.


  • [ccAfrica] Notes from the Global Summit Africa Regional Meeting, Aurelia J. Schultz, 09/27/2011

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