There’s a whole lot that’s cool about Wikitravel Press from business, community and licensing angles — follow links from our previous post about it.

Their new Paris title adds to the coolness by incorporating maps from OpenStreetMap, also under a CC Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Also, this is a good time to mention that anyone thinking of similarly building a business around collaboratively built content is strongly recommended to absorb Wikitravel and Wikitravel Press cofounder Evan Prodromou’s Commercialization of Wikis presentation.

Lately, a virtual whirlwind of projects and people and organizations have blown our way, and we don’t expect the dust to settle any time soon. To keep track of some of the progress and collaboration within open education, we’ve started to host bi-monthly features ranging from individual interviews to project spotlights. We hope to open your eyes and ears to what these voices in the movement have to say.

This month’s feature is on “Attribution Only” as Default Policy—Otago Polytechnic on the How and Why of CC BY; this and all subsequent features will be on our home page. You can join our listserv for automatic updates on these and other ccLearn issues. And for those who like to compartmentalize, you can even sign up for a separate feed of our news blog.

ccLearn‘s Executive Director, Ahrash Bissell, will give a talk at Open Source Lab’s fourth official workshop, a series that features various speakers promoting openness across a variety of fields. The Open Source Lab at Stanford was founded just last November, and already hosts video content from three past workshops on their site. The ccLearn workshop will be held tomorrow, April 23rd, at 3pm in the Learning Theater on campus. Ahrash will speak on:

“Open source, open content, open practices. What is “open”, why is it compelling, and where is all of this heading? I will focus on recent developments in the open education movement, including the hopes, challenges, and promising advances in this international effort. We can discuss any number of things, including: the establishment of and current work at ccLearn (including a federated search project, best-practices in (CC) licensing, etc.), the Cape Town Open Education Declaration, key barriers to the implementation of open educational resources (OER) in both higher education and K-12, international efforts and coordination, technical platforms for enabling participation (OER creation, use, and adaptation), and more.”

In homage to its content, the event is also open to the public—here are the details. But don’t worry if you can’t make it; according to co-founder Henrik Bennetsen, a video of the workshop will be available on their site later.  

Interested in learning more about what it means to be open these days? Come hear it from the experts at the next San Francisco CC Salon on May 14th from 7-9 at the Shine bar. You’ll hear from Erik Moeller, Wikimedia Foundation’s Deputy Director, about all things Wikipedia. Alexis Rossi, Internet Archive’s Manager of Collections will be presenting on the Open Library Project. Hannes Gassert and Girogio Pauletto will close the night, teaming up to present on Swiss Open Systems User Group and the State of Geneva’s vision for open standards, open source and open data. How can you go wrong with a line up like that? We look forward to seeing you there!

Update: Check out the SF Salon on our Upcoming page as well.

A month ago, I blogged about CC’s Role in Open Access at Otago Polytechnic; specifically, on their adoption of CC BY as their default IP policy. For those who don’t already know, Otago Polytechnic made a novel decision last year to essentially reverse the standard policy of most educational institutions. While other university staff must obtain permissions to release their work under a license different from “all rights reserved” copyright, Otago Polytechnic staff must explain why they don’t want material published openly under CC BY, should they desire standard (restrictive) copyright or another license. Not only does this eliminate all the red tape before getting your work out in the open, it sets open access as an educational imperative. (And by open, they mean really open–free to copy, distribute, adapt and derive the work for both commercial or non-commercial purposes.)

Because of this inversion in standard IP policy, ccLearn was curious to learn how and why and what exactly Otago Polytechnic did and thought to arrive at this decision. While most institutions, especially educational ones, slap on the non-commercial term, Otago seemed to think differently about doing so; in fact, they never even considered it.

Read on for an interview with Leigh Blackall, from the Educational Development Center at Otago Polytechnic. Some things about Leigh: he lives in beautiful Dunedin, New Zealand, develops his own educational resources with his wife Sunshine and dog Mira, and judging from this photo, is a forward thinker who will climb most any mountain.

(more…)

A month ago, I blogged about CC’s Role in Open Access at Otago Polytechnic; specifically, on their adoption of CC BY as their default IP policy. For those who don’t already know, Otago Polytechnic made a novel decision last year to essentially reverse the standard policy of most educational institutions. While other university staff must obtain permissions to release their work under a license different from “all rights reserved” copyright, Otago Polytechnic staff must explain why they don’t want material published openly under CC BY, should they desire standard (restrictive) copyright or another license. Not only does this eliminate all the red tape before getting your work out in the open, it sets open access as an educational imperative. (And by open, they mean really open–free to copy, distribute, adapt and derive the work for both commercial or non-commercial purposes.)

Because of this inversion in standard IP policy, ccLearn was curious to learn how and why and what exactly Otago Polytechnic did and thought to arrive at this decision. While most institutions, especially educational ones, slap on the non-commercial term, Otago seemed to think differently about doing so; in fact, they never even considered it.

Read on for an interview with Leigh Blackall, from the Educational Development Center at Otago Polytechnic. Some things about Leigh: he lives in beautiful Dunedin, New Zealand, develops his own educational resources with his wife Sunshine and dog Mira, and judging from this photo, is a forward thinker who will climb most any mountain.

(more…)

Creative Commons is working with the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja to create Ecuador jurisdiction-specific licenses from the generic Creative Commons licenses.

CCi Ecuador List

Project Leads: Dr. Juan José Puertas Ortega, Carlos Correa Loyola
Team members: Dra. Patricia Pacheco Montoya and Abg. Verónica Granda González, Abg. Gabriela Armijos Maurad.

• License draft (PDF).
• English explanation of substantive legal changes (PDF).
• Post a message.
• Subscribe to the discussion.
• Read the discussion archives.

More about the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja

The Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja was founded by the Ecuadorian Marist Association (AME) on May 3rd, 1971.

UTPL was officially recognized by the State of Ecuador under Executive Decree 646, published in the Official Register Nr. 217 of May 5th, 1971, in which it was constituted as an autonomous legal entity on the basis of the “Modus Vivendi” Agreement between the Holy See and the State of Ecuador, following the Church’s regulations in its organization and government.

On October 27th, 1997, the Diocese of Loja transferred indefinitely to the “Idente Association of Christ the Redeemer, Idente Missionaries” the operation of the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, to be conducted with total autonomy and in accordance with Idente charisma.

In 1976 the UTPL inaugurated the Distance Education Modality, the first in Latin America. The current statute, approved by the National Council of Higher Education, CONESUP, on January 30th, 2002, established that the institution would offer higher education at undergraduate and graduate levels through the following modalities: Traditional, and Open and Distance, with its variants: a) Traditional Distance; b) Mixed Mode; and c) Virtual.

The UTPL educational model is centered on “Productive Entrepreneurship” in which the students and the professors take part in real projects in the Centers for Research, Technology Transfer, Extension and Service (CITTES)

In summary, the academic life of UTPL combines all the dimensions of the university: the CITTES, the Schools, their programs in the Traditional and Distance Modalities, and service to society, with a strong humanist perspective.

Submissions due April 26. Head on over to the complete CFP.

The program chairs are Jonathan Zittrain, Oxford University, UK, Tyng-Ruey Chuang, Academia Sinica, Taiwan, and Giorgos Cheliotis, Singapore Management University, Singapore.

This is a fantastic opportunity for researchers studying the commons to share with peers in this highly interdisciplinary field.

Matthew Davidson, self-proclaimed sound-designer/graphic artist/hobby photographer/computer fanatic, recently released an amazing 3GB sample pack, “Total Harmonic Distortion”, under a CC BY license. This pack has popped up in numerous places, including the massive OLPC sample fest we discussed earlier, but is in itself is a thing of electronic sample beauty. You can download it for free at LegalTorrents, an “an online community created to discover and distribute Creative Commons licensed digital media”.

blip.tv has long been a CC-friendly staple for video sharing online, providing users a means to upload their content under a CC licence while simultaneously facilitating commercial avenues that would go otherwise unforeseen. We recentlly got up with blip.tv CTO Justin Day and asked him some questions, allowing us to peer more deeply into the unique opportunities blip.tv provides for its users.

(photo via potatono)

Can you give us some background on blip.tv? When and why did it start up? Who’s involved? What is blip.tv’s purpose?

Blip.tv is a video hosting site that’s focused on shows. What that means is that we narrow our attention to independent content creators who make regular episodic shows on the web. We started in direct response to the needs of the emerging videoblogging community in 2005. Our purpose was to give shows an open platform from which they could build their own brand and identity online.

Unlike a lot of online video-sharing sites, blip.tv focuses on episodic content. What led you to this focus?

We focused on episodic content because we’ve always positioned blip.tv to be a pro-sumer tool for independent content creators. Because the community has grown from simple video diaries to web shows of every sort, we’ve grown with them.

blip.tv is distinct in that it has an interesting ad-revenue sharing model with content uploaders as well as distribution deals outside of the web. Can you elaborate on what this entails and share any illuminating anecdotes?

We view monetization and distribution all as part of the same whole, which is to provide the content creators with the best tools to keep making great shows. With advertising we allow shows to opt-in to our network of ad networks right from the first day. Once they build an audience we go to work with direct sponsorship sales. All revenue is split down right down the middle with the creators. Distribution is similar, we want to give a show as much exposure as possible be that on blip.tv, their own website, iTunes, or direct to the living room like with the Sony Bravia. It only helps us both. One of the most interesting lessons learned in my mind was how important building a destination site brand is to driving that exposure, which is one of the reasons why more of our focus has been there in recent months. Originally we thought of ourselves as merely a platform, whereas now we understand that in order to be effective we have to be both platform and destination.

The option to CC license is built into to blip.tv’s UI. Do you find that users utilize CC licensing often? What are the benefits users have in using CC licenses on blip.tv?

From the very beginning we’ve been big proponents of openness and sharing. We’ve never had licensing where we claim to own other peoples content, nor have we ever tried to obscure direct downloads of the original source material. CC plays a critical role in maintaining an open community from which everyone benefits. Nearly a quarter of the videos uploaded to blip.tv are under CC licensing. By allowing for sharing, re-mixing and re-sharing on the content creator’s own terms we provide more opportunity for shows to grow and build community.

CC Founder Larry Lessig has called blip.tv a “true” sharing site as it allows content creators the option to have their videos downloaded, enabling sharing and reuse. Can you talk about any interesting instances of reuse that have arisen from users choosing CC licensing?

I think one of the most interesting CC experiences I’ve seen on blip.tv was early on, when Rudy Jahchan and Casey McKinnon, the brilliant minds behind Galacticast, created an episode titled “Node 666”. Members of the videoblogging community created clips which imagined themselves as survivors of a post apocalyptic earth and uploaded them to blip.tv under CC licensing. Rudy and Casey gathered and edited together the clips into to one of their most memorable episodes to date.

What’s next for blip.tv?

Next for blip.tv is to keep doing what we’ve been doing, which is building great tools for great video makers. We want to keep pushing independent show creators to the forefront until they are able to build sustainable businesses out of their creative talents. Part of that vision is to continue leveraging CC licensing to give content creators access to distribute and re-use great content.