rejon.org is Jon Phillips.

@mlinksva just put out a great slide show, albeit the over-use of bullet points ;), that is an overview of CC as well as a general look at the historical trajectories of Free Software and how Free Culture Movement is approximately 10 years behind. This is a great beginning at the more intimate look at where WE are heading collectively, because of course, Free Software and Free Culture’s paths are intermingled. It would be quite interesting actually to write a book about these paths with major highlights and where WE are heading.

Yes, I know there are many books analyzing Free Software and then some coming out like David Bollier’s Viral Spiral that looks at Commons production overall including rise of Creative Commons, but actually one looking at the larger scope of Free Culture would be quite interesting.

Check out the slides and throw em up if you have any comments:

BTW, I wonder if we should collectively be working on a more finite conference about the Free Culture Movement for next year. This would be one targeted towards production of content, assessing failed projects, live events, and no eunuchs to assist in cultural production. The idea is that this conference would directly fit into the trajectory of Free Software. This conference would be in the optimal location globally for most people to attend for the least amount of expenditure, such as Amsterdam, Vancouver, Singapore, or a better optimized location. I think we can learn from Wikimania in Cairo and conferences in Sapporo as absurd for more than the usual suspects on the conference circuit (of which I am a part).

Free Culture Conference (”Get your FreeCon”) would be a meeting of specific projects to hash out interrelationships and collective trajectories for the coming year. We have had great success with the Libre Graphics Meeting which is not about people hand waving and armchair philosophizing about every single person’s movement, but specific projects coming together to their roadmap, challenges for interoperability, and real hacking on projects more than just declarations.

What would it take to put on a proper Free Culture Conference and who would need to be present. I would say:

Free Software Foundation
Creative Commons
Wikimedia Properties
Gnome Foundation
Open Courseware Consortium
Internet Archive

And the list keeps going on…please add to, as this is just off the head…the number of companies that would be interested in this intermixing would be quite high IMO. I’m particularly interested in this being a place for companies interested in Open Hardware and Specifications to intermingle (aka, Openmoko, VIA, Intel)

The idea is that this is a place where project roadmaps are compared, integrations resolved (like Wikipedia BY-SA compatibility), and real hacking would take place. Also, this conference would be 2-3 days max and marked with conversions of projects to more liberalized licensing as affirmations each day to pump up participants [0]. The goal of the event would be to produce actual statements showing resolutions with implementation to back them up, and to announce the next 5-10 free culture priorities for the year.

Is anyone interested in this?

[0] I’ve called this Freedom Day before, but it needs a better name without the negative associations with Freedom in many asian countries - aka, freedom means free as in destroy the government, which this is NOT. Rather, the idea of Freedom Day would be for projects to announce using free licenses and/or moving from more restrictive licenses to more free licenses. What would a better name for this annual day be? What about SHARING DAY, or Global Day of Sharing

Poster by Blender Foundation, CC BY 3.0

This is the next 30-45 days (okay a month) of knocking out all kinds of projects I’ve had in the queue for months, literally. The first of these is the Creative Commons Case Studies project. Seriously, this one has been touched by so many people for countless months now.

I remember when Mike Linksvayer wanted me to push this one out and TVOL and I sat in a room looking at each other like what the hell is this vague task Mike just gave us Well, it coalesced at the CC Taiwan

It also now helps me feel like the information side of Creative Commons infrastructure is pretty solid. I won’t say complete, but at least up to par with most projects of this size. To go along with this release, Alex and I shuffled around some of the /projects page at creativecommons.org and there is now a section called “Information” which is useful for all those seeking out about why use CC. Please all, feel free to use these sections.

Joi just blogged a chunk of the Case Studies blog post I did over at CC’s blog, which I’ve sourced below:

Creative Commons Launches Global Case Studies Project
Jon Phillips, June 24th, 2008
Brisbane, Australia & San Francisco, USA — 2008 June 24

Today Creative Commons (CC), in association with Creative Commons Australia, officially announced the release of the Case Studies Project, which is a large-scale community effort to encourage all to explore and add noteworthy global CC stories. Creative Commons provides free tools to allow copyright-holders to clearly show rights associated with creative works, and now this project shows how notable adopters like author Cory Doctorow, web video-sharing company Blip.tv, and open film project “A Swarm of Angels” have successfully used CC licenses.

And, Joi had this to say about the project:

This is a very important initiative and I hope everyone will contribute and use this resource. In order to make CC ubiquitous, we need support from businesses to get it integrated into the tools and the infrastructure. We need to prove that CC is not only good for society and culture, but makes business sense too. These case studies will be very important to help drive home the fact that sharing is good for business in addition to being “the right thing to do” in other respects.

This also helps make the case to creators that you sharing makes sense for professionals as well.

The next big projects to focus on are the Metrics project, PDWiki Projects (Open Library with CC/PD integration and PDRegistry.ca). No links you say! Well, they are mostly out there in the ether so you can do investigation to find out what these cool projects are that I’ve been working on for a couple of years, seriously!

SIDENOTE: For all you friends of Open Clip Art Library and ccHost, a few of us will be heading to Berkeley to meet at Mudrakers Cafe at 2 PM this Thursday, June 26, 2008 until whenever (~5 PM) to hack with legendary hacker, Victor Stone on ccHost 5.0, the engine behind ccMixter.org, Open Clip Art Library and Open Font Library. I want to do some code fun and not just my talky talk I do mostly these days.

This just in from Mr Superhumanoid himself, Cam’ron Parkins: R-Kelly is not guilty on all 6 accounts!

This is a big day for one of the most creative and successful R&B/Hip-Hop artists of all time! Also, he is one of the highest level, if not the highest level musician to have Creative Commons licensed some music.

Here are some juicier tidbits from a news article:

Jurors, who began their deliberations Thursday afternoon, said that though most of them believed Kelly was the man on the tape, it was harder to positively identify the girl.

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And…

Kelly’s attorneys had alleged that the star was framed by his former protégé, singer Stephanie “Sparkle” Edwards, the alleged victim’s aunt. Sparkle and parts of the victim’s family had teamed up with two Kansas City men to fake the sex tape, Kelly’s team alleged, saying Sparkle wanted “money, money, money.”

Neither Kelly nor the alleged victim were on the tape, they contended, claiming that a mole on Kelly’s back did not appear on the man in the tape.

And the resulting…

But an overcome Kelly dropped his head and began sobbing as the first “not guilty” was read shortly after 2 p.m. Friday, keeping it bowed for several minutes as he was cleared on each of the remaining counts.

Now, does this clear the way for a lil wayne and R-Kelly track or leaked album. I think R-Kelly’s Double-Up album had to be one of the best hip-hop albums of last year, and now Lil Wayne has dropped probably the hottest album of 2008 thus far. Can these camps get together please and make some jams.