The new European normative makes it possible that with the addition of 1,000,000 signatures, the political debate on a certain topic can be initiated in the European Parliament. And one of the good things about this new normative is that it has been designed for the XXIst century, as online participation (i.e. signing) is considered in equal terms as offline participation.
The procedure is the usual one, where an initiative is registered and then signatures are collected within the member states. Once the European Commission validates the firms (the person signing is a European citizen, has not signed more than one time, etc.), then a new legislative process can begin.
Another asset is that the European Commission must provide free software platforms for the collection of signatures in any website. These platforms will work with digital signature, whatever its kind: certificates, tokens, smartphones, etc.
The initiative can be started at any member state and, once the platform is validated, the process of gathering support can begin.
The regulation is written as if it was about data protection, as that is the major issue when providing a (electronic) vote supplying personal data, but the regulation to be applied will be the one of any member state.
Daniel Guagnin; Carla Ilten Self-Governed Socio-technical Infrastructures. Autonomy and Cooperation through Free Software and Community Wireless Networks
Net Neutrality is the freedom to use a communication infrastructure in all possible ways without constrains. And free software is a matter of liberty, not price, it is about free as in free speech (not as in free beer).
Technology is society made durable: social “programmes” are inscribed in any technology. In expert systems rules are disembedded from the realm of use, and defined by experts. Free software opens up the experitse to laypeople, why proprietary software stays opaque.
Copyleft is a general method for making a program or other work freely available and with the compulsory condition that any other work based on it will also be available in the same way.
Community Wireless Networks are based on free software and DIY hardware. They use wireless peer-to-peer mesh network architecture and have collectively organized and owned communication infrastructures.
An example can be the Chicago Wireless Community Networks [in Spain we have the very interesting initiative Guifi.net.]. Chicago Wireless Community Networks is a non-profit project to serve disadvantaged neighborhoods, in cooperation with CUWIN open source programmers. It’s community building through network set-up and maintenance. The Pico Peering Agreement acts as a constitution for peer networking.
That is certainly a new approach to Net Neutrality, as Net Neutrality is, all in all, a battle about the control over infrastructures.
Mayo Fuster Morell An introductory historical contextualization of online creation communities for the building of digital commons: The emergence of a free culture movement
Online creation communities (OCCs) are a set of individuals that communicate and collaborate mainly via a platform hosted on the Internet with the purpose to create a final outcome of the joint work.
These communities are deeply rooted in the movements of the 1950s like hacking culture, hippies contraculture, action-participation methodologies and popular education, etc.
If the free software projects imply the appearance of OCCs, there is a shift from free software to free culture with the change of millennium with movements like the Creative Commons, the Wikipedia, alternative news media (e.g. Indymedia), peer-to-peer file sharing, open access of scientific research, etc. The explosion of the web 2.0 is greatly powered and fostering at the same time the concept of OCCs.
Infrasctructure conditions:
Level of freedom and autonomy of the content generators in regard to the infrastructure.
Level representation of the interests of the community of creators in the infrastructure provision decision-making and provision transparency.
Two main types:
Autonomy + open = commons logic; they reinforce more collaborative communities.
Close + dependency = corporate logic. Tend to generate larger communities.
The free culture and digital rights movement has 4 main goals: preserve the digital commons, to make important information available to the public, promote creators, remove barriers to distribution of knowledge and goods.
Lately, the movement has been shifting from free culture to meta-politics. This can be seen in the Change Congress initiative in the US (2008) or the #nolesvotes and #15M movements in Spain.
Georgia Foteinou Institutional Trust and e-Government Adoption in the EU: a Cross-National Analysis
Why citizens that are used to e-commerce appear sceptic when it comes to using e-government websites? Normally, it is attributed to the poor quality of services, few available services, insufficient infrastructure… but evidence shows that is none of the above, at least not as a strong determinant not to be using those services. In fact, e-government usage is higher than e-commerce in most European countries, even if it has a decline of -4.5% (of all Internet users) over the period 2005-2010. On the other hand, in aggregate, e-government is growing at 30% (accesses) while e-commerce is growing at 75%.
It seems that the digitally reluctant could not be trusting the government, but not of a specific agent, but in government as a whole. This is what data seem to be telling at statistically significant levels.
Jorge Luis Salcedo Conflicts about the regulation of intellectual property in Internet: comparing the issue networks in UK and Spain
In the issue of the conflicts about the regulation of intellectual property, how is media visibility distributed between the stakeholders in this conflict? What actors have more visibility? This is crucially relevant in mass-mediated democracies.
A first hypothesis is that the regulation supporters (Copyrights coalition and governments) will achieve a greater visibility level on the news channel.
A second hypothesis is that the Digital Rights Activists (DRA) will have a higher visibility on non traditional media (blogs, websites) than the CRC.
3r hypothesis: DRA will have a higher visibility in specific web channels, but not on the entire web.
4th hypothesis: The most visible agents on the news channels are going to get the most visibility as a whole, especially in search engines.
It is very interesting to see how in Spain, DRA have huge coverage in online platforms, in the UK they are even with CRC and both of them having less visibility than the government’s official position. In search engines, though, both UK and Spanish DRA seem to be having the same impact.
The differences may come from different resources from the different stakeholders, a more lax regulation in the UK in downloading matters, the worst reputation that the coalition has in Spain in comparison to the UK’s, including the dynamics of politics in the different countries.
Access to public information and Social Networking Sites Chaired by Ismael Peña-López
e-Government at W3C José Manuel Alonso, CTIC Foundation / World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
There is an increasing trend demanding open public information, raw public information, instead of one stop shops to access public services or public information that has already been “treated” or “prepared” for the citizen. Why should administrations limit the interactions with their citizens?
Governments should shift from being owners of data to being curators of data.
Benefits of freeing data are many, arguably being the most relevant one the “Many minds principle”: there’ll always be someone that will find out a way to reuse data that you wouldn’t have even figured.
Three steps to reuse: identify relevant data, represent them so that they can be used, and expose them to the wider world.
Data.gov, the flagship of the US Government on open data.
If data are put in appropriate formats, they can be syndicated, aggregated, etc. And the costs of doing this, remixing, reshaping, etc. are almost zero to governments: once data are published, it’s private interests (for or not for profit) with do the rest.
Linked Data: its principle is to empower data so that they can be interlinked and enriched. The idea is to link a data set with another one, and that one yet with another one, etc. This should be able to be done automatically, so when applications accessed a data set, it “browsed” several data sets to build a new combined data set… and all of this made transparently for the user.
Challenges are many: alignment with the mission and strategy, there are some costs, inner capabilities of the administration, security, integrity, persistence of data (that data can always be found in the same place), licensing models and their compatibilities, legacy systems, standardization, etc.
In 1833 journalist Mariano José de Larra wrote Vuelva usted mañana (Please come back tomorrow) about the Administration’s inefficiency. Almost 200 years later, we’ve been adding technology to processes but the Administration remains the same. Our goal should be to make this statement obsolete by boosting efficiency and citizen satisfaction.
e-Government is somehow the same path of the modernization of the Administration but with an opposite approach, focussing on people and knowledge instead of processes and technology.
Usually, Administrations focus their e-Government strategies on the online availability of their public services, beginning with income-generating services. On the other hand, the stress has also been put more on G2B services rather than on the citizen.
And, do we know how much e-Government services are used?
What we do know is that a lot of money has been spent in government portals but the efficacy and the efficiency is yet to be made evident.
Shift from e-Government to Open Government (o-Government): services centred in the citizen and co-designed with the citizen; transparency and accountability; innovation fostering. And open data is a pre-requisite of o-Government, being a real exercise of transparency settling democracy. Open data reduce information asymmetry, firms get access to wealthy information and a new kind of citizen emerges: the infomediary.
If data is open, there is no need to agree (neither with the government, nor amongst citizens) on what services need to be set up: emergent initiatives will be able to set them up at their own will, as the resources are plainly available. For instance, Apps for Democracy.
Reusing public information for change Jordi Graells, Deputy Director of Content and Innovation in the Catalan government’s (Presidential Department) Citizen Service Office.
Innovation should be aimed at creating value, to transform knowledge to create value.
Gary Hamel: (new) leadership is about enabling rather than doing, is about distributing power, about managing the collective intelligence. On a managing approach, professionals should be put first, then the customer and then the stakeholders… which can easily be translated into the field of the Administration.
But the abundance of barriers and constraints lead us to empowerment through open data. And one of the main enablers of open data is open licences, so that these data cannot only be accessed but also (re)used by anyone.
In 2007 the Catalan Government begins using Creative Commons licenses in their publications. In 2009 the Catalan Government agrees that all publications (whenever there are intellectual propertyh rights) will be using CC licenses — being the optimum in the long run putting all public content in the public domain.
Roadmap of the Catalan Government:
Law 37/2007 for the reuse of public information, adding disclaimers to public information clarifying how it can be reused
Put information into open data bases so that data can be reused, with several options depending of he kind of database (just data, access to collections of third parties’ materials, etc.)
CC licensing for content with IP rights
But it’s not only about administrative change, but about citizen participation and engagement: the Catalan Government shares knowledge in social networking sites where people can participate and engage in collaborative work: communities of practice, social aggregators, etc..
The e-Catalunya project now holds +15,000 members in 54 big groups/categories and several dozen specific working groups.
Q&A
Idoia Llano: How is the Government of Catalonia’s blog going to be managed? Jordi Graells: It is not exactly the Government’s blog, but the “blog of the Internet experience of the Government”. It will be a corporate blog, not a blog (or a collection of blogs) of the members of the Government. So, it will be like any other communication channel.
Ricard Espelt: How is it, if open data and open platforms have such benefits, that Governments do not use them? Why Governments keep on using customized and closed applications instead of already existing “cloud” applications? Jordi Graells: Security is an issue. An other one is political show off (e.g. it’s “better” a good huge portal, rather than small spread applications that don’t even hold the institution’s logo).
Agustí Cerrillo: technologically speaking reuse of public information is possible and, increasingly, the law has also been updated this way. But it is not this way at the organizational level. So, what organizational change should take place? Jordi Graells: Communities of practice are proving to be a good driver for change. Alberto Ortiz de Zárate: it is very important to convince the leaders, and to do it through small successes and benchmarking others’ small successes. José Manuel Alonso: Act on a two-level basis: at the higher direction basis, agreeing on political strategies; and at the implementation and most operative basis, agreeing on the how-tos.
Ismael Peña-López: In a welfare state like ours, why should I participate and “work for the government”, if I already pay my taxes? Why should I if I won’t change the world? Alberto Ortiz de Zárate: It’s about small but really effective changes, especially in those places where resources are really scarce and small projects can have huge impact.
Marta Cantijoch: Aren’t we promoting a new digital divide — accompanied by a democratic divide — where people that can code, understand the new “sharing paradigm”, etc. can participate in this open society and the rest of the citizenry will be set aside? José Manuel Alonso: The idea is not the creation of a new elite of citizens, but to enable a new set of infomediaries that can provide more and better public services for the citizen. Jordi Graells: These new services that José Manuel Alonso refers to can be new cultural services, learning and research materials, weather data, more and better communication channels, etc.
Q: How can we encourage participation? Alberto Ortiz de Zárate: Historically, participation has been limited to sending out ideas and vote them, which is not really encouraging. If the Administration allows for a creation of new public services, new public value, the citizenry should be more eager to participate as their impact would be much higher.
Q: We should be aware of the risks of sharing information, especially private information. How do we avoid these risks? Jordi Graells: There seems to be an increasing trend towards a genuine change that needs to be managed, but that seems unstoppable.
There’s more in P2P than file sharing — and way more than music or movie “piracy” —. Can P2P networks change citizenry, engagement or governance? Is it a new way of thought? Is it citizenship empowerment?
Relevant questions to pose to ourselves:
Can we create culture together?
Is self-management and self-government possible?
Are the commons or public ownership possible?
P2P is shared resources in the digital era. Can it be translated into the analogue world?
Olivier Schulbaum presents the Bank of Common Knowledge, a project that applies P2P tools in the “analogue” world to work with and create communities that share knowledge. Tools emanate from the free software movement, enacted by a network of volunteers.
The Bank of Common Knowledge (BCK) works at two levels: cells, that cluster interests and experts in long-term exchange experiences; and microtasks, aimed to quick exchange of knowledge. Besides these two main axes, other models apply: consultancy, handbooks, etc.
One of the main goals of the BCK is to replicate it elsewhere or to apply it to different environments (the University, the corporation…), as though as benchmarking other experiences like banks of time, etc.
Liberty, equality and P2P Michel Bauwens, P2P Foundation
How do we change the society? We come from a tradition where “there is no alternative” to the economic and social system we’re living in. It was believed that only power could bring change in. But the end of slavery at the end of the Roman Empire was a matter of a social change that emerged bottom-up, not top down from the power. The Industrial Revolution was also a grassroots approach to disclose new patterns of doing things, in this case moving from land to capital.
We now see new patterns emerging, new forms of property and new ways of producing and of social practices. We are building a new society which sees new ways of disaggregation, highly decentralized organizations. People aggregate to create added value.
Three new things emerging today:
The ability to create in common
The ability of participants to manage the processes, to govern themselves
The ability to protect the resulting value from private appropriation
P2P is a third mode of production, governance and property.
Centralization is no more needed: we can broadcast our needs and people will aggregate around tasks according to their profiles and the described needs. Indeed, we have design from inclusion, where design itself is collaboration based.
No more division of labor, but distribution
No exclusivity, but inclusivity
No composite tasks, but granular
No finished products, but unfinished artifacts
If we lower costs of access and transaction, motivation will enable the emergence of common interests and cluster communities together.
If a traditional for profit company faces an open community, it is likely to loose: Britannica vs. Wikipedia, Explorer vs. Firefox, etc.
Key factors of success:
Motivation, based on self-interest — not extrinsic, enforced, monitorized motivation
P2P brings externalities into the system
P2P makes it possible to create things that the market cannot commoditize and/or set prices in exchange of it
Innovation stays within the system and is added up to the process — it is not taken away from an external owner
Open design and open innovation as the core of the evolution forward of P2P production.
The crisis of value: “making things is not more interesting”, as added value in manufactures is dropping. Marketing information does not make any much sense any more, as information is abundant, the information economy just will not work. Only open design will work.
Business models move along two axes: open vs. close and paid vs. free. Traditional business models work on a paid+closed basis. The free software business model works on an open+paid model: you charge not on the product, but on services around it. Closed+free is based on a portfolio approach. Last, open+free is based on common value.
The role of capital has changed: to innovate, in many cases you don’t need capital any more. There is a divorce between entrepreneurism and capitalism.
The core value of the whole system will be the P2P process, based on a gift economy, on values, and away from a market based core paradigm, where everything is a commodity.
To enable a P2P society we need distributed institutions.
Q & A
Enric Senabre: Isn’t it fragile to have everything distributed, dis-allocated, in remote places? A: Opennes creates value, and closeness captures it. Communities can create the necessary social struggles to avoid fragilities to break. On the other hand, struggles of control are needless if everyone gets its benefit/profit from the community.
Enric Senabre: sharing and helping as way of living isn’t an ancient concept, religiously talking? A: It is scarcity that creates hierarchies. It is very different being a teacher or a facilitator than being a guru or a priest. There’s an ethic or moral difference there.
Oliver Schulbaum: do we need a state of the commons? A: We need an enabling authority, an institution that fosters social innovation so that the community becomes more competitive. If you loose your job, the Welfare State will pay you to do nothing (which is better than starving). But if you can keep on contributing in an open system, you can do things, create value, get a reputation, continue to be active and productive. We need institutes of the commons, incubators and we have to create mechanisms, new ways of patronage so that people can contribute in projects.
Q: What are the risks of losing net neutrality? What other freedoms are in danger? A: The good news are that people have been able to create organized decentralized coalitions to efficiently fight for their rights.
Ismael Peña-López: we’ve talked about engaging and enabling motivation. What do we do with the failures of the P2P model, e.g. free-riders or people that objectively add little or no value? A: P2P processes (1) getting people (2) selection and (3) defending from your enemies or infections. Free-riding might not be an issue in a world of abundance, where there is no scarcity and no competition or for consumption. So, free-riding does not destroy P2P, to say the least. And it can even be a learning process. Of course P2P is not perfect, but it’s better than the existing system.
Q: How do we create social networks owned by the citizens, how do we gain autonomy from proprietary and closed platforms? A: sharing and commons modes are different, and we have to decide what model do we want. The P2P model can be based on both modes. And, indeed, communities have to be conscious that enablers (e.g. YouTube or FaceBook) do have to get support (funding) for their job.
Maria Jesús Salido: how far do have to go until the P2P model is fully sustainable? can it be applied in a mixed model where traditional capitalist systems live together with P2P initiatives? Can e.g. intellectual property rights, backing systems, etc. allow for P2P initiatives? A: It is possible to create P2P communities compatible with a non-P2P framework.
e-STAS is a Symposium about the Technologies for the Social Action, with an international and multi-stakeholder nature, where all the agents implicated in the development and implementation of the ICT (NGO’s, Local authorities, Universities, Companies and Media) are appointed in an aim to promote, foster and adapt the use of the ICT for the social action.
Here come my notes for part III.
Cases of Citizens’ initiatives (I)
Pedro Cluster, President of the “Desde la Calle” Society
Moving experience on how a homeless got media attention through his blog. Having had success in businesses, he ended being a homeless. After years in the street he somehow manages to get a living and then creates the “Desde la Calle” association to get homlesses out of the street. ICTs have boosted the reach of his speech beyond expectations.
Cases of Citizens’ initiatives (II)
Jenaro Garcia, Red Sin Fronteras Foundation
Created Red Sin Fronteras, an NGO to provide with connectivity remote rural areas. To do so, they made up “4×4 WiFi” [4WD WiFi] which, as the name itself states, is installing WiFi devices on 4WD cars so they can access [phisically] rural areas and bring them people connectivity.
Actually, the ultimate goal is not connectivity supply, but advocacy: by visiting little towns with the “connected” 4WD, they raise awareness on the existing content, services and opportunities for rural areas of being connected, so inhabitants ask (the administrations, the telcos) to set up internet access to their villages.
Cases of Citizens’ initiatives (III)
Red E-RUS. Network of Country Areas for the Rural Technological Development (Red E-RUS)
Goals: research in ICT4D, advocacy, fighting the digital divide, fostering human development.
Standards, Accessibility, Access and Sustainable Innovation in the field of ICT (I)
Free knowledge accessible for all Jonathan Chacón, ONCE Foundation
We’d better focus on the users’ needs instead of creating new ones
Internet is a new gate to knowledge, but it’s a closed gate to some people: technological disabled, cultural disabled, temporal disabled.
Technological solutions [free as in freedom]:
Free software
Free hardware: we’re buying more power than needed/used. Grid computing, etc. take this extra power and use it for several purposes.
Free connectivity: same situation as hardware, where you sometimes cannot chose the quality of band you’re buying (i.e. sometimes too much for just e-mail)
Digital literacy should focus not only on technology, but on all kinds of disabilities. And standards ease access… but they are standards set for standard people, so we should be careful with those so-called standards: design for all, solutions for all. Accessibility is useful for absolutely anyone, not just disabled people.
If we now go back and see the Internet as a knowledge gate, access to Internet is access to knowledge, access to free knowledge.
Standards, Accessibility, Access and Sustainable Innovation in the field of ICT (II)
Innovation and NGO Technology Allen Gunn, Aspiration Tech
Lessons learned in NGO Tech Innovation
NGOs should retain control of their own technological future
Too few NGO stakeholders understand technology: simple is needed, cool is installed
NGOs feel pressure to use technology
Innovation should be discussed in the language of the NGO mission
Innovation driven by “users stories”
Unsustainable innovation is no innovation
NGO Innovation Checklist
can you articulate the benefit of an innovation in simple language?
does the NGO feel in control of the process?
are we considering the full innovation life cycle?
will this allow us to focus more time on mission?
have all stakeholders been engaged?
3 drivers of NGO Tech Innovation
Free and open source software
Free and open content
Open interfaces for accessing data
Project:Social Source Commons: what software is out there for nonprofits and who’s using it, how, why, what other tools are useful in conjunction with a tool, etc.
Standards, Accessibility, Access and Sustainable Innovation in the field of ICT (III)
Access to knowledge and sustainable development Eddan Katz, Yale University and Director of the Information Society Project
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Chinese proverb Sell a man a fish, and he can eat for a day, teach a man to fish, and you lose a great business opportunity. Karl Marx
Intellectual property is most times about the second quote. And there is an increasing push to more and more intellectual property rights of the ones that came before the Information Society
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.
Give a man a fishing rod, and he feeds himself and his family for as long as the rod lasts.
Help a man develop the knowledge and means to improve the fishing rod and to design and produce new ones, and he may feed himself and his society for years to come. WIPO Magazine
There is a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot. Steven Wright
Teach a man to create an artificial fish shortage, and people will eat steak. Anonymous economist
Knowledge Management through the New Technologies for the Social Action
Managing Health Information in Low Resource Settings William Lester, EngenderHealth
Access without training makes no sense. ICT training, thus, is an important issue and, paradoxically, training by ICT means (i.e. e-learning) is a very useful tool for training in the developing world.
A big problem with e-Health is how to adapt existing tools for developing countries. Those tools are based on some western/developed assumptions that do not take place in developing countries: a fixed address, national ID card/number, (known) birth date, unique medical record, etc.
Adaptation not only means technological adaption, but also cultural adaptation: of the so many web resources, one should be able to decide which to trust/choose.
Lester really believes — he repeats it along his speech — that mobile phones are the ones that are making and will be making the difference in developing countries.
Congress Conclusions
In a networked society, access is a right, specially to achieve higher rights
Internet gives voice to the ones that never had it
ICTs give more democracy, more participation
The importance of the hinge role of NGOs to make all agents and users/beneficiaries meet
Social innovation enhanced by ICTs
Let new technologies be designed to satisfy users and needs, not vice versa
We should work together in the Net and as a network
e-STAS is a Symposium about the Technologies for the Social Action, with an international and multi-stakeholder nature, where all the agents implicated in the development and implementation of the ICT (NGO’s, Local authorities, Universities, Companies and Media) are appointed in an aim to promote, foster and adapt the use of the ICT for the social action.
Here come my notes for part II.
Tools for collaboration and social networks for the Millennium Development Goals (I) Raoul Weiler European President of the Club of Rome and Adviser of the Wikimedia Foundation Social Networks for Enhancing Sustainability & Democracy
Tools for collaboration and social networks for the Millennium Development Goals (II)
The Vit@lis Network Fabio Nascimbeni, Director of Vit@lis
Vit@lis mission: to gather, share, reuse all the ICT projects that have taken place around the European Commission @lis programme during the last years.
Key issues: multilinguism, intellectual property rights, starting seed capital, real reciprocity, practical policies, multidisciplinarity; sustainability and transferability, articulate information, articulate results, motivation vs. financing, ideas vs. financing, continuous political consensus.
Goal: You sometimes realize that what costed 1,000,000 $ to implant in a couple of places, can be replicated in three more places by just adding 100,000 $ more. That’s the point: to share knowledge that can be applied, replicated with increasing scale benefits.
Digital literacy: universalization, democratization, dissemination of digital tools.
The RITS network promotes information society access by all means. Besides digital literacy, there’s an incredibly huge effort to set up hundreds of telecentres, wireless connetivity and mesh networks, community radios, etc.
At the political level, they try and (a) break the official or de facto monopolies on telecommunications and (b) change the legal environment that obstructs the development of the Information Society
Tools for collaboration and social networks for the Millennium Development Goals (IV)
2015: A better world for Joana Esther Trujillo Jiménez. Director of the Corporate Social Responsibility Dep. of Telefónica.
There’s an increasing concern about businesses and their behaviour. More and more NGOs, indexes, reports explain how businesses behave and, in case they don’t do it “right”, some actions are organized against them such a boycotts, demonstrations, letters to CEOs, etc.
On 2002 the FRC (Corporate Reputation Froum) was created for the members to help themselves to achieve a better reputation and social behaviour. One of the projects that they are running is explaining the MDGs to the society. Joana is the character that is going to explain the society about the MDGs, how to achieve them, what have been done, etc.
Open Educational Resources: legal aspects
Raquel Xalabarder, Department of Law and Political Science, UOC
In principle, intermediaries (i.e. OER repositories) are liable for infringement of intellectual property rights. Nevertheless, there are safe harbours (exceptions) where intermediaries are not liable, provided they pass the awareness of knowledge test. Mainly it deals with knowing you’re consciously infringing the law and your ability to quickly remove content when required to.
Big problem: there’s no consensus on which law should apply to what at the international level.
Three things that the law empowers the author (not the industry) to do: distribute, communicate to the public and transform. But there are exceptions to the author does not abuse his monopoly, and education is one of them. OER repositories, though intended to teaching — thus, fair use — do open those contents to anyone, be their purpose teaching or not, so we have a problem here of possible infringement.
Creative Commons is, in no way, a registry: you should (also) register your work in the Copyright registry to protect your rights, regardless of what you intend to do with them.
The advice for the OER community should not be just try and see how I apply the law but to lobby and see how this law can be changed, changed so educatinoal purposes are always an exception to copyright, to enhance consumer protection (vs. the industry’s). OER practitioners should aim to bring the debate to the international fora, not just to keep it in the scope of their own (immediate) needs. Rights should be about exploitation, not use.
Open Educational Resources and Virtual Universities
Susan D’Antoni, Head of UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning, IIEP Virtual Institute
Knowledge is not merchandise, knowledge divide is deeper than the digital divide [personal note: this is because we think of digital divide as ICT infrastructures divide, i.e. forgetting about informational literacy], OER has the potential to address national policy objectives on the Knowledge Society.
UNESCO (and, actually, the OER community taking part in the fora) should be in position to design a policy framework to enchance/foster/refer OER development and implantation.
Yochai Benkler, The wealth of networks: The importance of policy choices – and the social political choides behin them – in the move towards the information society.
Closing Session
Julià Minguillón, Vice-Director Internet Interdisciplinary Institute, UOC
The OLCOS project has drawn a roadmap and some tutorials on how to implant OER.
Recommendations
There’s a need for information, to spread the word of open access and OER
Top-down and bottom-up approaches
Remove producer-consumer barriers, in the sense that consumers can become producers, and producers become consumers
Stick to standards
Update 20061220: The presentations can now be downloaded here Update 20070517: The videos can now be downloaded here
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UOC UNESCO Chair in Elearning Third International Seminar. OER: Institutional Challenges (2006)
