News & updates on Creative Commons in Singapore

The first CC Singapore meetup will be on Friday 10 Feb, 2012.
Venue: HackerSpaceSG (thanks again, folks!)
Time: 7.30pm – 9.30pm
Host: Kanako Honma/ Ivan Chew

Facebook Event page, here. BTW, anyone can attend this event (there’s no “membership” or anything like that). Would appreciate if you could indicate your attendance at the FB page or by leaving a comment. So that we don’t need to turn anyone away due to space constraint. Thanks!

This meetup came about as a result of this discussion about the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) at the CC Singapore mailing list.

As of this post, the proposed bills have been withdrawn. Mashable.com has posted a timeline of the events that eventually lead to the withdrawal of the bill.

The meetup was organised just before news of the bill’s withdrawal from the US Senate. Still, it remains a relevant topic to be discussed. Always good to understand the wider implications of such proposed bills. Particularly when such bills, even if passed in another country, affects websites that exist outside of it.

Here’s a 4min video that explains the impact of those bills, if they had been passed.

Also, we have Justin’s permission to re-post his explanation about the implications of SOPA and PIPA:

There are lots of misconceptions about SOPA and PIPA. The reason behind these 2 acts is mainly because content producers like Hollywood are losing “potential revenue” due to piracy, and they have come up with various solutions to try and curb that, SOPA and PIPA being some of the more drastic solutions.

The main gist is that content producers like yourself will be able to tell DNS servers to not allow resolving of domain names that infringe copyright. DNS servers reside locally, and they are the backbone of the Internet to translate friendly names like “google.com” into computer numbered addresses like “8.8.8.8”. Since DNS servers reside locally within the country and the jurisdiction is within the country (as opposed to trying to shut down the actual server with infringing content in another country), it allows content producers the ability to potentially stop people within the country from accessing sites that infringe their content.

In layman’s term as a consumer, what this means is that potentially if any content is deemed infringing copyrights, you as a consumer within the country will not be able to access that content anymore. Let’s say Wikipedia infringes content from some media conglomerate or some book written by some guy, these people can just say “Hey, Wikipedia has infringed my copyrighted works, block them from Singapore.” That’s the “dumb-case” scenario, but potentially could happen. Consumers within Singapore will not be able to access content. Think “Great Firewall of China”.

Another view, you as a content producer sometimes require to “mix” content in and might potentially infringe copyrights unintentionally. Your website could potentially be blocked from Singapore and nobody can access that content.

~ Ivan Chew

“CC Salons are open forums for people who are interested in the issues surrounding Creative Commons and global participatory culture. CC Salons are global, informal events focused on building a community of artists, developers, and creators of all kinds around Creative Commons licenses, standards, and technology.”
Source: wiki.creativecommons.org/Salon

DATE: Fri 25 Jun 2010
TIME: 7.30pm – 10.30pm
WHERE: HackerspaceSG, 70A Bussorah Street, Singapore 199483 (hackerspace.sg); gothere.sg map.
Indicate your attendance at the Facebook event page.

Presentation 1: “Sharing my Images with a CC license” by Preetam Rai (10 minutes)
Synopsis: Preetam talks about why he shares his photos under CC license and how people are reusing these images.
Preetam is a technologist and an  distinguished educator. He is always on the move, putting up open technology and culture events across Asia. (twitter: @preetamrai , web: preetamrai.com )

Presentation 2: “Marginalia: Giving books their social life” by Kevin Lim (10mins)
Synopsis: Kevin (theory.isthereason.com) will give a short presentation that discusses the tradition of “Marginalia”, that is notes and scribbles left behind in the margins of a used book. He will show how the printed text taps on this tradition to become “socially alive” online, through the use of open-source tools such as CommentPress and Digress.it. Augmented books tend to be licensed under CC, as they encourage user participation and co-creation.
Dr. Kevin Lim graduated with his PhD in Communication at the University at Buffalo (SUNY). Dabbling for both pragmatic and play, he seeks an ideal interplay between online and offline life, through social networking, blogging and lifecasting.

Presentation 3: “Adobe After Effects demo: Creating animated words” by Stefano Virgilli (10mins)
Synopsis: Stefano will show how he animates words using Adobe After Effects. He will show how the videos can convey emotion from the animated words. After the demo, the completed project will be made available in HD format, under a CC license, at www.vox.sg/cc/video/pkw/index.html
Stefano has an Italian degree in communication design and moved to Singapore three and a half years ago. Since 2003 he has been teaching mostly 2D graphic design and photography post production. He now also specialises in video editing, 2D and 2.5D animation. He is a certified trainer and more about his training credentials can be found at lab.edu.sg

Presentation 4: “Creative Commons & The Opposing Innovation” by Inch Chua (10mins)
Synopsis: For a century, major record label companies have been monopolising the music industry. However the innovation of the Internet has spawned its greatest “leaderless” enemy, infamously known as Music Piracy. With such opposing innovation against the conventional Music Business System, it has become evident that musicians/ artists need to seek new ways to adapt to its changing environment. So why would Creative Commons licensing be the answer?
You might know Inch Chua by the popular upbeat alternative rock act Allura. Or you might have heard about her as being the first Singapore solo artist selected to perform at the South By Southwest (SXSW) music festival. Her CC-licensed music can be downloaded from inchchua.bandcamp.com

Acknowledgments:

• HackerspaceSG – hackerspace.sg
• Ruiwen, for venue arrangements at HackerspaceSG.

What happens at the CC Salon Singapore sessions?
You turn up, network, share and mingle. That’s it :) There will about 30mins to 45mins worth of CC-related sharing/ presentations. The rest of the time is really for you to get to know your fellow Creative Commoners better. For enquiries, please email the Creative Commons SG community manager, Ivan Chew (ramblinglibrarian@gmail.com)

Reference: CreativeCommonsSingapore wiki page.