Video: Copyright explained in 6 Minutes
A nice video by CGPGray about copyright:
Heute hat der Tölzer Stadtrat einstimmig eine Informationsfreiheitssatzung im Stile von München angenommen. Dadurch wird dem Bürger ermöglicht, Informationen von der Stadt zu bekommen, auch wenn er nicht direkt betroffen ist. Dies ist ein weiterer Schritt in Richtung mehr Transparenz in der Kommunalpolitik.
Weiterhin sind wir eine Stadt näher an der Einführung eines Informationsfreiheitsgesetzes in Bayern, eines der wenigen Bundesländer ohne ein solches Gesetz.
Ich freue mich einfach, wie einfach unsere Demokratie manchmal funktioniert und man mit einem simplen Antrag bei der Bürgerversammlung im März jetzt eine Informationsfreiheitssatzung hat.
Stellt Doch auch einfach mal einen Antrag auf die Einführung einer Informationsfreiheitssatzung. Ein Brief mit 5 Zeilen + ein paar Internetlinks reicht.
Mehr Infos: www.informationsfreiheit.org
Video Series: Everything Is a Remix
I just found this series by Kirby Ferguson about how our culture are based on remix. He explains how famous music acts and movies are the product of other works. Best of all the videos are remixes themselves. It is a four part series with the first two parts released. Visit www.everythingisaremix.info for more information and all videos.
Everything is a Remix from Kirby Ferguson on Vimeo.
Sebastian Frankenberger - Photo: chrisglub - CC-BY-SA
On friday as part of the ongoing series of political talks by the “Piratenpartei Bayern” I watched the presentation about “Volksbegehren”, referendums, by Sebastian Frankenberger.
Frankenberger is known in Bavaria for the referendum about “Nichtraucherschutz” banning smokers from pubs and restaurants. It is one of the few successful referendums in Bavaria and was one of the most controversial and emotional issues in Bavaria last year. But leaving pro and contra smoking behind us Frankenberger gave some very good insights in the organization of referendums.
Sebastian himself is since November 2010 the chairman of the German political party ÖDP, a kind of conservative Greens, and supports as a consultant referendums in Berlin, Hamburg and Austria. He is also a member of ” Mehr Demokratie e.V.”, a group trying to improve the democratic processes in Germany.
First of all a referendum is about the amendment of a specific law. Therefore there needs to be the amendment and a justification of the amendment written down in the referendum. Referendums in Bavaria have three stages:
- “Antrag auf ein Volksbegehren” – The initiators of the referendum have to collect 25.000 signatures of people entitled to vote (time span: 2 years) to get the process started.
- “Volksbegehren” – In the second stage of the referendum 10% of all people entitled to vote have to sign for the referendum in their respective city halls (time span: 14 days). The Bavarian parliament can accept the amendment, deem it unlawful or has to initiate the third stage of the referendum:
- “Volksentscheid” – The people have to decide about the amendment themselves – at least 25% of all entitled citizens have to vote.
In Bavaria 18 referendums were approved, 7 of these reached the 10% quorum. Of these 7 referendums 3 were successful. The most difficult part of the process is to reach the 10% signatures, representing in Bavaria about 1 million people. The time span of 14 days makes this very hard, therefore the focus of the initiators has to be on this stage. The non-smoking referendum had 13.9% signatures.
Several key points seem to be important for a successful referendum:
- The topic of the referendum should be easy to understand and emotional to activate the people. Only these topics have a chance to overcome the 10% hurdle.
- A strong core team (3 – 8 people) is necessary to coordinate the efforts.
- This team needs to establish a strategy.
- A very important part of the work is to have very good press relations. Especially during the 2. stage the press has to report about the referendum the whole 14 days. A professional press relations officer seems the way to go.
- In every county there need to be people to further the referendum by info booths, local press relations, etc.
- To get the necessary manpower and funds an alliance with other interest groups and parties is key at least after the initial 25.000 signatures. The broader the alliance, especially with NGOs and nonpolitical entities, the more information about the referendum can be dissipated to the people.
- A referendum seems to cost at least 200.000 Euros, realistically half a million Euros. Therefore fundraising is another key element and has to be done during the whole process. Most of the funds will come from the members of the alliance, although parties seem to be sticky with their money and during elections do not count on them.
All in all a referendum is an undertaking spanning several years and binding quite a bit of manpower and resources. The best way to a successful referendum seems to be to first attach yourself to a referendum initiated by an experienced group and learn by doing it. But initiating a referendum will be a great experience and learning opportunity regardless the outcome.
More information (in German) and consultants can be found here: http://bayern.mehr-demokratie.de/bayern_volksbegehren.html
Genius
Always a great laugh: http://mimiandeunice.com/ by Nina Paley
Copyright III – Changing Copyright
Today the duration of copyright is fixed to 70 years after the death of the creator. Copyright is automatically bestowed on the work, there is no opt-out existent. In this post I want to describe an alternative which honors the changes in our society in the last decade.
The idea that works are produced by the creator alone without influences from the outside world and therefore there is a livelong right to the works (even after death) is in my opinion wrong. Creation of works always happens in context with society, with experiences and learning through the society. Society enables the creator to create his work. Therefore I present some ideas for copyright reform:
1. Copyright as Opt-In
First of all copyright should be opt-in and not a default. Everybody who wants to have copyright protection should have to seek it actively. Works who are not under the stewardship of the creator or copyright holder therefore can go easily into the public domain easing the problem of orphaned works, works no one claims anymore but today are still under copyright. Also copyright as opt-in gives the creator a choice to donate his work to society, the public domain, or protect it through copyright and e.g. using Creative Commons licences.
2. Copyright Registration
Establishing copyright to works should be done by the creator on a central webpage. This guarantees a onestop-shop for people seeking to use and licence works. They can see if the work is copyrighted and by whom. Or that it is not 
. Public Domain works could be registered as public domain in a community effort so producing an extensive database of the worlds creative works. This also would remedy a bit the problem of people, who might register copyright wrongly for works not their own.
Another point should be the possibility to deregister copyrighted works or change the status of the work e.g. to public domain. Such changes could happen automatically for works slipping out of the time span of copyright duration.
3. Copyright Duration
For me a key to copyright reform is copyright duration. Especially the duration should not be connected to the life or death of the creator but be standard periods of years after publication. This would be more just for the creator and easier to establish if a work is still under copyright.
Another point is that the total span of copyright should be divided in several smaller periods. With the end of every period the copyright has to be renewed or the work will become public domain. This again protects society from the problem of orphaned works.
An example would be spans of 10 years and the possibility to renew it for 5 times. The total span of copyright protection would then be 50 years. This for me should be amble time to make a profit from creative works. Most creative works make most of its profits in the first years after publication. And after 50 years it should really be time for the creator to honor is part of the copyright contract and give society his works.
Often it is said the long duration of copyright protection encourages creativity. But does it? One question in a presentation by Cory Doctorow boils it down: We have 70 years copyright protection, do you think a prolongation to 90 years will encourage John Lennon to write a new song?
Video: The Story of Stuff – Electronics
Just came across this video from storyofstuff.com. It describes how electronics are sold to be dumped these days and just points to one of our major environmental problems. Who does not have electronic gadgets gathering dust for being obsolete or just not what you need?
