Welcome

Yesterday we had the pleasure to take part to the Launch of the Belgian Creative Commons.
These licenses allow artists and “content producers” to offer their rights to any taker under a set of conditions. They have been translated and adapted to the Belgian Law by the CRID, Namur , the K.U. Leuven / CIR and K.U. Brussel. This event was held thanks to the Digitaal Platform of IAK / IBK.

If we share the enthusiasm of the adopters of the CC licenses, we also felt that it was crucial to understand the context in which they operate.

A quick overview on today's programme...

First, we will discuss the different free licenses, the different strategies at play, the similarities and the contrasts between the art field and the free software movement.

We will then have an overview on the evolution of the author's right at the European level and discuss the (Collectively Managed Online Rights) model for collective management of online rights, a pragmatic compensation system. And an insight on court cases where copyrights conflicts with the public domain.

The last session will outline the concepts of a gift economy, self employment and immaterial labor. And how they can help to understand the way artists can make a living.

Practically the guests will answer your questions collectively at the end of this morning session in a discussion that will be moderated by Séverine Dusollier, who is head of the Department of Intellectual Property Rights at the research Center for Computer and Law at the University of Namur as well as the lead of the Creative Commons translation team in Belgium.
But meanwhile if you have a problem of understanding, our guests will be glad to give more information.

We will start with the launch of the book, Guide to Open Content Licences, a gratis DIY guide to free licences and an exercise in comparative rights. This book is your survival guide in the copyright jungle, it is precise, informative and it reads like a detective novel. The guide is written by Lawrence Liang, researching intellectual property with the Alternative Law Forum in Bangalore and former Research Fellow at the Piet Zwart Institute.It will be presented by Femke Snelting and Florian Cramer.

Femke Snelting is a member of the art and design collective De Geuzen. She is also working for the Media Design Research and MA Media Design programme of the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam.

Florian Cramer is based in Berlin and has written about code poetry, comparative studies in the literature and the arts, modernism, text theory, literature and computing.

Antoine Moreau will introduce us to the Free Art License. This license has been used for some years now and we have asked Antoine to give us an overview of some projects released under Free Art License and to comment on the differences and similarities with the Creative Commons.
Antoine Moreau is an artist and the initiator of the collective Copyleft Attitude.

Cornelia Sollfrank has made a research on the history of artists willing to leave the field of art. She will explain her last projects where she comes to terms with the notion of authorship. Cornelia Sollfrank initiated the cyberfeminist alliance Oldboys network. Central to her conceptual and performative works are the relation between art and politics, changing notions of art and the advent of a new image of the artist in the information age, gender-specific handling of technology, as well as the deconstruction of the all-pervading power of technology.

This morning session was about the different free licenses, the different strategies at play, the similarities and the contrasts between the art field and the free software movement.

We will now have an overview on the evolution of the author's right at the European level and discuss the model for collective management of online rights, a pragmatic compensation system. And an insight on court cases where copyrights conflicts with the public domain.

I will first invite Alexandre Dulaunoy who is a strong advocate of free software and free information. He is president and activist of the association called AEL (Association Electronique Libre). He started and maintains the Free Archive project in order to protect the free digital heritage. He will give us some critical information on the contents and the implementation of the EUCD.(European Union Copyright Directive)

Volker Grassmuck is researcher at the Humbold University in Berlin, and initiator of the Wizards of OS conferences. He is a lobbyist for the right to private copy.
He will introduce us to an alternative system for collective management of online rights.

Kobe Matthys is artist and founder of Agency. He conducts a long term research on the practices of reapropriation and the public domain. He has selected for us a series of rulings where copyrights, the status of a work of art and the public domain enter into conflict.