[Foundation-l] I'm a creative commoner!!!

[Hay (Husky)]

Nice write-up Domas. I really feel we are part of a bigger movement,
and that is what i usually express towards others who approach me
about Wikipedia. It's not just the encyclopaedia, but a whole movement
of people who think free licenses and media are an essential part of
the 21st century.

And i got a picture published as well. It was a pleasant surprise to
view my illustration of 'the long tail' in "Website Optimization" from
O'Reilly, complete with a picture attribution even though i released
it as public domain.

-- Hay

On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 5:50 AM, Brian <Brian.Mingus at colorado.edu> wrote:
> I was surprised last year to receive an e-mail from the journal Nature
> Genetics. They put one of my pictures that they found on Commons on the
> cover of the journal. I've received a couple of other similar but lower
> profile requests. Commons is definitely a great way to get your work seen.
>
> On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 9:34 AM, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>> I got this email back in summer, 2007. Did I just steal a job from
>> professional photographer? Or would they just leave blank book cover?
>> Will this lead to a better bridge in future? Did I join a civil cause?
>> All I know now, is that I’m book cover photographer, albeit quite
>> cheap one. Also, by using CC license I simply used lingua-franca of
>> world I’m in - and now my content can evolve into shapes that I
>> couldn’t expect, and that would be limited by non-portable licenses.
>>
>> Other anecdote is way more internal. I have cheap point-and-shoot
>> camera (same one to shoot book cover pictures :) that I use during my
>> travels. It fits well into my jeans pocket, it doesn’t provide me any
>> self esteem in professional photography. Still, I get to places, I
>> take pictures, I place them on my flickr photostream, and I license
>> them under creative commons. And fascinating things happen - my
>> pictures appear on top of Wikipedia articles (like
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_buildings_in_the_world
>>  ), without any intervention of mine. People just use it, I can sit
>> back, relax, and see how the contribution widens.
>>
>> Of course, there other different stories. My colleague (and manager)
>> runs a wiki about his own town, Bielepedia, and he wants to exchange
>> information with Wikipedia. Now he can’t, as well as quite a lot of
>> other free content community projects. Though of course, some may
>> believe license difference doesn’t mean much, in this case it means
>> that we’re building borders we don’t need nor we have intent to
>> maintain.
>>
>> I live and breathe Wikipedia technology, but I do not feel competent
>> enough to go and push content itself around, and it just shows up
>> there itself (oh, of course, there’s army of committed volunteers who
>> help with that). So, I benefit the project just by being creative
>> commoner, and I may benefit lots of other projects. We at Wikipedia
>> technical team are very open in what we do, and try to spread our know-
>> how in many directions. Documents I wrote about how we do things ended
>> up downloaded hundred thousand times, and I really hope that some of
>> that know-how will end up used and reused.
>>
>> I guess I’m taking this to extremes - I ended up talking to people in
>> government of Lithuania, journalists and non-profit activists. Imagine
>> a government, that would commit to open licensing for produced
>> content. Well, no need to imagine - US federal institutions release
>> information to public domain, but in Europe it is way more restricted.
>> Still, what one has to realize - at government level it is not only a
>> right to be given, it also has to be a right that has to be protected.
>> Nowadays that means going to copyright powerhouses that serve large
>> record labels and movie studios, and will charge for services, that
>> government has to provide for free (and does in other areas, like
>> looking for your stolen car).
>>
>> We have lots and lots of talks about knowledge-societies at government
>> levels, but we never get to the point, that every individual is part
>> of that, and first of all we have to teach those rights, and guard
>> them. But of course, to prove, that our rights have to be guarded, we
>> have to show how great our work is - and how powerful can our sharing
>> be. To achieve that we have to build bridges between license islands,
>> talk same languages, and of course, create.
>>
>> I’m a creative commoner. So should be you.
>>
>> P.S. So should be Wikimedia Foundation. I’m extremely excited about
>> the work being done to make it reality (thanks Erik, Mike, Mako,
>> everyone!), and you know my personal position on the matter by now :)
>>
>>
>> Cheers,
>> --
>> Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]
>>
>>
>>
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