Some recent posts that you may like:

* Public Domain Assertions versus Dedications
* Open Licenses vs Public Licenses
* CC’s Public Domain Mark versus the Open Access Data Mark

The JISC-sponsored Preservation of Web Resources project (JISC-PoWR) will be running its first workshop in London. The aim of the series of workshops is to gain and share feedback from institutional Web, information and records managers about the challenges presented by Web resources.

The first workshop, entitled ‘Preservation of Web Resources: Making a Start’, will be held from 10.30 am – 4pm on Friday 27th June 2008 at Senate House Library, University of London. The workshop is free to
members of HE/FE Institutions and related HE and FE agencies.

Further details are available from the JISC-PoWR blog:
http://jiscpowr.jiscinvolve.org/workshops/workshop-1/

The booking deadline is Friday 16th June

Location: Oxford Internet Institute, 1 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3JS. This event is open to the public. If you would like to attend please email your name and affiliation, if any, to: events@oii.ox.ac.uk

Perhaps surprisingly for some, data and databases are not a ‘rights free’ area where no intellectual property rights apply. Open Data Commons was started to provided free and open source software and Creative Commons style licensing solutions for data — open data. The legal tools being developed have implications both in terms of open access to scientific research and in enabling the semantic web. This talk will discuss the Open Data Commons legal tool — the Public Domain Dedication & Licence — and place this work within the greater context of open access and new generations of web tools.

About the speaker

Jordan Hatcher is a lawyer and researcher with a focus on intellectual property and Internet law, especially issues surrounding open licensing solutions such as Creative Commons and open data. He has a JD in law from the University of Texas, and a, LLM in IP and IT law from the University of Edinburgh. Jordan is also the author, together with Dr Charlotte Waelde, of the Open Data Commons set of legal tools.

If you have an interest in open data, please contact me. More details to follow.

“One more case in the ongoing battle in Spain between SGAE and small bars over copyleft music. Derecho de Internet reports on this latest appeal by the SGAE against a bar in Madrid called ‘Buenavistilla Social Club’. The collecting society initially lost the case and therefore appealed to have the ruling reversed. In the latest sentence, the court argued that evidence presented by the defendants indicated that the locale played alternative music, also known as ‘música libre’ or copyleft, and therefore dismissed the appeal and allowed the initial ruling to stand.

Read more at Technollama: New copyleft ruling in Spain

Use of open content licences by cultural heritage organisations

The Eduserv Foundation is funding a study into the use of Creative Archive, Creative Commons and similar open content licences by cultural heritage organisations in the United Kingdom. The study is being led by legal consultant Jordan Hatcher of opencontentlawyer.com. The survey is available here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=L3x_2b1lQJxqu7KdfK587AeA_3d_3d

This survey is open to UK-based cultural heritage organisations such as museums, libraries, galleries, archives, film and video organisations, broadcasters, and other organisations that conduct cultural heritage activities.

The goal of this study is to provide information on the actual use of Creative Archive, Creative Commons, and similar licences. This information will be useful to decision makers and interested professionals in the cultural heritage sector, and for local and national government and the HE and FE sector. The study will be conducted from now through to the middle of September and a report will be made available in October.

If you are a member of a cultural heritage organisation, whether or not you currently use Creative Commons or Creative Archive licences (or even know what they are!), your participation is needed to make this study a success.

Again, the survey is available at:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=L3x_2b1lQJxqu7KdfK587AeA_3d_3d

==iPod Shuffle giveaway==

As a bonus for completing the survey, respondents will get the chance to enter a drawer to win one of three iPod Shuffles that come pre-loaded with music! See the survey for full details.

Blog and email — Please help spread the word

We would appreciate it very much if you could help publicise this survey by blogging about it or forwarding this email to people who you think might be interested.

More about the project

You can learn more about the project and read the original research proposal at our homepage:

http://www.eduserv.org.uk/foundation/studies/cc2007

If you would like to take part via post or telephone, or are interested in finding out more about the study, please contact Ed Barker and Jordan Hatcher at

cc-study AT eduserv.org.uk
–or–
phone +44 (0) 125 474328