Jessica Powell
Building connections in the Literacy Community

Many believe that the Internet can play an important role in promoting literacy and education efforts worldwide. It was with that aim that Google, LitCam, and UNESCO's Institute for Lifelong Learning launched The Literacy Project, which provides a platform through which literacy organisations and teachers can connect and share best practices, tools, and information. This talk will look at the promotion of best practice sharing through the site, as well as address some of the challenges faced across this field, including Internet connectivity, new media literacy, and cultural and language differences.


Anthony Falzone
Expanding Boundaries Of Fair Use Protection Under U.S. Copyright Law
The fair use doctrine provides a critical exception to American copyright protection, and plays an increasingly important role in protecting free expression. But while copyright restrictions are expanding, so too are fair use protections. In recent years, key fair use decisions from influential U.S. Courts have paid greater attention to creative freedom, and the significant public benefits that robust fair use protection provides. This address will explore the increasingly important role of fair use, its expanding protections, and what these expanding protections mean for content creators.


Johanna Blakley
Ready to Share: Fashion and the Commons
More than any other industry, fashion treats most of its creative output as a commons - shared resources that can be freely reused, recreated and recombined. How does the fashion industry manage to thrive with virtually no copyright protection?



Mohamed Nanabhay
The Commons in the Corporation: The challenge of raising awareness within media corporations
Concepts such as Open Source and Creative Commons are usually foreign to most corporations. Mohamed will share his experience with championing these concepts within a media company and discuss how Al Jazeera is aligning these philopsophies to their strategic goals.



Erin McKean
Language as a Commons
The commons is not a new idea, but rather one that has been assisting in the generation of meaning since human beings developed the ability to recognise and replicate signs. Erin McKean, the best-dressed lexicographer in the business, explodes the myth of the commons as a digital phenomenon.



Rishab Ghosh
Collaborative Creativity: How innovation together has stood the test of time
Innovation as a product of an ivory tower of individual ownership is not so much a thing of the past as an obsolescence. Many minds sharing freely solve problems faster.




David Wiley
Open Content: The first decade  
The Commons has been going for long enough for it to have a 'history' and perhaps even a 'legacy'. The Commons is now old enough to ask the questions that are a challenge for any parent: "Where did I come from?"



Rebecca MacKinnon
Free Culture and Free Speech: Why strong and vibrant free culture communities are important for freedom of expression
In the democracies of today freedom of expression is often taken for granted when it is particularly fragile. It is a right that needs to be continually exercised, because if it isn't, the space that society provides for it shrinks until the next time someone exercises that right. The communities that subscribe to the ethos of the Commons are important actors in the creation of the space for free expression.


Jamie King
No License for these territories
As innovative and forward-looking as the Commons is, the real world is still one step ahead. As comprehensively as open content is documented, there are territories of sharing that have yet to be pinned down by lawmakers of any description and it is here where the cutting edge of the Commons has yet to be felt. Who's going to get there first?



Adam Haupt
Enclosing the Commons - for Dummies: Creativity, citizenship and media ownership
In his address, Haupt argues that legal threats issued by SAB Miller and Wiley Publishing to culture jammers Laugh It Off Media and Mail & Guardian Online, respectively, provide important perspectives on democracy and commons enclosure. Both the Wiley "for Dummies" and SAB Miller "Black Labour White Guilt" cases offer insights into corporations' tendencies to employ narrow understandings of IP to protect their own interests - often at the expense of the public interest. However, we should be wary of reducing both media incidents to 'David and Goliath' struggles. The story of commons enclosure and limitations on free speech is not always as dramatic. Media ownership offers one example of the ways in which democracy is perverted and the South African media landscape is no exception in this regard.



David Bollier
Social Movements on the Commons
The Commons is one of many social movements  active in the world today. Many of them share characteristics with the Commons, but there are significant differences. What can the Commons learn from other social movements and vice versa? Is there a more effective way of doing things and has someone been doing it for ages without the Commons noticing?


Joi Ito
Status of the Commons
Creative Commons has evolved from a great idea to a series of licences to a global movement of a variety of projects quickly becoming ubiquitous in technical, social and academic circles. Ito will provide an overview of Creative Commons and its projects and explore the opportunities and challenges ahead.



Paul Keller
Mars Landing: How Collecting Societies have Opened
This presentation will explore the evolving relationship between Collecting Societies and individual rights management practices as expressed through the use of Creative Commons licenses by musicians and other free culture practitioners. The past three years have seen intensive interactions between Collecting Societies and Creative Commons and over the last year there has been an emergence of experiments that explore the potential of combining collective rights management and individual rights management.