[WSIS CS-Plenary] [WSIS THETHA] THETHA - Using Creative Commons - 24 May 2005

[THETHA]

THETHA - THE SANGONeT ICT DISCUSSION FORUM

"Using Creative Commons to Licence Publicly-funded Knowledge"

24 May 2005

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The Southern African NGO Network (SANGONeT), in collaboration with the
Association for Progressive Communications (APC), is hosting a Thetha on 24
May 2005 to discuss whether Southern African organisations should use
Creative Commons to licence the information that they produce. The Thetha
will occur in the same week (25-27 May) as the launch of Creative Commons
South Africa and an international conference hosted by the Link Centre
entitled "Commons-sense: Towards an African Digital Information Commons".
Refer to www.commons-sense.org for more information.

SANGONeT's Thetha Forums aim to provide civil society organisations (CSOs)
with an opportunity to discuss information communication technology (ICT)
issues of common concern and to learn from one another's experiences. The
forums focus specifically on the ICT challenges facing the CSO sector,
highlighting and promoting practical benefits, opportunities and lessons
learned to date.

Creative Commons is an innovative non-profit that has developed a set of
licences that people can use to mark the conditions under which their
content can be copied, distributed and shared. Some of these conditions
include reproduction for non-commercial or commercial use, and the
publication of derivative works.

More than 5 million webpages are currently licensed under the Creative
Commons banner. The success of the licence is, in part, due to the fact that
Creative Commons provides a simple way for people to encourage the type of
sharing and distributed creativity for which the web was first intended.
Using "human readable", "lawyer readable" and "machine readable" code,
Creative Commons licences enable even non-lawyers to understand how their
copyright works on the Internet.

The Creative Commons Thetha will cover the following themes:

- What is Creative Commons?
- Who is using Creative Commons to licence publicly-funded content?
- How do you use Creative Commons to licence your content?
- What next? A Southern African collaboration?

Larry Lessig, renowned author and chairman of Creative Commons will address
the issue of "licencing publicly-funded knowledge online". Other speakers
include Heather Ford and Andrew Rens of Creative Commons South Africa.

The Thetha will be held in Classroom A, Donald Gordon Building, School for
Public and Development Management, Wits University Campus at 2 St David's
Place, Parktown (09h00-13h00).

If you are interested in participating in this Thetha, please contact
Refilwe Rakhibane or Sandra Roberts at SANGONeT before 20 May 2005:

Tel: (011) 403-4935 / Fax: (011) 403-0130
E-mail: thetha at sangonet.org.za / sandra at sangonet.org.za

For more information on Thetha - The SANGONeT ICT Discussion Forum, please
visit the SANGONeT website - http://www.sangonet.org.za

For more information on the APC's Creative Commons project, please visit
http://za.creativecommons.org/commons-sense/about.htm

Participation in the Thetha is free of charge.

"Come Thetha with us"
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