Sharing is Caring 2015: Right to Remix?

Sharing is Caring: Right to Remix? was held 2 October 2015 in the DR Concert Hall in Copenhagen.

The DR Concert Hall. Photo by Lars Lundqvist, CC BY-NC-SA
The DR Concert Hall. Photo by Lars Lundqvist, CC BY-NC-SA

#sharecare15
#righttoremix

Sharing is Caring: Right to Remix? addressed the topic of remix culture and rights, and how the cultural heritage sector can deal with these in constructive and proactive ways.

Watch videos from the seminar

See photos from the seminar

Through a versatile programme of international keynote speakers, keynotes in conversation and ignite sessions, the seminar focused on the amazing stuff the cultural sector can achieve when rethinking the logic of copyright in a digital age perspective. But we also discussed the hurdles to overcome and the fights to take, when we want to challenge the traditional notion of copyright.

The speakers delivered talks to open up fresh perspectives on how to work more flexibly with rights in the digital age, and what awesome potentials the cultural sector can tap into if we dare to change our existing mindsets and ways of working.

As a special feature this year, Sharing is Caring led directly up to the annual cultural heritage hackathon Hack4DK from Friday evening 2 October through Sunday 4 October.

SPEAKERS

Keynote speaker Melissa Terras

Melissa Terras, Professor of Digital Humanities UCL
Melissa Terras, Professor of Digital Humanities UCL 

Read the blogposts that Melissa based her keynote on.

Taking, Making and Law-Breaking: copyright, digitised content, and the digital maker movement.

In this talk, Melissa Terras will talk about her experiences in trying to reuse digitized heritage content to make something she likes, wants, and will use – and the frustrating barriers she encountered along the way.  Covering issues of technical digitization standards, search and retrieval issues, and licensing issues, it is demonstrated how difficult it is to reuse cultural heritage content in this context, given the implicit and explicit barriers raised, institutionally, technically, and legally, along the way.

Melissa Terras is Director of UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, Professor of Digital Humanities in UCL’s Department of Information Studies, and Vice Dean of Research (Projects) in UCL’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities. With a background in Classical Art History, English Literature, and Computing Science, her doctorate (Engineering, University of Oxford) examined how to use advanced information engineering technologies to interpret and read Roman texts. Publications include “Image to Interpretation: Intelligent Systems to Aid Historians in the Reading of the Vindolanda Texts” (2006, Oxford University Press) and “Digital Images for the Information Professional” (2008, Ashgate) and she has co-edited various volumes such as “Digital Humanities in Practice” (Facet 2012) and “Defining Digital Humanities: A Reader” (Ashgate 2013). She is currently serving on the Board of Curators of the University of Oxford Libraries, and the Board of the National Library of Scotland. Her research focuses on the use of computational techniques to enable research in the arts and humanities that would otherwise be impossible. You can generally find her on twitter @melissaterras.

Keynote speaker Maarten Zeinstra

Maarten Zeinstra, advisor at Kennisland
Maarten Zeinstra, advisor at Kennisland

Caring for the limits of sharing

If the cultural heritage sector wants to support a thriving Remix Culture, we need to debate the legal and technical mechanisms that are holding artists and institutions back from sharing. We need a frank discussion on the merits of sharing vs. the monopoly of intellectual property rights.

Maarten Zeinstra works at Kennisland (KL). KL is an independent think tank with a public mission. KL aspires to strengthen our knowledge society by designing innovative programmes and realising interventions to address the grand challenges of today’s society. A strong knowledge-driven society subsists because of access to information. By making digital heritage collections available in an open and innovative way, knowledge can thrive.
Maarten is advisor on copyright law and open technology in the cultural sector. His focus is to guide cultural institutions in making data available online. In practice, this means writing policy, giving workshops and masterclasses, and guiding technological development. Maarten is project lead of Creative Commons Nederland and has extensive experience as a requirements engineer and architect for projects like Open Images, Europeana and OutOfCopyright.eu.

Keynote speaker Eva Van Passel

Eva van Passel, researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Eva van Passel, researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel

How open is open enough? A philosophy of cultural commons for the cultural heritage sector.

Cultural (heritage) institutions are redefining their roles in a context of digital access to culture. This talk will address how the cultural heritage sector can adopt a layered approach, with different degrees of openness. An overall goal of cultural heritage institutions in the digital age can be to provide as much access as possible and to be as open as possible towards reuse and remix practices. How open this is, however, might change depending on specific user communities, and it can also be different depending on the content being shared.

Eva Van Passel has been a researcher at iMinds – SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, since 2007. Her research interests include the many challenges and opportunities for arts and heritage in a networked society, but her research mainly focuses on the changing roles of cultural (heritage) institutions in the context of digitisation, digital preservation, and distribution and sustainable digital access. Topics under scrutiny over the years have included strategic challenges for cultural institutions, digital cultural policy, audience strategies, business models, the European digital library Europeana, open cultural data and open GLAM initiatives, and financing models for digital cultural heritage. Eva holds Masters degrees in Communication and Media Studies, and in Film Studies and Visual Culture.

Keynote speaker: Cédric Manara

Cédric Manara, copyright counsel, Google
Cédric Manara, copyright counsel, Google

Copyright and the 99%

Historically, copyright has been concerned with encouraging commercial cultural production. Today, most of the creative expression comes from amateurs who do not understand copyright, or have no clue what it’s about. What about tomorrow? The Internet, with its 2.8 billion users and counting, is just beginning to change the legal landscape. How to reform copyright – in Denmark or in Europe – to reconcile the interests of those who want to make money, when others just want to share knowledge or information?

Cédric Manara, PhD, has lost his hair teaching, writing or consulting. He has been a full time law professor at EDHEC Business School (France) and held visitorships in Finland, Italy, Japan and the USA, published a lot on intellectual property and internet legal issues, and also was a consultant for e-commerce companies or law firms. He joined Google’s wonderful legal team as copyright counsel in 2013.

PANEL DEBATE: CREATIVE COMMONS FOR CONTEMPORARY ART?

A terrific panel of artists, copyright experts, and museum people in a debate about contemporary art, digital media, and rights issues.

In this debate, we discussed perspectives and challenges in using Creative Commons licenses on contemporary art, as opposed to traditional copyright. Does it entail increased visibility for artists if they share reproductions of their work more liberally than copyright allows for? Is it even possible for artists to opt out of social media today, if they want their work to known more widely? Are there new ways for artists to make revenues in connection with more openly licensed images of their work? Or is it a slippery slope to start relaxing the restrictions on how images of artworks are shown, shared and circulated online?

The aim was to have a constructive and solution-oriented debate that will help artists and cultural institutions alike to better understand how to navigate and benefit from the participatory culture on the Internet, while respecting rights.
The panel

IT lawyer Martin von Haller Grønbæk, Bird & Bird, will moderate the debate.

Panel Debate: Creative Commons for contemporary art?

A terrific panel of artists, copyright experts, and museum people in a debate about contemporary art, digital media, and rights issues.

In this debate, we discussed perspectives and challenges in using Creative Commons licenses on contemporary art, as opposed to traditional copyright. Does it entail increased visibility for artists if they share reproductions of their work more liberally than copyright allows for? Is it even possible for artists to opt out of social media today, if they want their work to known more widely? Are there new ways for artists to make revenues in connection with more openly licensed images of their work? Or is it a slippery slope to start relaxing the restrictions on how images of artworks are shown, shared and circulated online?

The aim was to have a constructive and solution-oriented debate that will help artists and cultural institutions alike to better understand how to navigate and benefit from the participatory culture on the Internet, while respecting rights.
The panel

IT lawyer Martin von Haller Grønbæk, Bird & Bird, will moderate the debate.

Young artist Filip Vest remixes old paintings, and releases some of his own work under a Creative Commons license.
Young artist Filip Vest remixes old paintings, and releases some of his own work under a Creative Commons license. Filip is captured in front of his digital remix of 22 skies from Danish golden age paintings, spring 2015. Photo by Lisbeth Holten.

Keynote Cédric Manara

Keynote speaker: Cédric Manara

Cédric Manara, copyright counsel, Google
Cédric Manara, copyright counsel, Google

 

Copyright and the 99%

Historically, copyright has been concerned with encouraging commercial cultural production. Today, most of the creative expression comes from amateurs who do not understand copyright, or have no clue what it’s about. What about tomorrow? The Internet, with its 2.8 billion users and counting, is just beginning to change the legal landscape. How to reform copyright – in Denmark or in Europe – to reconcile the interests of those who want to make money, when others just want to share knowledge or information?

Cédric Manara, PhD, has lost his hair teaching, writing or consulting. He has been a full time law professor at EDHEC Business School (France) and held visitorships in Finland, Italy, Japan and the USA, published a lot on intellectual property and internet legal issues, and also was a consultant for e-commerce companies or law firms. He joined Google’s wonderful legal team as copyright counsel in 2013.

Keynote Eva Van Passel

Keynote speaker Eva Van Passel

Eva van Passel, researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Eva van Passel, researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel

 

 

How open is open enough? A philosophy of cultural commons for the cultural heritage sector.

Cultural (heritage) institutions are redefining their roles in a context of digital access to culture. This talk will address how the cultural heritage sector can adopt a layered approach, with different degrees of openness. An overall goal of cultural heritage institutions in the digital age can be to provide as much access as possible and to be as open as possible towards reuse and remix practices. How open this is, however, might change depending on specific user communities, and it can also be different depending on the content being shared.

The idea of ‘constructed cultural commons’ can provide a useful background or philosophy for initiatives the sector is undertaking. Some of the guiding principles of this approach are the intrinsic value of culture and digital cultural artefacts, the rights of users to sustainable access to these valuable assets, and the need for diversity and inclusiveness of the offer – also with regards to copyright status, in order to avoid a ‘digital black hole of 20th century content’. This ‘as open as possible’ philosophy, with respect to rights but without being unnecessarily constraining, can inspire cultural policy and cultural institutions’ digital experimentation.

Eva Van Passel has been a researcher at iMinds – SMIT, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, since 2007. Her research interests include the many challenges and opportunities for arts and heritage in a networked society, but her research mainly focuses on the changing roles of cultural (heritage) institutions in the context of digitisation, digital preservation, and distribution and sustainable digital access. Topics under scrutiny over the years have included strategic challenges for cultural institutions, digital cultural policy, audience strategies, business models, the European digital library Europeana, open cultural data and open GLAM initiatives, and financing models for digital cultural heritage. Eva holds Masters degrees in Communication and Media Studies, and in Film Studies and Visual Culture.

Keynote Maarten Zeinstra

Keynote speaker Maarten Zeinstra

Maarten Zeinstra, advisor at Kennisland
Maarten Zeinstra, advisor at Kennisland

 

Caring for the limits of sharing

While our digital lives are undisputedly globalised, we have no international harmonised market for intellectual property. For this reason, artists and the cultural heritage sector struggle to legally share their creative works online. This hinders the public’s access to knowledge and culture, which in turn can have an economic impact on society.

At Kennisland, we call for a strong public domain, an EU harmonised internal market for intellectual property, fitting limitations and exceptions, and accessible provenance information. The current implementation of the new orphan works directive only solves problems of access to the extent of the Internet five years ago, not for the future.

If the cultural heritage sector wants to support a thriving Remix Culture, we need to debate the legal and technical mechanisms that are holding artists and institutions back from sharing. We need a frank discussion on the merits of sharing vs. the monopoly of intellectual property rights.

Maarten Zeinstra works at Kennisland (KL). KL is an independent think tank with a public mission. KL aspires to strengthen our knowledge society by designing innovative programmes and realising interventions to address the grand challenges of today’s society. A strong knowledge-driven society subsists because of access to information. By making digital heritage collections available in an open and innovative way, knowledge can thrive.
Maarten is advisor on copyright law and open technology in the cultural sector. His focus is to guide cultural institutions in making data available online. In practice, this means writing policy, giving workshops and masterclasses, and guiding technological development. Maarten is project lead of Creative Commons Nederland and has extensive experience as a requirements engineer and architect for projects like Open Images, Europeana and OutOfCopyright.eu.

Sharing is Caring 2015: Right to Remix?

Sharing is Caring: Right to Remix? was held 2 October 2015 in the DR Concert Hall in Copenhagen.

The DR Concert Hall. Photo by Lars Lundqvist, CC BY-NC-SA
The DR Concert Hall. Photo by Lars Lundqvist, CC BY-NC-SA

#sharecare15
#righttoremix

Sharing is Caring: Right to Remix? addressed the topic of remix culture and rights, and how the cultural heritage sector can deal with these in constructive and proactive ways.

Go to programme

Watch videos from the seminar

See photos from the seminar

Through a versatile programme of international keynote speakers, keynotes in conversation and ignite sessions, the seminar focused on the amazing stuff the cultural sector can achieve when rethinking the logic of copyright in a digital age perspective. But we also discussed the hurdles to overcome and the fights to take, when we want to challenge the traditional notion of copyright.

The speakers delivered talks to open up fresh perspectives on how to work more flexibly with rights in the digital age, and what awesome potentials the cultural sector can tap into if we dare to change our existing mindsets and ways of working.

As a special feature this year, Sharing is Caring led directly up to the annual cultural heritage hackathon Hack4DK from Friday evening 2 October through Sunday 4 October.

Keynote Melissa Terras

Keynote speaker Melissa Terras

Melissa Terras, Professor of Digital Humanities UCL
Melissa Terras, Professor of Digital Humanities UCL

Read the blogposts that Melissa based her keynote on.

Taking, Making and Law-Breaking: copyright, digitised content, and the digital maker movement.

Although there is a lot of digitised cultural heritage content online, it is still incredibly difficult to source good material to reuse, or material that you are allowed to reuse, in creative projects. What can institutions do to help people who want to invest their time in making and creating using digitised historical items as inspiration and source material? How does this affect the creative choices that people can make when trying to produce items based on digitized content? How does the current copyright licensing, and the treatment of digitized versions of orphan works, help or hinder the ability to reuse and share digitized content in a physical form?

In this talk, Melissa Terras will talk about her experiences in trying to reuse digitized heritage content to make something she likes, wants, and will use – and the frustrating barriers she encountered along the way.  Covering issues of technical digitization standards, search and retrieval issues, and licensing issues, it is demonstrated how difficult it is to reuse cultural heritage content in this context, given the implicit and explicit barriers raised, institutionally, technically, and legally, along the way.

Melissa Terras is Director of UCL Centre for Digital Humanities, Professor of Digital Humanities in UCL’s Department of Information Studies, and Vice Dean of Research (Projects) in UCL’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities. With a background in Classical Art History, English Literature, and Computing Science, her doctorate (Engineering, University of Oxford) examined how to use advanced information engineering technologies to interpret and read Roman texts. Publications include “Image to Interpretation: Intelligent Systems to Aid Historians in the Reading of the Vindolanda Texts” (2006, Oxford University Press) and “Digital Images for the Information Professional” (2008, Ashgate) and she has co-edited various volumes such as “Digital Humanities in Practice” (Facet 2012) and “Defining Digital Humanities: A Reader” (Ashgate 2013). She is currently serving on the Board of Curators of the University of Oxford Libraries, and the Board of the National Library of Scotland. Her research focuses on the use of computational techniques to enable research in the arts and humanities that would otherwise be impossible. You can generally find her on twitter @melissaterras.

Be ignited!

5 brilliant 5 minute ignites! 

DIY culture
Henriette Roued-Cunliffe, Assistant professor, PhD (D.Phil), The Royal School of Library and Information Science, University of Copenhagen

DIY culture is a fast-growing domain due mainly to the democratising effect of the Web. Cultural institutions have a history of engaging with DIY culture. As DIY culture is getting better at organising itself on the internet outside of institutions, it becomes more important than ever to understand this phenomenon, as well as to work towards continuing this relationship. I will focus on genealogy and how Kolding Stadsarkiv managed to create a mutually beneficial working relationship with a DIY group on the project “Aagaards Billeder”.

Denmark on film
Thomas Christensen, Curator,  Danish Film Institute

Denmark on film is a portal displaying 500 historical film clips (a total of 50 hours content), from the period 1897 to ca. 1950, geographically placed on a map of Denmark. Selection criteria have been that clips should have a location and a date. Films are searchable by keyword and contain a mix of themes, such as cities, agriculture, children, etc. The sharing aspect is thought of through the offering of a “make your own clip” tool, which allows sharing concrete clips through social media. Also, the portal allows the embed code of clips to be lifted, allowing integration into for instance heritage institution’s own websites. While the portal is supposed to function in its own right, the hope is that institutions and citizens will build their own local contextualization based on geography, thematic and special interests.

Is there something like the Ethics of Remixing?
Peter Soemers, audience and GLAM user

‘What are you doing with this respectable work of art?!’ An Old Master discovers the modern world – and gets discovered by that world. A philosophical-entertaining talk, trying to sensitise for the arguments of ‘friends and enemies’ of remixing famous artworks.

Remixing sculptures – do you dare?
Lise Skytte Jakobsen, ph.d. Postdoc, Aarhus University, Art History and Center for Museology

Remixing, 3D printing and sharing – copyright protected – sculptures from the museum collection. – Do you dare? In this talk you can hear about somebody who did: a 3D workshop held in March 2015 at KUNSTEN Museum of Modern Art Aalborg, Denmark. For 8 days museum users were invited to 3D scan selected sculptures and remix them in open source software. The results were 3D printed and shared at youmagine.com.

Hackatons are so 2014, what’s next?
Stephan Bartholmei, head of product development and innovation, German Digital Library

Hacking means making something your own by studying it, taking it apart if necessary and (re)assembling it in a new way. In that sense hackathons are the ideal format to stirr up interest in open cultural data with the tech savvy internet crowd. We did this in Berlin with codingdavinci.de for the 2nd year running – with amazing projects built by our participants. Some of those will be featured in this talk as well as the “Erfolgsgeheimnis” of the 4 hosting institutions. But an annual event does not a living community make, so … what’s next?

 

OPEN CALL for ignite sessions

THE CALL IS NOW CLOSED. THANKS FOR YOUR SUBMISSIONS.
THE IGNITE SPEAKERS ARE NOW FEATURED IN THE PROGRAMME.

This year’s seminar addresses the topic of copyright and cultural heritage in a constructive and proactive way. Through international keynote speakers, keynotes in conversation and a programme of ignite presentations the seminar keeps focus on the amazing stuff the cultural sector can achieve when rethinking the logic of copyright in a digital age perspective. But we will also discuss the hurdles to overcome and the fights to take, when we want to challenge the traditional notion of copyright. The keynote speakers are invited to deliver talks that open up fresh perspectives on how to work more flexibly with rights in the digital age, and what awesome potentials the cultural sector can tap into if we dare to change our existing mindsets and ways of working. The seminar is targeted at professionals in libraries, archives and museums, Wikipedians, start-ups, and everyone interested in cultural heritage and digital culture.

As a special feature this year, Sharing is Caring will lead directly up to the annual cultural heritage hackathon event Hack4dk www.hack4dk.wordpress.com which will run from Friday evening through Sunday. Through the power of open data, creative reuse and playful engagement Hack4dk creates new usage of digital heritage collections. Hack4dk provides a chance for developers and creators to play with open cultural data and spend the weekend with fellow developers and creative people.

Are YOU one of our ignite speakers?

We a looking for engaging, motivating and entertaining ignite talks presenting best practice or theoretic approaches to this years theme “Right to Remix?”. Send a short presentation of your project or topic, and your motivation for speaking at Sharing is Caring (max 5 lines in English) to sharecareinfo@gmail.com no later than June 15th. We will get back to you within a week after the deadline. We are looking for up to 10 ignite speakers. We’re especially interested in ignites about remix culture, and the potentials and challenges in re-using cultural heritage data for creatives, designers, hackers, makers, and tinkerers.

The format
Each ignite speaker is allocated 5 minutes of presentation time accompanied by 20 slides. During your presentation, each slide is displayed for 15 seconds and then automatically advanced. Please note that your talk must be delivered in English.