I was on the BBC's Digital Planet on Tuesday February 22 discussing the Mukurtu project in relation to notions of openness and ownership including how legal notions of copyright misunderstand the basic relationships and protocols within indigenous cultures. From the show's highlights:

"What does it mean to own digital content and devices? As technology allows information and culture to be shared more easily than ever before, Gareth Mitchell is joined by Ray Corrigan, senior lecturer in technology at the Open University, to look at the ongoing struggle for ownership between producers and consumers. We hear from students who integrated Xbox Kinect into their own robot, and ask how major companies respond to consumers re-purposing their off-the-shelf devices."

Creative Commons licenses try to bridge the gap between restricting and opening up ownership, but even these may not offer enough flexibility or incentives when it comes to licensing content. One digital tool, Mukurtu, enables sharing to be tailored to the needs of different indigenous communities, so, for example, a group rather than an individual can authorise a license.


Take a listen and let us know what you think!

I am excited to announce the launch of the new Mukurtu website, development blog, wiki and more! Since we received a National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Start Up grant in March 2010, we have been re-evaluating the original archive platform and developing plans for the new open source version of Mukurtu with a demo site planned for early 2011 and an official software launch in August 2011. In case you don't know, Mukurtu is an open source, adaptable, digital archive and content management tool specifically aimed at the needs of indigenous communities, archives, libraries and museums globally. Over the last few months we have made some changes that will ensure the sustainability and interoperability of the tool and allow for maximum flexibility to fit the needs of diverse stakeholders. Find out about all we've been up to at the new site, pass it on, tweet, re-post and spread the word any way you can. We appreciate all of the support we have had from individuals and institutions (all properly acknowledged on the "community" page of the new site) and we look forward to the next months of development! If you have immediate questions email me: kim.christen@gmail.com

January 1 2011 is Public Domain Day a day, as the website suggests, to:
     "to celebrate the impressive wealth of knowledge, information and beauty that today, like every year on this day,     becomes freely available to humankind. Every year on New Year's Day, in fact, due to the expiration of copyright     protection terms on works produced by authors who died several decades earlier, thousands of works enter the         public domain - that is, their content is no longer owned or controlled by anyone, but it rather becomes a                 common treasure, available for anyone to freely use for any purpose."
I want to begin by saluting the efforts of those involved here to promote the ethical and practical use of materials that were intended by their creators to be open to the "public" and not restricted by default legal mechanisms or overzealous corporations etc. I'd like to also caution against a quick and all-too-often uncritical acceptance of the benefits of the public domain and the ethical assumptions about works becoming "common treasure." Most of us know that there is a portion of materials in the public domain which got there by dubious means and remain as sore reminders to indigenous peoples of the affects of colonialism and the paradigm of "discovery" and "collection" that drove much of the colonial imperative. Certainly some materials (songs, images, objects, texts, etc) were meant to be shared and used responsibly by those who engaged with various indigenous communities globally. Without discounting this, there is now and continues to be an expanding set of materials and knowledge that enters the public domain by default because indigenous peoples creations are not protected by traditional intellectual property rights mechanisms (as flawed as they may be). This is no historical oversight, indigenous peoples materials were MADE this way through their categorization as "folklore" and thus part of the property of "mankind" (later humankind, thanks). International politicians, colonial pundits etc knew that by making indigenous materials into folklore they ensured their circulation and exploitation by others. Today, there are still examples of this type of exploitation along with examples of shared benefits, negotiations and repatriation.

So while we take the time to celebrate that which has the potential to benefit some, let's not forget it does not automatically benefit all.

I'll be shifting Long Road from my wordpress site to this one. look for more soon. In the meantime enjoy this video: