...Access and open, participatory systems can help indigenous peoples have much greater say in how they are portrayed and represented....
While openness is empowering we need to remember that participation in open, collaborative systems should be a matter of choice and not compulsion. Few advocates of the commons would argue that it is ethical to broadcast confidential medical records or other personal secrets without the consent of people who are well informed of the risks of such exposure. Putting an “Attribution” licence on such content won’t make it any more ethical. In the same way, members of the global Commons need to recognise that ideas of privacy and secrecy vary widely, and indigenous ideas of what’s sacred, private, shareable, or secret vary tremendously. While Creative Commons licences can be a powerful tool for indigenous cultural expression, there are some cases where Creative Commons licence choices map poorly to local needs (Kansa et al 2005). To fill these gaps, other, non-standard, and incompatible licences may emerge as a result. Many elements of indigenous cultural heritage will probably never be neatly and cleanly compatible with global conceptualisations of “free culture” operating on a bedrock of compatible open licences. Much cross-cultural communication will likely take place in a necessarily “messy public sphere of contest, debate, and protest” (quoting Hayden 2003:46)....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/27/2007 11:07:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
