Discussion paper related to CC: "Transnational Dynamics in the Case of Creative Commons"

[Ivan Chew]

This isn't everyday-reading, but someone here might find it useful.
It's a publicly available discussion paper from the Max Planck
Institute for the Study of Society:
http://www.mpifg.de/pu/mpifg_dp/dp08-8.pdf

"Abstract
While the existence of transnational communities is increasingly
recognized in globalization studies, very little is yet known about
their impact on global governance. Studies investigating the role of
transnational communities in international rule setting tend to
specialize in specific types, such as epistemic communities, social
movements, or policy networks, and narrow down their effects to agenda
setting or issue framing. In this paper, we choose a broader view. We
examine the regulatory effects which arise when different types of
transnational communities with a common goal operate in concurrence
through all phases of the rule-setting process.

The empirical research of this papers focuses on the transnational
governance field of copy-right. More specifically, we study
transnational communities aiming to overcome limitations to the
prevalent transnational copyright regime in the face of new
information technology.

On the basis of a longitudinal case study, we show how an epistemic
community and a social movement came to interact around the non-profit
organization “Creative Commons” in ways which provided unforeseen
momentum for their rule-setting project. This impetus generated both
functional and latent effects. While the rapid growth of the social
movement enabled Creative Commons to successfully disseminate its
private licenses among producers of digital intellectual goods,
bypassing classical regulators and policy makers, it also threatened
the goals and internal decision making of Creative Commons itself.
Following the division of Creative Commons into two separate, but
still connected, organizations, it remains to be seen how the
interaction of the epistemic community and social movement will evolve
in the future."

[Giorgos Cheliotis]

Yes, I have not read it yet to be honest, but it is high on my reading
list :) Would be interested in hearing comments from anyone who has
actually read it.

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[Rambling Librarian]

Hi Giorgos,
I tried. But didn't quite understand. Even when I skipped to the
conclusion section. Think I'm not tuned to the academic mind :)
ivan

On Nov 25, 5:17 pm, Giorgos Cheliotis <gcheliotis.li...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[Kevin Lim]

Hello,
Here's what I think: The agenda of the paper is to examine how
uniformly governments in each country gets impacted by global
movements. The Creative Commons movement is used as context/control.

Two key statements in the abstract include: "While the existence of

transnational communities is increasingly recognized in globalization
studies, very little is yet known about their impact on global

governance. [...] We examine the regulatory effects which arise when

different types of transnational communities with a common goal
operate in concurrence through all phases of the rule-setting
process."

Instead of studying through specific transnational communities such as
epistemic communities (e.g. international network of copyright
lawyers), social movements, or policy networks, and narrow down their
effects to agenda setting or issue framing, this paper attempts to
take on a broader view by studying the impact of the Creative Commons
as an epistemic community concurring with social movement.

*** Being a study on transnational communities and its impact on
global governance: ***
Independent variable: "Creative Commons" as consistent global movement
/ rule-making
Dependent variable: CC Adoption by various governments around the world

This is a longitudinal study, so it's quite heavy. The researcher has
interviewed CC staff across various countries and agencies, looked at
statistics such as rate of ported jurisdictions, and analyzed content
generated relating to CC such as blogs (journals), flickr (photos),
revver (video), soundclick (audio). Interesting passages include:

- Cory Doctorow, a university professor and science-fiction author
involved in Cre- ative Commons from the beginning, referred explicitly
in his response to the latter comment to the issue of Creative Commons
as both an organization and a social movement: "The difference between
a movement and an organization is that an organization is a group of
people who want the same thing for the same reason. A movement is a
collection of groups of people who want the same thing for different
reasons. Movements are infinitely more powerful than organizations.
... [T]here are Marxists, anarchists, Ayn Rand objectivists,
economists, art- ists, free marketeers, libertarians, liberal
democrats, etc. who see copyright liberalization as serv- ing their
agenda. If we insist that copyright reform is about copyright reform
and nothing else, there will be no copyright reform
movement." (http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/icommons/
Week-of-Mon-20070528/000273.html, May 31, 2007)

- There's effectively TWO agencies on Creative Commons... Creative
Commons spawned iCommons in the UK, and how the organization changed
from there (2005).

- Changing from top-down to bottom-up (This part reminds me of what
Ivan said... too much grassroots and it threatens to wrongfully bark
up the copyright tree).
After having failed to influence politics via agenda setting or
litigation, the epistemic community of US lawyers behind Creative
Commons engaged in drafting standardized licenses, thereby directly
ad- dressing potential license users. As a consequence, Creative
Commons attracted and activated previously non-organized
“quasi-actors” (Dahrendorf 1959; Mayntz/Scharpf 1995; Dolata 2003) and
started a process of bottom-up standardization. The rapid increase of
license usage across countries and different application fields at-
tracted a growing number of new members from heterogeneous backgrounds
to the Creative Commons movement, eager to participate in what may be
called a “move- ment for cultural environmentalism;” its ”free spirit”
both helped and threatened the Creative Commons project of
establishing a global commons of alternatively licensed works.


How this helps us:
If anything, I believe that this study reinforces the idea that
popular opinion matters. Content gets diffused under CC, which offers
evidence as a way to lobby for change. I see the conclusion as key to
how CC Singapore could conduct its practice, including how communities
of lawyers, teachers and so on could play a part in CC adoption in
Singapore, rather than to focus entirely on the government head-on
politically through agenda setting and issue framing. I see this
approach as being pragmatic and holistic.


Kevin Lim
Cyberculturalist
http://theory.isthereason.com
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[Giorgos Cheliotis]

Thanks Kevin for sharing your thoughts. I think I will have to reserve
judgment until I have actually read the piece, though it does resonate
with many of my own thoughts about the nature and evolution of CC.

Giorgos