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<DIV>THETHA - THE SANGONeT ICT DISCUSSION FORUM<BR><BR>"Using Creative Commons
to Licence Publicly-funded Knowledge"<BR><BR>24 May
2005<BR><BR>----------------------------------------------------------------------------<BR><BR>The
Southern African NGO Network (SANGONeT), in collaboration with
the<BR>Association for Progressive Communications (APC), is hosting a Thetha on
24<BR>May 2005 to discuss whether Southern African organisations should
use<BR>Creative Commons to licence the information that they produce. The
Thetha<BR>will occur in the same week (25-27 May) as the launch of Creative
Commons<BR>South Africa and an international conference hosted by the Link
Centre<BR>entitled "Commons-sense: Towards an African Digital Information
Commons".<BR>Refer to <A
href="http://www.commons-sense.org">www.commons-sense.org</A> for more
information.<BR><BR>SANGONeT's Thetha Forums aim to provide civil society
organisations (CSOs)<BR>with an opportunity to discuss information communication
technology (ICT)<BR>issues of common concern and to learn from one another's
experiences. The<BR>forums focus specifically on the ICT challenges facing the
CSO sector,<BR>highlighting and promoting practical benefits, opportunities and
lessons<BR>learned to date.<BR><BR>Creative Commons is an innovative non-profit
that has developed a set of<BR>licences that people can use to mark the
conditions under which their<BR>content can be copied, distributed and shared.
Some of these conditions<BR>include reproduction for non-commercial or
commercial use, and the<BR>publication of derivative works.<BR><BR>More than 5
million webpages are currently licensed under the Creative<BR>Commons banner.
The success of the licence is, in part, due to the fact that<BR>Creative Commons
provides a simple way for people to encourage the type of<BR>sharing and
distributed creativity for which the web was first intended.<BR>Using "human
readable", "lawyer readable" and "machine readable" code,<BR>Creative Commons
licences enable even non-lawyers to understand how their<BR>copyright works on
the Internet.<BR><BR>The Creative Commons Thetha will cover the following
themes:<BR><BR>- What is Creative Commons?<BR>- Who is using Creative Commons to
licence publicly-funded content?<BR>- How do you use Creative Commons to licence
your content?<BR>- What next? A Southern African collaboration?<BR><BR>Larry
Lessig, renowned author and chairman of Creative Commons will address<BR>the
issue of "licencing publicly-funded knowledge online". Other speakers<BR>include
Heather Ford and Andrew Rens of Creative Commons South Africa.<BR><BR>The Thetha
will be held in Classroom A, Donald Gordon Building, School for<BR>Public and
Development Management, Wits University Campus at 2 St David's<BR>Place,
Parktown (09h00-13h00).<BR><BR>If you are interested in participating in this
Thetha, please contact<BR>Refilwe Rakhibane or Sandra Roberts at SANGONeT before
20 May 2005:<BR><BR>Tel: (011) 403-4935 / Fax: (011) 403-0130<BR>E-mail: <A
href="mailto:thetha@sangonet.org.za">thetha@sangonet.org.za</A> / <A
href="mailto:sandra@sangonet.org.za">sandra@sangonet.org.za</A><BR><BR>For more
information on Thetha - The SANGONeT ICT Discussion Forum, please<BR>visit the
SANGONeT website - <A
href="http://www.sangonet.org.za">http://www.sangonet.org.za</A><BR><BR>For more
information on the APC's Creative Commons project, please visit<BR><A
href="http://za.creativecommons.org/commons-sense/about.htm">http://za.creativecommons.org/commons-sense/about.htm</A><BR><BR>Participation
in the Thetha is free of charge.<BR><BR>"Come Thetha with
us"</DIV></BODY></HTML>