Archives - March 2004

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03/30/2004

Free Culture Translation Project by SocialBrain.org

Post @ 12:23 in Chinese Blogosphere - Digital Culture

I got an Email from Isaac Mao, he invited to me join a new project: Translate Lawrence Lessig's new book "Free Culture" to Chinese Edition. Isaac created a wiki page in SocialBrain.org website which is a non-profit research lab focus on social technology and activities in China. The first reaction pops up in my mind is the permission issue from the author, so I checked Lessig's weblog and saw his comment reply to Isaac's request.

Lawrence Lessig
A noncommercial translation is as permitted as an audio version.

Just few days after Larry announced that the book goes an online version licensed under CreativeCommons. There huge echoes were breeding over the internet, especially in blogosphere. Also there is collaborative audio version project launched by AKMA ( I first saw this on joi's).

David Weinberger
AKMA has had the best idea of the significant interval: Since Larry Lessig allows anyone to record the audio of his book, Free Culture, for non-commercial purposes...

Project Abstract:
Free Culture - Chinese Edition
As the books sparked us a free digital culture trend, we attempted to implement this idea by using wiki, wiki is a symbol of free culture social software which could mostly collect social energy, we are expecting this collaborative project to let us translate and publish this book to a Chinese Edition, rapidly and effectively. Before our work, there are some points have to be nail down:
1> must follow author's authorization of this book: Licensed under CreativeCommons
2> all works are non-commercial purposes.
3> allow translate and public publish works.

I 'm not sure I translate exactly, so I will take totally responsibility if any misunderstanding caused by my translation. Anyway, actually I didn't have a chance to download this book yet, but I 'm so excited to join this project, Hopefully I could promote this on my blog to let more people know it. Free culture will brings me a brand-new experience I never had before.

Donate for The Future of Ideas

Post @ 07:12 in Books - Digital Culture

Followed Joi's post, I donate some money to CreativeCommons through Paypal in order to get the Lawrence Lessig's great book "The Future of Ideas". Although I could get this book from local book store, I still think that donate some money to CC will be the best way to get this book in purpose. I mean I will buy this book after all so why not. Hopefully the shipping won't take a long time so I could ask Lawrence's signature in China Digital Future conference which host in UC berkeley at the end of April. My most expectative conference.

Also Lawrence's lunched online version of his new book "Free Culture", the work licensed under CreativeCommons. he provided a Bittorrent download.

Lawrence Lessig
Thanks to the lessons explained by others (Cory), and the courage of a great publisher (Penguin), Free Culture launches today with a free online version of the book, licensed under a Creative Commons license. You can get the book here, though at the moment, only the bittorrent version is apparently up. Later today, there will be a direct download available from the Free Culture site, and from the Amazon site.