There is a lot of interesting discussion about copyright on the airwaves at the moment.

Charles Arthur from Guardian Tech Weekly interviewed Joi Ito, CEO of Creative Commons who talked about the different levels of licencing available and how they might be used in different situations. Of course, Creative Commons is of most use in countries which are concerned with enforcing copyright, so it is not necessarily of interest worldwide. Those who do use it to effect  include Ridley Scott, the White House, Al Jazeera and the Powerhouse Museum (amongst many other museums), whose case study makes interesting reading if your museum or gallery is thinking of contributing to The Commons on Flickr.

View of Woman Holding a Fancily Decorated Bicycle from the Powerhouse Museum Collection, used under Creative Commons licence.

Ito discussed some of the cases which had come to court recently involving Creative Commons licences: it was ruled in the US that breaching a Creative Commons licence was a breach of copyright. Will this now make Creative Commons seem more safe as the law has been tested?

As an investor in Twitter, Ito also addressed the growing push to monetise the service as part of a general discussion of business models and friends networks. That is a whole other discussion which there isn’t room for here, but is worth listening to for the latest developments.

If you’re in the UK, keep listening. The second segment of Guardian Tech Weekly discusses putting together a new BBC programme about the impact of the last 40 years of technological change on the British family. In researching for Electric Dreams, Gia Milinovich visited the Centre for Computing History’s Computer Museum in order to find the most appropriate technology for the family to use in each year of their realistic-as-possible journey. Some interesting observations were seen during the programme’s making including the apparent confirmation of a 1980s gender divide in computer use. I wonder, is this kind of social phenomenon reflected in computer or science museums?

Mark West’s The Mr Science Show branched out this week into enhanced podcasting in order to give a slide show of photographs. West had been affected by the red dust storms in Sydney and illustrated his meteorological explanation using some amazing Creative Commons photographs from Flickr.

Sydney Dust Storm by Ianz, used under Creative Commons licence.

Lastly, I think it’s pertinent that you all see this Monocle Culture video about Alfred Sirleaf, a newspaper editor in Monrovia. Each day he writes up the Daily Talk using local vernacular on a large blackboard outside his office, in order that the people can have access to the news where otherwise they could not afford to.

You can contact me at August(at)newcurator(dot)com