Professor Lawrence Lessig to keynote

InternetNZ (Internet New Zealand Inc) is pleased to announce that one of North America’s leading academics will visit New Zealand to deliver a keynote speech at the inaugural NetHui 2011 event.

Harvard University Professor of Law Lawrence Lessig is widely known in the global Internet community as a vocal proponent of reduced legal restrictions on digital copyright, and a champion of notions of ‘fair use’ and ‘free culture’.

Among his appointments, he is a founding board member of the alternative copyright licensing body – Creative Commons – and is a board member of the Software Freedom Law Center.

NetHui is being held at Auckland’s SkyCity Convention Centre, from 29 June to 1 July. Professor Lessig will deliver his keynote address on the final day – Friday 1 July.

NetHui will bring together all those involved with Internet issues in New Zealand in a streamed event format covering Access & Diversity, Digital Citizenship, Governance & Legal, Government & Openness, Innovation & Emerging Issues, and Education.

Lessig describes the issues under discussion at NetHui as “critical,” as they set the stage for New Zealand’s contribution to the future of networked action. “I am delighted and honoured to join NetHui 2011,” he says.

NetHui 2011 Advisory Board member Judge David Harvey says Lessig is one of the most influential contemporary commentators on law and the Internet, and is a dynamic and inspiring speaker.

“Lessig’s seminal work ‘Code is Law’ has influenced theories and served as a foundation for considerations of Internet governance issues since its publication. Lessig has also been influential in the field of digital copyright and the concept of the commons in an intellectual world,” says Harvey.

NetHui Organiser Richard Wood says securing an academic of Lessig’s stature is a real coup for NetHui. “Lessig’s focus sits right at the intersect of law and technology. This is an area that strikes at the heart of many of the important issues facing the Internet today, and we are delighted to have him on board.”

NetHui registrations are now open. To find out more about the event and to register, visit www.2012.nethui.org.nz .

Journalists wishing to attend NetHui please contact organiser Richard Wood.

For more information contact:

Richard Wood
InternetNZ
richard@internetnz.net.nz
027 4974837

6 Responses to “Professor Lawrence Lessig to keynote”

  1. This is amazing. We are just currently going through curriculum re-design, a shift from a Technikon model to a university of technology and suddenly we have to deal with students working more from the internet images they find than making their own images. For a graphic designer, this should be okay since the message is what counts, but the problem is that those images are also usually copyrighted. Both the image and sometimes the message are copyrighted, and yet they serve to communicate a quite a different message in another graphic context. What is the legality of this?

    Also we encouraging the learners to use more of the internet to create their own learning environments, but they find that the content they assemble-more like referencing these ideas, objects and images-is also considered infringing on copyright as they become part of the students inspirational and academic blog. How does the creative common work?

    We would be delighted as designers to set up a creative common at our university, here at Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa. Any leads as to how we cn be involved?

    Muthoni

  2. Hi there Muthoni

    Welcome to the NetHui community. There are many teachers and institutions grappling with the situation you describe, and broad movements toward better Open Education Resource policies are taking off this year (see http://wikieducator.org/OERF:Home).

    For an explanation of how the Creative Commons tools work, here is a page of useful videos http://creativecommons.org/videos/

    South Africa has a great Creative Commons team who can point you in the right direction, whether you want to include ‘open education’ more in your outlook or simply have better access to legally reusable materials for students. They’re based at the University of Cape Town (http://za.creativecommons.org/), and you’ll find their contact details at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/South_Africa

    Alternatively, feel free to contact me directly (http://creativecommons.org.nz/about_this_site/contact_us) and we can go from there.

    – jane