For this week we have to research intellectual property regulations and think about the licensing and dissemination of our final project. Here is Neil´s weekly lecture page and video
* Open Source is "a non-profit corporation with global scope formed to educate about and advocate for the benefits of open source and to build bridges among different constituencies in the open source community."
* Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and remixing of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools such as licenses.
* Documentary:"The Internet's Own Boy -The Story of Aaron Swartz". The hacktivist Aaron Swartz committed suicide after being charged for downloading all of JStore´s content, which he wanted to distribute freely. While the documentary focuses a lot on Aaron´s private life (in a sentimental tone), it still offers an insight into private property regulations in the US. Restrictions of access and lack of spreading eg academic knowledge is not based on technological affordances (as Aaron demonstrated), but on capital interests. JStore is one of the major publishing houses for academic content, for which Universities have to pay gigantic fees so their academics can read their own and their colleges work. A perverted system! RIP Aaron.
My project is not oh-so-new. There are other devices available (see week 17 assignment). However, the bracelet prototype is made to fullfill a specific need: to measure neurological states of excitement during The Machine To Be Another experience in order to better understand users´bodily reactions (and if not only their movements become synchronious but also their biosignals). This is embedded in BeAnotherLab´s artistic research as well as my PhD research in Social Anthropology to better undertsand the relationship between empathy and identity and how our bodies are impacted by Virtual Reality (see final project concept). The "Final Sense" bracelet is all about DIY, remixing available knowledge, making it transparent and available.
As my project will be embedded in BeAnotherLab`s artistic research, it is published under the same Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license. People can remix, rebuild, add and delete things as long as they credit my project and license their work under the same terms. This work cannot be used for commercial purposes. Creative Commons provides free and easy-to-use copyright licenses in a standardised way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work. This type of license is applicable to any kind of work you develop. It´s one of the most widely used because is adaptable to commercial and non-comercial work. Conditions are your choice. CC licenses lets you change your copyright terms from the default “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.” However, these licenses do not replace copyright, but work correspondingly. Some hactivists might call this "copyleft".
I developed the prototype for artistic research purposes, but do not plan to generate an income through it just yet.