CopyCamp calls for speakers

The International CopyCamp Conference 2014, subtitled "Understanding the Social Impacts of Copyright", is being hosted by the Modern Poland Foundation, which has launched an Open Call for speakers. The event takes place from 23 to 24 October this year in Warsaw, Poland, and the deadline for responding to the Open Call is 15 June 2014. By way of explanation the organisers state:

The International CopyCamp Conference is the first Central-and-Eastern European annual event to undertake a multi-sided, balanced and unrestrained discussion on the social and economic impacts of copyright. The third edition of the conference will be again an occasion to conduct a international debate characterized by high standards of communication and openness to the input from all interested parties - representatives of cultural institutions and the media, creative sectors, academic, legal, political and business circles, administration and non-governmental organisations - and the general public from all over the world with special attention to the perspective of the Visegrad Group countries.

We are glad to announce having two esteemed keynote speakers: Cory Doctorow, a London-based journalist and science fiction author, winner of the Prometheus and Campbell Awards, co-editor of Boing Boing and author of Little Brother and Birgitta Jónsdóttir, an Icelandic poet and member of the Icelandic parliament, internet activist, freedom of information and freedom of speech defender.

The programme is of the multi-track variety, details of which you can find here.  The organisers explain:

Presentation proposals must be submitted in the form of an abstract of no more than 1,800 characters under one of the enlisted thematic tracks that characterize this year’s conference. Each track explores a different aspect of the influence of copyright on our life. Submit your proposal at: http://copycamp.pl/en/contact/register. Please note: your presentation should not exceed 10 minutes.

The event's strategic partners are the Association of Authors ZAiKS and Google. The Coalition for Open Education is also backing it.

This blogger notes the commitment to discussion which is "multi-sided, balanced and unrestrained" and wonders how easily these criteria will be fulfilled -- especially if the pro-copyright side in the great debate is unrepresented or under-represented.

CopyCamp calls for papers

From Paweł Stankiewicz comes the exciting news that there is a call for speakers at CopyCamp 2013 – an international conference devoted to the subject of copyright, which will be held in Warsaw, Poland. He explains:

"This year, we will talk about copyright in the context of international legislation, we will analyze the copyright system from the perspective of researchers – anthropologists, sociologists and economists. We are interested in the language of the international debate on copyright and communication within this debate. What is more, we aim at discussing practical and innovative solutions for the creative sector as a step on the path to working out a copyright system that would be satisfactory to all involved parties [does "all" include creators, performers, owners, lawyers ... or are the involved parties only those who are involved in gaining access? ].

The special guest of the conference will be Eben Moglen, professor of Law and Legal History at the Columbia University in New York, the founder and chairman of the Software Freedom Law Center, the long-time legal counsel to The Free Software Foundation and co-creator (together with Richard Stallman) of the GNU GPL licence. 

Everyone who is interested in the subject of copyright and would like to express their opinion can submit a presentation proposal by 27 August [which is only a few days away]. The presentation summary of max. 1800 characters should be submitted to http://copycamp.pl/en/contact/register/. On the basis of the proposal summary, the appointed jury will select about 20 speakers of this year's CopyCamp. 

Please note: your presentation should not exceed 10 minutes. Please find more information at: copycamp.pl/en/

CopyCamp is part of the Future of Copyright project financed by Trust for Civil Society in Central and Eastern Europe. Co-organizer of the conference: Coalition for Open Education. Partners of the conference: Association of Authors ZAiKS and Google".

This blogger hopes that there will be a good balance of interests represented among the papers accepted for this appealing event -- otherwise it will be a bit like the Walrus and the Carpenter's dialogue with the oysters.