Volker Grassmuck
URL = http://www.vgrass.de/
Bio
Sociologist and media researcher at the Leuphana University in Lüneburg. He leads the project ‘Basic services 2.0 -- Internet-TV for a new generation of media focusing on the public, peer structures and information technologies’ and is involved in initiatives that deal with current copyright structures.
Long:
(before Leuphana)
Volker Ralf Grassmuck is a media sociologist and author. Currently he is a visiting reasearcher at the Research Group on Public Policy for Access to Information (GPOPAI) at the School of Arts, Sciences and Humanities (EACH) of the University of São Paulo (USP). He had been project lead of the conference series Wizards-of-OS.org and of the copyright information portal iRights.info and co-founded mikro-berlin.org and privatkopie.net.
He has formulated his concept of the knowledge commons as a resource open for use by all and developed and maintained by a community of commoners in the German language monograph Freie Software zwischen Privat- und Gemeineigentum, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, Bonn 2002. The commons have also been running as a thread throughout the Wizards of OS conferences, with the third one in 2004 entitled "The Future of the Digital Commons." <[ttp://www.wizards-of-os.org/archiv/wos_3/programm/panels/opening_speeches.html]
He has been advocating a shift from handed-down common sense to a commons sense. In particular he has been copyfighting for access to knowledge and the freedoms to copy, to share and to remix. Even more specifically his focus in recent years has been a new Social Contract on culture and one of its essential elements, the legalization of file-sharing in exchange for a levy on broadband Internet access. This policy framework for the knowledge commons has been promoted under different names in various countries. As the Sharing Licence it is about to become a copyright bill in Brazil.
Publications
EN: A Copyright Exception for Monetizing File-Sharing. A proposal for balancing user freedom and author remuneration in the Brazilian copyright law reform, 19. März 2010, <http://www.vgrass.de/?p=193>
PT: Uma exceção ao direito autoral para remunerar pelo compartilhamento de arquivos, 28 maio 2010 <http://www.gpopai.usp.br/blogs/blog/2010/05/28/uma-excecao-ao-direito-autoral-para-remunerar-pelo-compartilhamento-de-arquivos/>
Compartilhamento legal! – Brazil is putting an end to the ‘war on copying,’ at R$ 3,00 per month, 1. September 2010 <http://www.vgrass.de/?p=382>
More texts: