Update: David Bausola of Imagination (www.imagination.com) and Rob Myers - the conceptual engineers behind the commercial media production model that uses Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike as in Ford of Europe’s Where are the Joneses? - will both be joining Tom and John (see below) for our panel Q&A at the Monday seminar

Over the last few months here at ORG Towers, we’ve been working hard on the Creative Business in the Digital Era research project, examining the way in which businesses are using open intellectual property (IP) as a central pillar of their business model.

The project culminates in three free seminars in central London during March - a full day on 17th March, and two evening seminars on 18th/19th (with roughly the same content in each) - where we’ll talk about what we’ve discovered about open IP businesses, and talk to people who are actually giving stuff away whilst also making money from it. We’ve managed to recruit three fabulous guest speakers:

Monday 17 March
- Tom Reynolds, blogger, ambulance technician and author of Blood, Sweat and Tea, published under Creative Commons licence and in paper by The Friday Project.
- John Buckman, entrepreneur, musician and founder of CC music label Magnatune.

Tuesday 18 March (evening)
- Tom Reynolds graces our presence again.

Wednesday 19 March (evening)
- David Bausola, the creative mind behind interactive online comedy Where are the Joneses?

The seminar is aimed at people within the creative industry - e.g. music, publishing, film, TV, radio, visual arts, photography - and from any size of company, whether they are freelances or a C-level exec. The course materials are all being prepped out in the open, under CC licence.

As mentioned, the seminar is free to attend - if you are interested, all you need to do is to fill in our application form.

If you’re interested yourself, please do apply! If you have a blog, podcast or Twitter account and would like to mention our seminar, please do. And if you know of anyone who might be interested in coming, feel free to tell them about it.

Our deadline for applications is 15th February, so apply now!

Creative Commons (CC) celebrates its fifth birthday this weekend with a series of local celebrations across the globe, including Beijing, Berlin, San Francisco and Seoul. If you’re part of the worldwide CC Community, follow this link for details of all the different parties. And if you’re not yet aware of CC’s excellent and thoroughly open projects, from their suite of ’some rights reserved’ licences to the remix-community-incubator ccMixter, then be sure to get familiar.

ORG’s invitation to join the party arrived a little late but luckily we already had a party planned for this weekend. So we’ll join in the celebrations by raising a toast and a slice of cake to legal and creative sharing at our christmas party, which is this Saturday 15 December. If you’re a part of the CC community please come down and join our bash. The event is hosted by BBC Backstage and we have a whole heap of fun planned for our guests, including a very special revival of Cory Doctorow’s Copyfighters.

Here’s all the details, including instructions for signing up:

Where? Ye Olde Cock Tavern, 22 Fleet Street, London EC4Y 1AA
When? 19.30 - 02:00, Saturday 15 December 2007
Tickets: via Eventwax - click here to register
Any questions? Phone +44 (0)20 7096 1079 or email info at openrightsgroup dot org.

BBC Backstage is once again kindly sharing its gert big Christmas bash with Open Rights Group. And this one’s shaping up to even bigger and better than last year. For those who didn’t make it, here’s some picture of 2006’s full-to-bursting party.

So this time around, on Saturday 15 December, we’re taking over a 4-floor pub in the City of London. Amongst other treats there will be music, cake, party bags, werewolf and - for one night only - we’re delighted to announce the return of Copyfighters, featuring the magical Cory Doctorow. You should fully expect mayhem, drunken fandango and herds of Santas.

There are 100 tickets reserved for ORGites and due to expected demand you must register on eventwax (which only requires your name, email address and “org” as the promo code). Please use the ‘Open Rights Group’ ticket option so we don’t snaffle the backstagers’ allocation.

Where? Ye Olde Cock Tavern, 22 Fleet Street, London EC4Y 1AA
When? 19.30 - 02:00, Saturday 15 December 2007
Tickets: via Eventwax - click here to register
Any questions? Phone +44 (0)20 7096 1079 or email info at openrightsgroup dot org.

Our e-Voting campaign tour reached its triumphant climax this week in Blackpool. Jonathan Djanogly MP, the Shadow Solicitor General who was hugely complimentary about our work, joined Jason and the Electoral Commission on our panel to discuss the ills of electronic elections.

As in Brighton with the Lib Dems and in Bournemouth with Labour, the vast majority of delegates we spoke to and who attended our event agreed with our approach to the issue. Questions from the floor revealed concerns with accessibility, future developments in cryptography and also the lack of trust in the existing, paper-based system. Some attendees even took our printed materials back to their local parties to help spread the word.

The audio recording is available for download in both ogg vorbis and mp3 format. Or, listen below via the embedded media player. There’s also a few more photos on flickr.

Thanks again to the JRRT, which funded this campaign; to Jason for leading our work on this issue; to William for expertly chairing the conference sessions and to the election observers who worked so hard to put together our elections report. ORG is already looking forward to the 2008 conference season!

If you live local to Blackpool, please come along for a drink and meet the ORG team this Monday evening. We’ll be in town for our fringe event at the Conservative Party Conference - part of the “Should we trust electronic elections” roadshow - and are really keen to meet ORG supporters in the area and find out about your digital rights concerns.

We’re meeting at 19.00, Monday 1 October at The Saddle Inn, 286 Whitegate Drive, Blackpool FY3 9PH. So if you’re a local activist or want to become more engaged with digital rights issues, come down for a chat.

If you live local to Bournemouth, please come along for a drink and meet the ORG staff this Thursday night. We’re in town for our fringe event at the Labour Party Conference - part of the “Should we trust electronic elections” roadshow - and are really keen to meet ORG supporters in the area and find out about your digital rights concerns.

We’re meeting at 18.30, Thursday 27 September at The Inferno, 38 Holdenhurst Rd, Bournemouth, Dorset, BH8 8AD. So if you’re a local activist or want to become more engaged with digital rights issues, come down for a chat.

If you’re in or around Brighton this weekend, be sure to come and have a drink with ORG. We’re really keen to meet ORG supporters in the area and find out about local digital rights concerns. It’s not often we get to leave the big smoke on official ORG business (we’re roadshowing our e-voting campaign at the Liberal Democrat party conference), so we want to make the most of it.

We’re meeting at the Black Lion Pub, on Black Lion St, from 1600 this Sunday 16 September. Who knows, we might even raise a belated glass to Software Freedom Day.

Since our 3 May mission to observe e-voting and e-counting in the English and Scottish elections, the ORG e-voting team have been hard at work. The individual reports from our 25-strong volunteer team, as well as materials collected by Michael and Jason using Freedom of Information requests, have been turned into a sixty-page report which is on its way back from the printers now.

The report will be officially launched tomorrow night at the Royal Academy of Engineering. The event will include a presentation from Harri Hursti, computer security expert and star of Hacking Democracy, who has revealed a number of flaws in American voting systems. Spaces for ORG supporters are strictly limited, as we’re trying to attract as many MPs and civil servants as we can, but if you’d like to attend, please get in touch with Michael today (michael[at]openrightsgroup[dot]org).

Last night’s inaugural Support ORG! (and Party) event was a huge success - thanks to everyone who came. We signed up over a dozen new supporters, with dozens more walking away with supporter forms tucked inside their free culture goodie bags. Danny O’Brien’s speech was characteristically rousing, and Dave Rowntree did a great job as our raffle puller. A pool of photos is growing on Flickr, as revellers recover from their hangovers and get uploading their photos (if you’re uploading photos of the night to Flickr, please tag them “openrightsgroup”).

Thanks to all the volunteers who made the night go so smoothly - Glyn, Sheila, Chris, Janita, Felix - and to Tim, Andrew and Johnny V for sounds and visuals. Thanks to Ian and Lee at Bar Kick, to No2ID, Genewatch, Magnatune, Canonical, O’Reilly and Beatpick for their contributions to the goodie bags, and to EFF and Mind Candy for some last minute schwag. Thanks to all our celeb raffle donors, and big, big thanks to Michael for pulling the whole thing together so artfully.

And now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for… the ORG raffle winners:

• A signed copy of Lawrence Lessig’s Code 2.0 goes to Kimberley Gahramt
• A signed copy of Bruce Schneier’s Beyond Fear goes to Karen Molden
• A signed copy of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property goes to Grant Slater
• Neil Gaiman’s signed keyboard goes to Ben Goldacre
• £90 of O’Reilly vouchers goes to Laurie Rich
• £60 of O’Reilly vouchers goes to Zach Robinson
• The 12 CD Beatpick compilation goes to Lawrence Lessig (you should have heard the cheers that one got on the night)
• And the chance to be written into Cory Doctorow’s next book and receive a signed author’s galley goes to Graeme Sutherland

Congratulations to all our winners. Michael will be getting in touch with those of you who weren’t at the party to collect your prize soon to arrange delivery. Commiserations to those who were less successful, but take heart in the knowledge that the money you’ve spent on raffle tickets is going to a very good cause.

It’s less than two weeks until Support ORG! (and Party) - the ORG supporter event on the evening of 11 April at Bar Kick, London. To recap - SO!(aP) is a chance for ORG supporters to meet one another, and we’re asking each ORG supporter to bring at least one friend who they think would like to support ORG if they knew more about our work. The event will feature “public domain” music, remixed visuals and free culture goodie bags - truly an evening not to be missed.

And I’m pleased to announce that our very special guest speaker will be ORG’s pledge founder - Danny O’Brien - who is flying in to the UK from his EFF outpost in San Francisco. What’s more, we’ve got even more treats to add to the ORG raffle - a signed copy of Code 2.0 from Lawrence Lessig, £150 in O’Reilly book vouchers and… wait for it… a signed copy of the Gowers Review of Intellectual Property! But remember, you don’t get a chance to win anything, if you don’t buy a ticket (£2.50 each - available now via Paypal or on the night for cold, hard cash).

We want as many people as possible to come and join us for this event, so please spread the word. See you there!