Grants/Patamu.com
Describe the project you are proposing as clearly as possible in just five sentences.
Patamu is an new born italian site, with the aim to provide free and instantaneous timestamping and storage of art works (such as music) and of any creative work in general, and it is intended for musicians, photographers, writers, poets, artists, journalists, bloggers, researchers, etc, to help them diffuse their works in CC protecting themselves from plagiarism. The contextual release of these works in a Creative Commons license is highly encouraged in our site. Patamu follows a Business Ethics model, offering a useful and complete free service for the basic user, and a premium service (almost at production cost) for professional users. Patamu is probably one of the first sites in italy and in europe to provide this kind of service. We also plan to develop a knowledge database and a blog containing information about CC, free culture world, and an overview on the world of royalties collecting companies, to provide users with a strong know how, and offer them orientation to pursue the diffusion of free art and culture.
Detail the tangible project output (e.g., paper, blog post, written materials, video/film, etc.; this would be in addition to the final written report that successful grant recipients will be expected to deliver to CC at the conclusion of the project).
The first tangible project output would be the definition of the legal status of Patamu, and the eventual establishment of Patamu as a real and recognized company or organization, allowing the site to better pursue it's aim for the diffusion of creative commons culture. In addition, a new area of the site would be implemented in the form of a blog and opensource knowledge database with all the useful information for users about creative commons licences, and on how to integrate CC licences with proof of authorship, using the free timestamping service provided in the site or similar techniques. Another output would be the translation of the site in other languages and the completion of the english translation. Finally, an improvement in the technologies would be made, allowing the provision of better services for users.
Describe the community you are targeting. How would the project benefit the community?
We are targeting the broad community of authors of creative works in general, such as musicians, writers, photographers, artists, but also scientists or journalists, or bloggers. In other words, anyone producing a creative work. Our site would help them to feel free to diffuse their works without the fear of being plagarized (through the use of the digital timestamping). This, in sinergy with CC licences, would allow a better diffusion of artistic and cultural content, and allow many members of the community to obtain for free a service that is now provided almost only by royalties collecting societies. For instance, in Italy protection from plagiarizing is provided at high costs by the state royalties collecting organization SIAE, which binds the authors with many constraints on the use of their own creative works. Recent studies show that 90% of these authors don't even receive any royalties for their artworks, but nevertheless still use SIAE, even if it is only to prove their authorship. Patamu services would free all these people from the constraints of SIAE, by providing a viable, valid and non-constraining alternative for proof of authorship, thus encouraging them to spread their works in CC licences. Furthermore, the know how database created in Patamu would help the community to better decide how to licence and spread their works, and to have an overview of the best practicing and CC-integrated royalties collecting societies in various countries.br />
My personal knowledge in the field of plagiarism protection and free diffusion of creative works comes from the fact that I am a musician, I compose music, and I am also a physicist, therefore the project of Patamu was generated from my first hand experience and needs, and those of my network of connections, since a similar service was not available. I am in contact with many members of both the artistic and scientific community, and many of them feel the need of such a service. I have been in contact for a long time with "Free Hardware Foundation" and "FPML.it" networks for free culture, and our discussions, together with the feedback of their communities, helped me develop a pilot concept, which has finally recently come to life as Patamu.
How will you measure and evaluate your project’s impact - on your main participants? Other contributors? On the larger community?
The impact of the project would be evaluated by the number of subscribers in the following months, as well as on the number of timestamped files and visitors on the site (especially in the new blog area). A special professional feedback feature will also be implemented, to interact as much as possible with the users and involve them in the discussion to improve the service and the development of the services provided in the site. The impact on the larger community would be evaluated by the diffusion of the Patamu project awareness, and hopefully by the number of invitations that we would receive in creative commons and free culture conferences or debates to explain our project.
How many participants do you expect to be involved in your project? How will you seek and sustain their involvement?
We expect to involve at least 1000 participants in the first 6 months. We will seek their sustain and involvement through an open source model for the site: everybody will be encourage to interact and to propose new ideas to improve the service, through a feedback section, in which users can propose and vote ideas. At the same time, the users will be encourage to collaborate in the blog area, thus creating a common and shared knowledge database regarding subjects related to the free culture and creative commons world. We will seek their involvement proposing a Business Ethic model, in which service is provided for free for non-pro users, young users or non profit organizations, and the project is economically sustained by the professional users. In this sense we already had a good feedback. Since the unofficial launch on the site, 2 weeks ago, we already received many collaboration proposals from non profit netlabels and other ethic business organizations. In the following days, a new EP will be released in Creative Commons, with the protection from plagiarizing and the storage of the protected content provided by Patamu. At the same time, we already received some donations to help the project. This shows that our model can work.
Describe how your project will benefit Creative Commons' mission to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in "the commons".
As a musician, I noticed that one of the fears of the artists releasing their works in Creative Commons is to be plagiarized. For this reason, sometimes the artists prefer to pay an amount to the royalties collecting societies which incidentally provide also protection from plagiarizing. In this way, unfortunately, their artworks are no more elegible to be released in CC licences (this is for instance the case in Italy). By providing a free protection, and leaving the user free to release his artworks in any kind of licence (the CC licence is the one proposed in our site). This, together with our storage service, would drastically improve the "sensation of safety" of the user, encouraging him to release his artworks in CC and increasing therefore the amount of cultural and scientific content freed in CC in Italy, and hopefully in other countries as well. The blog area, furthermore, would help the user to deepen his knowledge in the subject, and therefore to better choose the option that is more suitable for his needs.
Describe what technologies and tools your project will use. What kinds of technical skills and expertise do you bring to the project? What are your technical needs?
The technologies used in the site are JOOMLA and the OpenSSL technology. I bring to the project both my programming skills (as a physicist) and my experience in the creative commons and free culture area (as a CC musician and composer). Our technical needs would be mainly high speed, high capacity and high configurability linux servers. we already have them, but they have an high monthly cost. Help from CC in this sense would help us to lower our monthly costs.
What challenges do you expect to face, and how do you plan to overcome them?
The main change we have to face is the diffusion of our project. We plan to overcome it doing a big effort on the diffusion of our project idea through the links that we have already established with organizations working in the free culture and CC area (such as the Free Hardware Foundation, Buskerlabel.com, Fpml.it, to do some examples in italy) but also using channels as facebook (the pro version), or myspace, or other similar places where our idea can be immediately perceived as useful.
How do you plan to sustain your project after the Creative Commons funding has ended? Detail specific plans. How do you plan to raise revenue to continue your efforts in the future?
How can this project be scalable, or have a scalable impact?
What resources and support do you expect Creative Commons to provide to your project to ensure its success (if any)?
Describe how your organization currently communicates with its community members and network partners. (100 words)
Legal
No
