Dropping Knowledge is a mega-project that aims to institute a global dialogue on the most pressing global issues of the day. It’s a high-tech affair with as physical component, a giant electronic table in Berlin. It will record the contributions of 112 leading world thinkers on September 9th.
My feelings where mixed when taking a look at it, since, while it aims for global dialogue, the whole experience is very tightly designed from the top down. You quickly realize you can’t copy anything for citation directly from the intro, it’s all images.

Their licensing model, which claims to be copyleft, actually disposseses any creator, and it explicitely forbids the creation of a database based on the material their collecting.

I’m reblogging the whole explanation here, from the blog Repositorium:

“In these days creative minds are requested to submit questions and content to the global dialogue platform droppingknowledge.org. By signing a Release Form filmmakers (Licensors) grant all rights to use their content free of charge for commercial and non-commercial purposes to dropping knowledge e.v. (Licensee). Droppingknowledge e.v. creates a searchable knowledge repository by indexing this content and storing it in a multimedia dababase. The content will be deployed in multiple ways by Droppingknowledge e.v, e.g. by making it available on the internet under a so-called Dropping Knowledge Copyleft License (DKCL) or by presenting it to the public in the form of commercial projects. Most notably Droppingknowledge e.V. retains the exclusive rights to use the knowledge for commercial purposes – the DKCL restricts commercial use of content for creators of derivative works and prohibits the creation of databases based on the droppingknowledge content.

Jonathan Meese asked the question: What is Copyleft. My answer to Jonathan is: certainly not what is expressed by the DKCL. The intention of Copyleft is to remove restrictions on the distribution of copies and modified versions of a work for others and require the same freedoms be preserved in modified versions. The database created by the people who contribute their questions and answers to droppingknowledge is a collective work by itself, so it should belong to the people. In my opinion Droppingknowledge e.v, being the aggregator of the content and not the creator should apply a different licensing policy. According to the principles of Copyleft contributors would license their content to Droppingknowledge e.v under a Creative Commons license and Droppingknowledge.e.v would make available the content or derivative works based on the content under the same license.

I asked the question: Who controls the knowledge repository created by dropping knowledge? I also asked the question: Who owns public space?

My answer is: Public space has been captured by the proponents of the advertising industry long time ago. Ralf Schmerberg, the entrepreneur who founded Droppingknowledge e.v. is one of them. Their licensing policy will show if Droppingknowledge e.v who currently buys out knowledge and work of volunteers and uses it for commercial purposes is just yet-another pseudo-charity project.”