Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

            Our society is built upon the accumulated knowledge of past generations. Our political debates cannot turn to discussions of class dynamics without talking about Marx. In the same way, our discussions of power invariably reference Foucault. As such, in our studies, we students of politics base our thoughts on the accumulated knowledge of these thinkers and their ancestors in the same way that physicists rely upon the discoveries of Einstein, and Newton before him. They made their discoveries so that we do not have to spend our lifetimes in pursuit of the same knowledge. Be it in our politics, our technology or our culture we are “standing on the shoulders of giants”.

            We are truly lucky to have the majority of this knowledge be open and free for us to access and learn from. The Internet presents remarkable libraries of works in the public domain. Websites like Project Gutenberg at www.gutenberg.org provide access to tens of thousands of books of politics, science and literature in the public domain. Others, like www.Wikipedia.org, allow you and I to share what we have learned with each other, correcting our mistakes where we can. Yet, so much of the most current and dynamic debate we encounter in our studies exists in much more inaccessible formats. Copyright laws provide necessary protection to people with new and novel ideas. But until recently, there was little an author could do to protect their rights to their own words while presenting their work for free distribution, for the sake of learning. Creative Commons licenses provide a mechanism for this. 

           This year, we are publishing the Caucus under Creative Commons licenses. By granting readers the right to share and reproduce the articles and ideas inside the Caucus, we hope to give you, the students at the University of Ottawa, an opportunity to reach a far wider audience with your opinions than was previously possible. As always, the Caucus is run by dedicated student volunteers, such as myself, to present your opinions to your peers for their comment. We are working hard to build a lasting forum for students' political discussion and debate online and in print. By allowing you to present your opinion in a shareable format, we hope that your words will be read and published in many different forums, run by many different organizations, by many different people while retaining your rights to legal protection and attribution.

           Also, this initiative will allow us to expand the Caucus into exciting new territory. We are redesigning our website, e-caucus.ca, to reflect the notions of community, free discussion and open access that are so central to the vibrancy of our University. In this, we hope to help contribute to the dynamic spirit of political activism that is life-blood for so many of you in this city. All of our articles and issues from this year and as far back into our past as we can will be posted and free to download. As well, I, and several other of our staff, will regularly post our opinions and responses to political events and happenings on Campus in blog commentary. Should you have the time to join us you may. Our words will be open to any student who has a thoughtful response. Any piece in the Caucus will be open to you to read, reflect upon and talk about with me, our staff and other readers. In the spirit of accessibility and interactivity, any Caucus article will be free to be translated by whomever has the time. As well, you are free to re-publish anything produced by the Caucus, unless otherwise marked, on your own website or in your own publication, so long as you attribute to the original author and share alike according to the specific license outlined at e-caucus.ca. 

           Periodically, we will print Creative Commons content by other authors in the Caucus and at e-caucus.ca. By properly attributing such works from local and international artists, writers and photographers, we hope to expose you to a portion of the rich variety of accessible and high quality content that is available to you if you know where to look. In this way, we hope that you can come to appreciate the incredible wealth of accumulated and growing knowledge that is available to you through the public domain and through Creative Commons, upon which your University education is possible.