Deerhoof & CASH Music team up for “Fresh Born” experiment

Eric Steuer, July 24th, 2008

One of my favorite bands, Deerhoof, has teamed up with innovative media company CASH Music (we’ve talked about CASH’s great work here, here, and here) for a very interesting project. In a sly nod to the ubiquity of pre-release music leaks, the group has issued the sheet music for its upcoming single “Fresh Born” under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license in advance of the October release of Offend Maggie, the band’s new album on Kill Rock Stars.

It’s a neat experiment in encouraging interactivity: Deerhoof’s recorded version of “Fresh Born” isn’t even available yet, but there are already several great recordings of the song - all made by other people - floating around online. Visit the CASH site for the most up-to-date collection of links to versions of the song. Lucas Gonze has made the music easier to work with digitally by retranscribing it with music notation software. Also, be sure to check out New York public radio station WNYC’s cool video of Deerhoof fans using their sight-reading abilities to collaboratively create a rendition of the song.

Incorporating content license information just made easier

Greg Grossmeier, July 23rd, 2008

Creative Commons has announced the release of two very important tools for the developer community. These tools, liblicense and LicenseChooser.js, provide simple and standard ways of reading or writing license information to a variety of files.

liblicense is specifically geared towards the desktop application developer who wants to use license information in media files but does not want to implement the low-level code themselves. LicenseChooser.js, however, is designed to be used in web applications such as a media sharing site for users’ pictures or music.

Both of these software packages aim to make the lives of the developers’ easier. One way in which that is accomplished is that these tools will continue to be updated as new versions of Creative Commons licenses are released thus moving the burden from the developer to Creative Commons.

There will be a public demonstration of liblicense at OSCON on July 24th. For more information see the Press Release.

Google Code adds content licensing; Google Knol launches with CC BY default

Mike Linksvayer, July 23rd, 2008

A Google twofer for Creative Commons today!

Google Knol opened today, intended to be a platform for authoritative articles about a specific topics, also known as knols, by a created single author or collaboratively. The default license for a new knol is CC Attribution. A creator can also choose CC Attribution-NonCommercial or All Rights Reserved.

Separately, Google Code added an option for software projects to specify a separate license for content associated with a software project — CC Attribution or CC Attribution-ShareAlike. This does not change Google Code’s selection of free and open source software licenses for source code. (Note: Creative Commons also recommends and uses free and open source software licenses such as the GNU GPL for source code.)

It’s really great to see both Google Knol and Google Code launching with and launching support for CC licensing on the same day, and interesting how their choice of licenses to offer differs. Knol defaults to the most liberal CC license, but allows authors to choose a more restrictive (NonCommercial) license, or even the most restrictive option — no public license.

As prior to its launch Knol was often speculatively compared to Wikipedia, it should be noted that the default Knol license (CC BY) could permit using Knol content in Wikipedia (with attribution of course), but knols under more restrictive options could not be incorporated into Wikipedia. On the other hand Wikipedia content could not be incorporated into knols (except in the case of fair use of course), even in the case Wikipedia migrates to CC BY-SA — Knol doesn’t offer a copyleft license.

The two CC licenses offered by Google Code are those that are in the spirit of free and open source software, befitting Google Code’s user base — free and open source software developers.

Reminder: CC Salon NYC is Wednesday Night

Fred Benenson, July 22nd, 2008

Just a quick reminder that CC Salon NYC is happening tomorrow night. July’s salon will feature presentations from Wikia Search, Livable Streets Network, and a special performance from comedian Max Silvestri (of Gabe + Max’s Internet Thing).

Here are the details:

Wednesday, July 23rd from 7-10pm
The Open Planing Project
349 W. 12th St., 1st Floor

We’ll have free (as in beer) beer sponsored by Brooklyn Brewery. Don’t miss this great opportunity to be a part of the CC community in NYC and learn about some great projects and people thinking about the issues we care about.

Follow the event via Upcoming.org and RSVP via the Facebook event or e-mailing me - fred [at] creativecommons.org

Remix Kidz in the Hall and Tyga at Jamglue

Cameron Parkins, July 21st, 2008

Jamglue - featured commoner, remix contest holder extraordinaire - have delivered again with two awesome remix contests, one featuring rap-duo Kidz in the Hall and the other solo-artist Tyga. Both contests feature song stems for both artists’ current singles - “Driving Down the Block” and “Coconut Juice” respectively - released under a CC BY-NC-SA license. As we have noted before, by using CC licences Jamglue allows artists to open up their content to fans in a way that not only allows for positive interaction and creation, but also maintains the commercial interests of the artists at hand.

Unfortunately, the entry date for the Tyga contest has passed (which doesn’t mean you can’t remix it - just not for a prize). Entries for The Kidz in the Hall contest are due by August 17, giving you plenty of time to rearrange and pick apart their music, crafting your own creation in the process.