REMINDER: CC Salon NYC is Tomorrow Night

Fred Benenson, September 29th, 2008

Just a quick reminder that the CC Salon NYC is happening tomorrow night!

The Open Planning Project has once again generously allowed us to use their loft space in the West Village for the salon and a reception afterward.

September’s Salon will feature presentations from Rachel Sterne from GroundReport.com, and a special screening / premier of two new shorts from the Meerkat Arts Media Collective, and other special surprises.

Here are the details:

Tuesday, September 30th, from 7-10pm
The Open Planing Project
349 W. 12th St., 1st Floor

We’ll also have free (as in beer) beer for the reception afterward. If you didn’t make it to July’s salon, don’t miss this one, and if you did, you’ll know to come early as space is limited.

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

FSCONS: Free Society Conference and Nordic Summit

Michelle Thorne, September 26th, 2008

Free Culture, Free Software, and Free Content will join forces under the banner of “Free Society” at FSCONS on October 24-26 at the IT University of Götheborg, Sweden. The orgnaizing trinity, Creative Commons Sweden, Free Software Foundation Europe, and Wikimedia Sverige, see FSCONS as a chance to reach out with their respective communities and build joint projects with like-minded activists and organizations.

A strong speakers lineup provides the rhetorical food-for-thought in the Free Culture track. Mike Linksvayer (Creative Commons) asks, “How far is free culture behind free software?” as he charts key indicators and historical factors in the progress of each. Eva Hemmungs Wirten argues that the digital commons extends back to nineteenth-century London, while Oscar Swartz keynotes the events with the warning that Sweden’s controversial “Lex Orwell” may usher in “The End of Free Communication”.

Nikolaj Hald Nielsen spotlights Amarok 2, the intuitive music player for Linux and Unix, demonstrating a viable intersection of Free Culture and Free Software. Meanwhile, other landscapes are being analyzed by Inga Walling (Open Street Map), who recounts the project’s efforts to create and provide free geographic data.

John Buckman (Magnatune) riffs on “Squeezing the Evil out of the Music Industry” by using CC licensing to rethink record labels. And since online attribution persists as a thorny issues for many music content sites, Victor Stone (ccMixter) reports on how some platforms are solving the problem with the Sample Pool API.

The blend of timely topics and kindred communities makes FSCONS an exciting event to follow this autumn. Thanks a lot to the organizing teams for their efforts — we’re looking forward to this!

COMMUNIA: A growing European network

Michelle Thorne, September 24th, 2008

Earlier this month, Mike gave us a sneak preview of several not-to-be-missed conferences in Europe this October. COMMUNIA kicks off the list with its 3rd Workshop, this time held in Amsterdam on October 20-21. The Amsterdam workshop will tackle Marking the public domain: relinquishment & certification, and the CC0 beta/discussion draft 3 will be one of the main items on the agenda.

The workshop follows the successful COMMUNIA Conference 2008, held at the University of Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium on June 30 and July 1. The conference furthered COMMUNIA’s mission to enrich and inform the debate about various (and often under-represented) issues related to today’s copyright. In particular, the COMMUNIA network continues to improve understanding about the true value of the public domain and open licensing.

All materials produced by the COMMUNIA network can be downloaded from the COMMUNIA website, which is in itself a great resource for the latest news in intellecutal property, copyright and public domain issues around the world.

Image from COMMUNIA Conference 2008 by Politecnico di Torino, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Wikis Take Manhattan!

Fred Benenson, September 22nd, 2008

After the fantastic success of Wikipedia Takes Manhattan, Wikipedia, The Open Planning Project, Free Culture @ Columbia, Free Culture @ NYU and Creative Commons have all teamed up to organize another free culture photo scavenger hunt hunt for this Saturday, September 27th!

This time we’ve really stepped up the awards. The grand prize for the team with the most photos is now a dinner with Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia and CC board member, at the fantastic Pure Food & Wine restaurant in downtown Manhattan.

The photos will go directly into Wikimedia Commons and the Livable Streets Streetswiki and all photos will be released under our Attribution-ShareAlike license to allow for easy remixing and reuse in any future projects.

The day starts at 1pm and ends with a party after sunset. Register now and we’ll see you on Saturday!

Software Freedom Day 2008

Mike Linksvayer, September 20th, 2008

Today is Software Freedom Day, a worldwide celebration of free and open source software. See our post on SFD2007.

For context on Creative Commons and software freedom, see these slides on free culture and free software (pdf) (I’ll be giving an updated version of this talk at FSCONS next month), our recent post wishing happy birthday to the GNU project, or better yet, check out our software, all of which is free (as in freedom).

December Technology Summit, Call for Presentations

Nathan Yergler, September 19th, 2008

Following the success of our first technology summit in June we knew we would do another one soon.  Today we’re announcing the next, which will be held in Cambridge, MA on December 12.  We’re also changing the format slightly, trying to add more talks and reduce the number of panels.  To support that we’re also announcing a Call for Presentations. 

The Technology Summits are about connecting the larger developer and technical community that’s sprung up around Creative Commons licenses and technology, so we want to provide a venue where people doing interesting work can share it. We’ve identified some areas we think are interesting and ripe for exploration but those are mostly just a guideline. The summit will once again be a single-day event, so we have about five 45-minute slots available. Proposals/abstracts are due October 24, so get to it! Full details are available in the wiki.

Sydney Arts Management Advisory Group: “Copyleft or Copyright” Seminar

Cameron Parkins, September 17th, 2008

We’re not quite sure what is in the water down under, but more great news keeps piling in from our friends at CCau – on 29 September the Sydney Arts Management Advisory Group (SAMAG) are running a seminar entitled “Copyleft or Copyright: Alternative licensing models in the digital era: promotion or protection” which promises to “explore[] how the landscape has changed since the analogue era and what this means for the creators of copyright.”

Delia Browne will be presenting on behalf of CCau, along with David Noakes from the Film Finance Corporation (FFC) and Scot Morris from the Australasian Performing Rights Association (APRA). Details below:

When: 6pm – 8pm, Monday 29 September 2008
Where: Australia Council: 372 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills
How: RSVP by 9/25 to Janelle Prescott – info AT samag DOT org – or (02) 8250 5722 (msg only)
Cost: FREE ENTRY for 2008 SAMAG Members / $10 for non-members / $5 for students

Digital Fringe

Cameron Parkins, September 17th, 2008

Digital Fringe, a program that will be taking place during the 2008 Melbourne Film Festival, recentlly issued a call for material to screen during this year’s program. Taking place between the 9/24 – 10/12, the material will vary in form and content with DF broadcasting the submissions anywhere and everywhere – from public screens to TVs in shop windows to the web. From CCau:

Run out of the experimental media bar, Horse Bazaar (one of my favourite places in Melbourne – check out the men’s toilets!), Digital Fringe showcases the work of emerging and established new media artists on hundreds of screens across Victoria. Contributions can be from anywhere in the world and can be in any form, from works by professional artists to kindergarten multimedia projects and everything in between. You provide the material, they provide the novel environment – whether it be a bar, a gallery, a wall or even a mobile phone. They even have a Mobile Projection Unit, which moves around Melbourne from dusk, projecting onto buildings and structures and interacting with the citylife and local goings on.

And our favourite bit (as always) – the copyright. All artists retain full copyright in their works, and are free to license them however they like, from all rights reserved to public domain. However, in the spirit or sharing and experimentation, Digital Fringe encourages the use of Creative Commons licences.

Creative Commons @ Web 2.0 Expo NYC

Fred Benenson, September 17th, 2008

I’m about to head over to the first day of the Web 2.0 Expo in New York City. Creative Commons has a booth in the non-profit pavilion, so if you are at the conference and you’d like some swag (including some of the highly sought after CC vinyl stickers) or just want to say ‘Hi’, don’t hesitate to drop by!

Copyleft Festival 2008

Cameron Parkins, September 12th, 2008

The Copyleft Festival 2008 kicked off yesterday in Arezzo, Italy (located in Tuscany) with a great looking lineup of speakers and events. From CF2K8:

Four days full of debates, meetings, music and shows that speak about Copyleft and Creative Commons licences. From the 11th to the 15th of September, the city of Arezzo in Tuscany will be the capital of free circulation of ideas. The festival will take place in Arrezo’s two central squares and will host a bevy of guests including the collective of writers Kai Zen, the French mathematician Philippe Aigrain and new media expert Gabriele Lunati (who will explore copyleft and CC applied to music).

On Sunday the 14th, a ‘barcamp’ about new media and citizen journalism will take place from 11AM to 5PM. Space to debate, with round tables dedicated to open source/public administration, bank loans, music and CC-using professionals will also be available. Every day features book presentations, projections, shows.