CC Talks With
2008 June
CC Talks With: deviantArt
Shockingly, we have yet to post anything on uber-online artist community deviantArt, who not only act as a creative outlet for over 7 million users but do so with CC licensing built into their UI. Our bad. Hopefully we can make up for lost blogging through an interview with Richard Hartley, Director of Community Development at deviantArt (and sometimes clown in disguise). Read on to learn more about the incredibly rich deviantArt community, how CC licences play a roll in user submissions, and future plans that include nothing short of global domination (seriously).
Can you give us some background on deviantArt? When and why did it start up? Who’s involved?
deviantART began on August 7th of 2000, primarily as a site to provide a space to allow deviants to upload various application skins for programs like Sonique, WInamp, WindowBlinds and so on. Soon after it became pretty obvious the community wanted more space to flex their creativity and more categories opened up for digital and traditional art all across the board. At this point we now have over 1700 different categories for every conceivable genre, sub genre and unique niche you could imagine, all at the request of our community. Back when it first began it was a small staff of people, less than ten, and now we currently have over 50 employees world wide as well as around 100 volunteers.
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CC Talks With: Lingro
Lingro is a project that aims to create an online environment that will allow anyone, in reading a foreign language website, a quick and easy means to translate words they don’t understand. Simple in concept, yet profound in implication, Lingro (which we have blogged about twice before) uses open dictionaries and user-submitted, CC BY-SA licensed, definitions to expand its ever-growing database. We recentlly caught up with co-founder Paul Kastner and were able to discuss in-depth the philosophies behind Lingro, how it accomplishes what it does, how it uses CC licenses, and what its future holds.
What is Lingro’s history? How did it get started? Who is involved?
The idea to create a new kind of on-line dictionary which would help people learn languages was conceived by my co-founder, Artur Janc. A few years ago, Artur was practicing his Spanish by reading Harry Potter y la piedra filosofál. He had taken all the advanced Spanish courses at the university where he was studying, and like most students, had a good grasp on the grammar and core vocabulary of the language. When he started reading, he found that while he could understand the structure of the writing, there were so many words he hadn’t come across before that he was spending more time looking up words in a dictionary than actually reading!
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CC Talks With: Modiba Productions
Modiba Productions is an international music production/publishing company and record label that aims to combine a love for music and a fervor for activism. Focusing primarily on ‘afrocentric’ music, Modiba has been the source for two great CC-based contests over the past year and a half, one with Malian artist Vieux Farka Touré and the other with Brazilian band Nation Beat. We recently caught up with Modiba co-founder Eric Herman and were able to get some background on Modiba, what they aim to accomplish, and how CC-licenses have helped facilitate their goals in combining their passion for music and zeal for social activism.
Can you provide us with a bit of background on what Modiba Productions does? How did it get started? Who is involved?
Modiba Productions is a social activist music production company, record label, and publishing company focusing on international – primarily what we dub “afrocentric” – music. Our mission is to use the best in international music as a vehicle for the empowerment of Africa and its Diaspora. Jesse Brenner and I founded Modiba while we were seniors at Wesleyan University as a means of combining our passions for music and activism. We have grown into a working family that includes an operations manager, a graphic designer, a lawyer, and a staff of interns.
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