“then you win”

Cameron Parkins, July 18th, 2008

“then you win” is an initiative aiming to release a series of documentaries that focus on international development issues under a spectrum of CC licenses. The documentaries are produced by Loin de l’Œil, a voluntary association in France, and will be released under Yooook, an open content platform project under development run by Camille Harang. You can read more about the project here.

With active donations, “then you win” will move these documentaries from All Rights Reserved into more open licenses - from BY-NC-ND to BY-NC-SA to BY-SA. The more money donated to the project, the more open these documentaries become. The hope is that with a more open license (the project is already powered by a suite of open source solutions) the documentaries will gain more exposure, greatly increasing the impact they are able to achieve.

ccMixter to the max Q&A; proposals due July 29

Mike Linksvayer, July 17th, 2008

May 29 we announced that we are accepting proposals for a new home for ccMixter, the innovative remix-oriented music community that Creative Commons has run since late 2004. The Request For Proposals was covered many places, including Advertising Age, Boing Boing, and WIRED as well as discussed on the ccMixter forums. Proposals are due July 29 and must be emailed to ccmixter-rfp@creativecommons.org. Questions are welcome at the same address.

We’ve received numerous questions since posting the RFP, which we’ve distilled into the Q&A below.

Before getting to the Q&A, check out (or come back to) some cool ccMixter and related developments over the last month: new site features galore, new developer features, a call for remixes from Shannon Hurley, a new weekly show featuring MC Jack in the Box’s ccMixter picks and of course lots of great new music.

ccMixter RFP Q&A

Why is CC doing this?

This is answered clearly (if dryly) in the RFP (emphasis added):

ccMixter.org was launched by CC in November 2004 to demonstrate legal mixing and reuse of music content, one area in which CC licenses have found firm footing and support. CC believes that ccMixter.org has fulfilled its initial mission of concretely demonstrating “legal reuse.” However, running a community music site is not one of CC’s core competencies, and accordingly, CC’s Board of Directors has decided that ccMixter should be transitioned to another person or entity with the necessary resources and expertise for ccMixter to continue to grow and reach its full potential.

In other words, we think ccMixter has the potential to “blow up” — in the right hands.

Does CC own all IP contained in proposals?

No. Section 3.2(c) of the RFP says, “All RFP responses, supporting materials, and other documentation submitted with responses will become the property of CC.” Our intent is not that CC become the owner or assignee of any intellectual property conceptualized or contained in a proposal response, only that CC needs to retain a record and copy of everything that’s submitted (for audit purposes, etc.).

What did Lessig really mean by “free”, “no ads”, “.org”, and “no variances”?

Appendix B to the RFP restates (verbatim) the criteria articulated by Larry Lessig for spinning out ccMixter to a new home.

“Free” means the entity does have to provide current ccMixter services at no charge, but does not prohibit it from providing “pro” services to users at another, related site. The related site can be linked to from the ccMixter website.

“No ads” means the free ccMixter site cannot have ads.

“.org” means the site will be served from a “.org” domain, but more importantly, have a “no ads” face, though the site content could be served from other domains as well, consistent with the license(s) the content falls under.

“No variances” will be considered from the spirit of the principles Larry articulated, but admittedly those principles leave some room for interpretation. We may need to refine those points in negotiation depending on the ideas contained in the proposals. But the over-arching and guiding intent is to ensure the ccMixter website remains a community environment where remixers can do their thing, legally, and not suffer abuse or feel that the essence of their community or the terms governing their participation have changed. We’re happy to review proposal ideas and drafts and provide feedback on whether the direction envisioned is tenable. This isn’t a matter of throwing one over the transom and hoping it isn’t immediately disqualified … if you’re interested in submitting a proposal, let’s talk.

What is the activity level of the site?

Probably the best window into how the site is used is on the ccMixter stats page.

Over the last 30 days, ccMixter has 333,871 pageviews in 58,158 visits from 39,234 visitors (according to Google Analytics).

Alexa, Compete.com, and Quantcast provide publicly available traffic indicators.

How much does it cost to run ccMixter?

The technical answer is that the site currently runs on one box, currently hosted at ServerBeach for $229/month, including bandwidth (2000GB/month). A <$10/month Dreamhost account is used to help with bandwidth. The other cost, much larger, has been its people. That basically means Victor (who has to date performed services at well below market rate) and a small amount of legal/finance/hr/management overhead from CC.

All this said, the question we encourage proposers to be thinking about is not “what does it cost CC, a non profit, to run ccMixter today?” The circumstances of our development and maintenance of the site in its current form should only inform, not drive or be relied upon in determining, costs going forward.

The question you really should be asking is “what would ccMixter cost [your name here] to run?”, which will be largely determined by your vision for its future.

The reason is simple. For almost every case, the current cost to CC does not translate to what ccMixter would cost somebody because the CC infrastructure of lawyers, accountants, tech staff, etc. would all need to replicated. And the “market value” of the very valuable work Victor performs at a cut rate for CC almost certainly will not translate to your real world scenario.

So the answer to this inquiry really depends in what kind of infrastructure you have at your organization, and even more importantly on your vision and plans for the site.

…

Remember, proposals are due July 29 to ccmixter-rfp@creativecommons.org! Please read the RFP carefully if you are considering submitting.

Digital Copyright Slider

Jane Park, July 17th, 2008

Thanks to The Wired Campus, I stumbled across this nifty digital copyright tool developed by the American Library Association’s Copyright Advisory Network (in the Office for Information Technology Policy). The ALA Copyright Advisory Network is dedicated to educating librarians and others on copyright, something that is no simple matter, since, “with copyright, there are no definitive answers.”

Check out the digital copyright slider. The tool itself is pretty simple. You basically slide the arrow up and down the years starting from “Before 1923″. The boxes on the left (Permission Needed? and Copyright Status/Term) tell you whether a work is still copyrighted or whether it’s now in the public domain, free for you to use and repurpose any way you like. Unfortunately, actually figuring out the copyright status of a work isn’t so simple as dragging your mouse—most of the years seem to be marked by a fuzzy period of “Maybe”. For example, say John Doe wrote and published a poem between 1964-1977 and you are able to find a copyright notice—you still can’t really figure out whether the copyright still applies. And if you can’t find a copyright notice? Well, you just don’t know then either. The same answer (don’t know) seems to apply to a lot of years here…

Props to the ALA for illuminating the incredible complications in US copyright (yeah, that’s right—this sliding scale also only applies to works published within the US). And double props for licensing their tool CC BY-NC-SA. I leave you now with this thought:

Photo licensed CC BY-NC by Nancy

Archive.org Releases Improved Uploading Interface

Tim Hwang, July 17th, 2008

Prominent Free Culture activist, ROFLCon-ite, and close CC friend Dean Jansen blogged recently about Archive.org’s new absolutely amazingly easy-to-use new interface for uploading media. As he writes,

This is great news, as Archive.org has historically been notoriously difficult to publish to. I’m encouraging them to go one step further and add easily accessible RSS links (with media enclosures) for users, categories, searches and so forth. This will turn Archive.org into an amazing free 1-stop (non-profit) publishing platform for independent podcasters and video bloggers alike.

Very cool. It currently only works for things less than 100 MB, and for anything larger, there’s the Creative Commons Publisher Tool. Check it out!

CC Salon LA Follow-Up

Cameron Parkins, July 17th, 2008

3 weeks ago we had an amazing experience putting on the CC Salon LA. Presenters Curt Smith and Monk Turner spoke eloquently about why they have used CC and it seemed a shame that their words were constricted solely to the space of FOUND Gallery. Thankfully we recorded the presentations and, after editing for brevity, we were able to post them online. Check them out below:

Curt Smith’s Presentation:

• vimeo
• blip.tv
• youtube

Monk Turner’s Presentation:

• vimeo
• blip.tv
• youtube

All the videos are released under a CC BY license and you can download them in their raw format at either vimeo or blip.tv. Similarly, we will be posting the unedited presentations to Archive.org in the coming days. You can also see a Flickr photoset of the night.

CC Salons are one of the best ways we have found for people to better understand how CC works and what we do - hopefully by taking these presentations online, they can educate an even wider audience.