REMINDER: CC Salon LA Next Week (9/3/08): Xeni Jardin and GOOD Magazine

Cameron Parkins, August 27th, 2008

A friendly reminder that we are hosting the latest CC Salon LA next week (9/3/08) at the FOUND LA Gallery in Silverlake (Google map) between 7:30PM-9:30PM. Joining us will be Xeni Jardin, Tech Culture Journalist and co-editor at Boing Boing, and Casey Caplowe, Creative Director of GOOD Magazine.

Both will discuss how CC, and ‘openness’ in general, has been employed in their respective undertakings, touching on the the successes they have had as well as obstacles they have had to overcome, specifically in regards to traditional and non-traditional journalism. Both will be available for Q&A after their presentations. 

Follow the event on Upcoming, mark attending on Facebook, and make sure to come down and hear from two exemplary members of the CC community on their experiences with open licensing. As always, there will be free (as in beer) drinks for the entire night.

UPDATE: We are pleased to announce that the wonderful sounds of Vosotros will be heard at the Salon in between presenters, giving you yet another reason to attend!

dublab and Creative Commons launch Into Infinity

Eric Steuer, August 26th, 2008

I’m happy to announce that dublab and Creative Commons have launched Into Infinity, a CC-licensed art and music project themed around the infinite possibilities of creative reuse. The online exhibition is available now; physical installations are being planned for Winter 2008 and throughout 2009.

Earlier this year, we distributed 12″ circular canvases to a collection of visual artists. We also commissioned an array of musicians to create eight-second audio loops. We went through all of the submissions and posted the best online, including pieces by world-renowned graffiti artist Kofie, 2008 Whitney Biennial alumni Lucky Dragons, Anticon collective member Odd Nosdam, and electronic musicians Flying Lotus and Dntel (AKA Jimmy Tamborello of The Postal Service).

Each time you refresh the site’s exhibition page, you’ll get a new art and loop combination. All of the images and sounds are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license and (as you may have guessed) we strongly endorse the sharing and remixing of this project. You can download the pieces individually via the links on the exhibition page; you can also download the entire project (including the site’s source code) all at once via the downloads page.

Stay tuned for updates, because we’re talking to new artists and musicians all the time and we’ll be adding new pieces to the exhibition regularly. Soon, we’ll also issue a formal call for remixes of Into Infinity’s works, many of which we’ll include in future versions of the show.

You can read a bit more about the project in the press release we issued earlier today.

Solution is Open Textbooks

Jane Park, August 26th, 2008

In January, the Student PIRGs launched the Make Textbooks Affordable campaign “to encourage faculty to adopt open educational resources in their classrooms” in the form of open textbooks and other classroom materials. Read ccLearn’s post on it from January.

Recently, the Student PIRGs released their findings after examining digital textbooks and surveying 500 students in the following report: “Course Correction: How Digital Textbooks are Off Track and How to Set Them Straight“. Nicole Allen, the campaign’s director, writes:

“I think this report helps draw a brighter line between the good and bad of digital textbooks. I think open textbooks too often get lumped into the overarching category of digital books, which does not do them justice as a solution.  We hope it will help refocus all of the momentum for digital textbooks toward the right kind of digital textbooks - open.”

The report highlights the defects of e-books offered currently by commercial publishers. (See the LA Times and The Wired Campus articles.) In addition to being expensive, they are accessible by students for only a limited time and cost a great deal for those who would like to print them. Open textbooks, on the other hand, are free and downloadable, giving students access to their own copy forever in addition to the abilities to reuse, remix or repurpose them under the terms of an open license.

The report itself is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA. You can download a copy.

One example of a commercial entity releasing an open textbook: Quirk eMarketing released “The Essential Guide to Online Marketing” last month under CC BY-NC-ND.

ABC (Australia) Launches CC-Friendly Social Media Site “Pool”

Cameron Parkins, August 26th, 2008

Great news coming in from our friends at CC Australia - the ABC, Australia’s national public broadcaster, just launched a CC-friendly social media space, Pool, which is designed to provide a “place for creative content makers to upload their work, publish and collaborate.” Pool offers users the ability to upload their content - whatever the medium - under the full suite of CC licences (as well as All Rights Reserved) for other users to reuse and share. From the CCau:

As Pool’s Executive Producer, Sherre Delys, puts it in this interview with Radio National’s The Media Report, the CC licensing means that “POOL starts to be a place where you can connect with others, and so for some that will take the form of online mentoring and skill-sharing; for others it’s a collaborative work space, they can download each other’s work, re-mix and re-use, and it also includes collaboration between ABC producers and audiences, and I think that’s really critical.” And in a first for the national broadcaster, Sherre also talks about Pool’s intention to release ABC archival footage for remix by it’s audience, sometime in the near future.

Community Generated HowTos

Fred Benenson, August 26th, 2008

Molly Kleinman, the “multi-purpose” librarian, has started putting together some easy to digest HowTos on Creative Commons. In HowTo #1 she details some very reasonable examples of proper attribution:

An Ideal Attribution
This video features the song “Play Your Part (Pt.1)” by Girl Talk, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license. © 2008, Greg Gillis.

A Realistic Attribution
Photo by mollyali, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

A Derivative Work Attribution
This is a video adaptation of the novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license. Copyright © 2003 Cory Doctorow.

In HowTo #2, Molly gives some examples to demonstrate our NonCommercial license:

1. Using an illustration on a birthday party invitation = Non-commercial
   Using an illustration on a charity auction invitation = Commercial
2. Using a song as the soundtrack to a collection of home videos for the family reunion = Non-commercial
   Using a song as the soundtrack to an advertisement for a Family Reunion Travel deal = Commercial
3. Using a photo on a personal website that has no ads = Non-commercial
   Using a photo on an ad-supported website = Commercial

Visit Molly’s site for more updates on the HowTos and other news relevant to open content and librarians.