Creative Commons

Press Releases

2003 May

Creative Commons and Negativland Begin Work on Free Sampling and Collage

Matt Haughey, May 30th, 2003

The Silicon Valley Nonprofit Also Rolls Out New Model for Community
Participation

Palo Alto, California, USA - May 29, 2003 - Creative Commons, a nonprofit
dedicated to building a layer of reasonable copyright, announced today
that it would begin development of the Sampling License, a copyright tool
designed to let artists encourage the creative transformation of their
work, for profit or otherwise. Leading the public discussion and
development of the license is Negativland, practitioners of “found sound”
music as well as other forms of media manipulation.

Glenn Otis Brown, Creative Commons Executive Director, commented: “The
Sampling License is among the most exciting projects we’ve taken on so
far. The technology and culture of the Net already facilitate the
remixing of culture. The law does not, so we’re helping it catch up by
remixing copyright itself.”

When completed, the Sampling License will allow people to create collage
art and “mash-ups” - as well as other art forms based on re-used
materials - from licensed works. Like all of Creative Commons copyright
tools, the Sampling License will be made available for free to the public
from the organization’s website.

“There’s a crucial difference between bootlegging another’s work and the
creative transformation of it.” Negativland said. “Collage is a technique
that has an undisputed currency in virtually all art forms today.
Originally, copyright was designed to prohibit the piracy or bootlegging
of complete works; that was and remains a worthy goal. But copyright is
now also routinely used to prohibit collage, as if it were no different
from outright piracy. With Creative Commons, we’re trying to build a
license that will allow copyright holders to invite transformation of
their works - even for money - while preventing this sort of verbatim
bootlegging.”

Negativland is Creative Commons’ first Project Lead, a role central to
the organization’s new community development model. As Creative Commons
identifies new projects, Project Leads will drive public discussion from
the Creative Commons website.

“Creative Commons is a public laboratory for new ideas,” said Lawrence
Lessig, Chairman of Creative Commons and professor of law at Stanford.
“By having real-life practitioners like Negativland lead volunteer
discussion groups, we’ve come up with a nice way to build on the great
ideas among our supporters.”

Creative Commons will soon announce new Project Leads for an Education
License, a Developing Nations License, and others. The nonprofit plans to
extend the Project Leads model into technological developments as well.

More about Creative Commons

A nonprofit corporation, Creative Commons promotes the creative re-use of
intellectual works - whether owned or public domain. It is sustained by
the generous support of The Center for the Public Domain and the John D.
and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Creative Commons is based at
Stanford Law School, where it shares staff, space, and inspiration with
the school’s Center for Internet and Society.

For general information, visit http://creativecommons.org.

To follow the progress of the Sampling License discussion group, visit
http://creativecommons.org/discuss.

About Negativland

The experimental music and art collective known as Negativland has been
recording music/audio/collage works since 1979, producing a weekly 3-hour
radio show (”Over The Edge”) since 1981, hosting a World Wide Web site
since 1995, and performing live on occasional tours throughout America
and Europe. They have released 15 CDs, one video and one book (Fair Use:
The Story Of The Letter U And The Numeral 2) since 1980.

Negativland’s particular musical practice incorporates found sounds and
musical samples into their collage compositions. This contemporary
interest in collage (a hallmark of 20th Century art of all kinds) stems
in part from fact that art and commerce have now merged to a degree where
corporations finance, groom, direct, filter, manufacture and distribute
almost everything we know of as “culture.” This inevitably uncomfortable
partnership of art and commerce to produce “mass culture” means that art
is no longer an independent creation. It is now instigated, owned,
operated, and promoted by administrators, subsumed by demographic
targeting, and subjected to economically inspired “guidelines” for
creation.

For more information, visit http://negativland.com.

More about the Project Leads model at http://creativecommons.org/discuss.

Contact

Glenn Otis Brown
Executive Director (Palo Alto)
1.650.723.7572 (tel)
1.415.336.1433 (cell)
glenn AT creativecommons.org

Negativland
dj AT webbnet.com
markhosler AT charter.net

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Creative Commons Welcomes Filmmaker Davis Guggenheim to Board of Directors

Matt Haughey, May 29th, 2003

Austin and Palo Alto, USA — March 11, 2003 — Davis Guggenheim, a celebrated director and producer of both documentary and dramatic film and television, joined the board of directors of Creative Commons this week.

“Davis brings a unique and invaluable perspective to our team,” said Lawrence Lessig, Chairman of Creative Commons and Professor of Law at Stanford.
“His is that rare combination of creative talent: critically acclaimed, commercially successful, and public-minded.”

Lessig announced Guggenheim’s joining Creative Commons during a standing-room-only keynote address at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas this week.

Guggenheim joins a board of directors that includes cyberlaw and intellectual property experts James Boyle, Michael Carroll, Molly Shaffer Van Houweling, and Lawrence Lessig, MIT computer science professor Hal Abelson, lawyer-turned-documentary filmmaker-turned-cyberlaw expert Eric Saltzman, and public domain Web publisher Eric Eldred.

More about Davis Guggenheim

In 1999, Guggenheim undertook an ambitious project documenting the challenging first year of several novice public school teachers. Two films resulted from this intensive immersion in the Los Angeles public school system: The First Year and Teach. Both films sought to address the tremendous need for qualified teachers in California and nationwide and to create awareness of this crisis — as well as to inspire a new generation to become teachers. In 2002, Davis received a Peabody Award for The First Year.

Guggenheim was an Executive Producer on Training Day and directed a feature film called Gossip, both for Warner Bros. His television directing credits include recently completed episodes of “The Shield,” “Alias,” and “24″ as well as such critically acclaimed programs as “NYPD Blue,” “ER,” and “Party of Five.” He is currently producer and director of the upcoming HBO series “Deadwood.”

Guggenheim’s other documentary films include Norton Simon: A Man and His Art, produced for permanent exhibition at the Norton Simon Museum, and JFK and the Imprisoned Child, produced for permanent exhibition at the John F. Kennedy Library. Guggenheim wrote and edited many films with his father, four-time Academy Award winner Charles Guggenheim. Davis graduated from Brown University in 1986.

More about Creative Commons

A non-profit corporation, Creative Commons promotes the creative re-use of intellectual works — whether owned or public domain. It is sustained by the generous support of The Center for the Public Domain and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Creative Commons is based at Stanford Law School, where it shares staff, space, and inspiration with the school’s Center for Internet and Society. For more information, visit http://creativecommons.org.

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