Lawrence Lessig to Give Final Presentation on Free Culture and Copyright

Eric Steuer, January 29th, 2008

Lawrence Lessig to Give Final Presentation on Free Culture and Copyright

San Francisco, CA, USA — January 29, 2008

Creative Commons founder and Stanford professor Lawrence Lessig will give his final presentation on free culture, copyright, and the future of ideas at Stanford’s Memorial Auditorium on January 31st, 2008 at 1pm. After 10 years of enlightening and inspiring audiences around the world with multimedia presentations that inspired the Free Culture movement, Professor Lessig is moving on from the copyright debate and setting his sights on corruption in Washington.

The presentation is being recorded for the upcoming feature film Basement Tapes: The Making of a Pirate Movie, a documentary about copyright in the digital age (see http://www.opensourcecinema.org). Over four years in the making, the film is co-produced by the National Film Board of Canada and the award-winning production house EyeSteelFilm.

For more information about the event, please visit http://events.stanford.edu/events/125/12594/.

About Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001, that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works, whether owned or in the public domain. Through its free copyright licenses, Creative Commons offers authors, artists, scientists, and educators the choice of a flexible range of protections and freedoms that build upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to enable a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach. Creative Commons was built with and is sustained by the generous support of organizations including the Center for the Public Domain, the Omidyar Network, The Rockefeller Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, as well as members of the public. For more information about Creative Commons, visit http://creativecommons.org.

Contact

Brett Gaylor
Director, Open Source Cinema / Basement Tapes
brett@opensourcecinema.org
514-937-4893

Mike Linksvayer
Vice President, Creative Commons
ml@creativecommons.org
415-369-8480

Press Kit

Philippine Launch Celebration: a vibrant member of the global commons

Michelle Thorne, January 13th, 2008

San Francisco, CA, USA and Pasay City, Metro Manila, Philippines — January 14, 2008

Following the unveiling of the Philippine localized Creative Commons licenses in December, citizens of the archipelago will gather today in Manila to celebrate in full the public launch of its completed licenses and the country’s strides towards fostering the global commons movement.

Attorney Jaime N. Soriano, Creative Commons Philippines Project Lead and Executive Director of the e-Law Center, announces that the launch activities are scheduled to take place on January 14, 2008 from 1:00pm to 9:00pm at the Arellano University School of Law.

The event will consist of three parts: 1) an orientation to projects by stakeholders in the Philippine Commons, with the aim of developing a local collaboration promoting alternative licensing, free and open source software, open education, and free culture; 2) the public presentation of the CC Philippine Licensing Suite Version 3.0, which has been available online since its soft launch December 15, 2007; and 3) the CC Philippines Concert featuring more than six local rock bands.

Atty. Soriano and Atty. Michael Vernon M. Guerrero, Deputy Project Lead of CC Philippines, are both pleased to also announce the public launching of the Philippine Commons website, available at www.philippinecommons.org, and the adaption of a CC license to the LawPhil Project, the most popular and comprehensive website on Philippine law and jurisprudence.

The localized CC licenses will also be applied to the Arellano Law and Policy Review; the law school’s IT Law Journal, whose first quarter issue features all articles devoted to Creative Commons; and the original works of the Arellano Law Singers. These materials will be presented and shared at ACIA: International Workshop on Asia and Commons in the Information Age, held on January 19-20 in Taipei, Taiwan.

About Arellano University School of Law

The law school Cayetano S. Arellano, a non-stock non-profit institution, is named after the First Chief Justice of the Philippine Supreme Court and established in 1938. Today it boasts more than six decades of providing quality legal education. The foremost objective of the school is to create global lawyers: practitioners who are deeply educated in the law, practice-ready, and devoted to service not only in the local but also the international community. Arellano Law prides itself for being one of the most populous law schools in the Philippines with faculty members who have distinguished themselves in law practice, the judiciary, government service, and the academe. The law school furthermore is one of the few schools in the Philippines that produces the most number of lawyers in the annual bar examinations administered by the Supreme Court.

For more information, please visit http://www.arellanolaw.edu/.

About the e-Law Center at Arellano University School of Law

The e-Law Center was founded in November 2002 under the auspices of the Arellano University School of Law, following the launching of the school’s LAWPHiL Project, which is considered one of the most popular on-line and electronic databases of Philippine law and jurisprudence that is accessible for free to the general public. The Center is pursuing projects in research, publication, policy initiatives and advocacy, capability building, academic support, and linkages in the field of information and communication technology as it affects the Philippine legal system.

About Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001, that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works, whether owned or in the public domain. Through its free copyright licenses, Creative Commons offers authors, artists, scientists, and educators the choice of a flexible range of protections and freedoms that build upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to enable a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach. Creative Commons was built with and is sustained by the generous support of organizations including the Center for the Public Domain, the Omidyar Network, The Rockefeller Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, as well as members of the public.

For more information about Creative Commons, visit http://creativecommons.org.

Contact

Dr. Catharina Maracke
Director
Creative Commons International, Creative Commons
catharina [at] creativecommons [dot] org
Press Kit
http://creativecommons.org/presskit
http://creativecommons.org/international/ph/

Creative Commons Announces Pledges Made to Fulfill “5×5” Funding Challenge

Eric Steuer, January 2nd, 2008

CREATIVE COMMONS ANNOUNCES PLEDGES MADE TO FULFILL “5×5” FUNDING CHALLENGE
Pledges include promises of support from the Hewlett Foundation, Omidyar Network, Google, Mozilla, Red Hat, and the Creative Commons board

San Francisco, CA, USA — January 2, 2008

Today, Creative Commons announced that pledges have been made to meet the Hewlett Foundation’s “5×5” funding challenge to Creative Commons. The 5×5 challenge, issued in honor of Creative Commons’ fifth birthday, called for the organization to find five funders to each promise five years of support at $500,000 per year.

In addition to the Hewlett Foundation, Creative Commons received pledges of $500,000 in yearly support for five years from Omidyar Network, as well as from an anonymous European trust. Google has pledged $300,000 in support renewable for five years, while Mozilla and Red Hat have each pledged to contribute $100,000 annually for five years.

The final block of support comes from the board of Creative Commons, which has promised to personally raise or contribute $500,000 to the organization annually for five years.

“I couldn’t be more pleased to make this announcement,” said Lawrence Lessig, CEO of Creative Commons. “The generous support of these foundations, companies, and individuals ensures that Creative Commons will be able to continue working to build and support a freer culture for years to come. I cannot express how fortunate we feel to have the backing of this wonderful community.”

“Omidyar Network is thrilled to support Creative Commons in its efforts to develop a copyright system that values flexibility, innovation, and protection for both content creators and users,” said Will Fitzpatrick, Corporate Counsel of Omidyar Network. “We believe that there needs to be a simple way for people to legally and freely access, share, and use information, and that Creative Commons’ efforts are crucial to reaching this goal.”

“Google is proud to support Creative Commons and its mission of offering authors, artists, scientists, and educators open and flexible ways to make their creative works widely available,” said Kent Walker, Google’s General Counsel. “At Google, we help people find, organize, and share information. Creative Commons plays an important role in facilitating the legal and creative re-use of much of this great content.”

“Mozilla is excited to support the work of Creative Commons with our 5×5 pledge,” said Mitchell Baker, Chair of the Mozilla Foundation. “Creative Commons has empowered people everywhere to help build a participatory Web by making it easy to share as well as protect one’s creative work.”

“Red Hat’s dream to act as a force for democratizing content and the mission of Creative Commons are a natural fit for each other,” said Max Spevack, Fedora Project Leader. “Red Hat hopes that this can be one of many opportunities to support Creative Commons in the coming years.”

About Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001, that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works, whether owned or in the public domain. Through its free copyright licenses, Creative Commons offers authors, artists, scientists, and educators the choice of a flexible range of protections and freedoms that build upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to enable a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach. Creative Commons was built with and is sustained by the generous support of organizations including the Center for the Public Domain, the Omidyar Network, The Rockefeller Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, as well as members of the public. For more information about Creative Commons, visit http://creativecommons.org.

Contact

Eric Steuer
Creative Director, Creative Commons
Email

Press Kit

http://creativecommons.org/presskit