dublab & Creative Commons Launch “Into Infinity”

Eric Steuer, August 26th, 2008

Ready-to-Remix Art and Music Exhibit Online Now; Physical Installations to Follow

San Francisco, CA, USA and Los Angeles, CA, USA — August 26, 2008

Today, dublab and Creative Commons announced the launch of Into Infinity, an art and music exhibit jointly produced by the two nonprofit organizations. The online version of the exhibit is online now at http://intoinfinity.org; physical installations are being planned for Winter 2008 and throughout 2009.

Into Infinity comprises a collection of ready-to-remix 12-inch circular artworks and 8-second music loops created by a vast array of artists from around the world. Contributors include 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). New submissions will be added to the exhibit regularly.

All of Into Infinity’s works are available for download under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial copyright license. This license gives the public the legal right to share, remix, and reuse all of the pieces of Into Infinity for noncommercial purposes. For the full terms of this Creative Commons license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/.

Into Infinity’s producers invite people to download the exhibit’s works and use them as source material for their own creations.

“Into Infinity is all about embracing the infinite possibilities of art and music,” says Mark McNeill, dublab’s founder. “These works are available to everyone in the world to reshape, remix, and redesign as many times over as possible. We can’t wait to see all of the creative ways people use them.”

“Sampling, remixing, and repurposing other people’s work has resulted in some of the greatest art of our times,” says Eric Steuer, Creative Commons’ creative director. “With this project, we want to make the statement that this sort of creativity should not only be legal, but also explicitly encouraged.”

Into Infinity’s producers add that new works made from assets offered online will be eligible for submission to the exhibit.

“As the show regenerates and expands, we’ll incorporate the best remixes into the show for display online and in our real-world exhibitions,” says McNeill.

About dublab

dublab is a nonprofit creative collective devoted to the growth of positive music, arts, and culture. At the core of the organization’s operations is a web radio station that broadcasts several streams of dublab’s signature “future roots” music. dublab has been broadcasting online since 1999 and now reaches more than 300,000 international listeners monthly. dublab’s creative actions include art exhibits, film projects, event production, and record releases. Into Infinity follows along the vibrant conceptual curve of dublab’s previous art projects: Up Our Sleeve, The Dream Scene, and Patchwork. Information about all of these projects is available at http://dublab.com/artaction.

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, 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
eric at creativecommons dot org

Mark McNeill
Founder, dublab
frosty at dublab dot com

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Flickr Cofounder Caterina Fake Joins Creative Commons Board

Eric Steuer, August 25th, 2008

San Francisco, CA, USA – August 25, 2008

Creative Commons announced today that Flickr cofounder Caterina Fake has joined its board of directors.

Fake cofounded the massively popular photo sharing site and community in early 2004. Flickr was one of the first media-sharing sites to embrace Creative Commons licensing as a way to encourage users to make their work available to the public for free and legal use. Since the site’s inception, Flickr’s community of photographers have licensed over 75 million photos to the public under Creative Commons copyright licenses, making it one of the biggest sources of permissively-licensed material on the Internet. CC-licensed Flickr photos are now used in a variety of projects and publications, ranging from Wikipedia to The New York Times.

After Flickr was acquired by Yahoo in 2005, Fake helped develop Yahoo’s social search products, ran its Technology Development Group, and founded Brickhouse, a rapid development environment for new products. She left Yahoo in June 2008 and subsequently took on the role of Chief Product Officer for startup Hunch. Fake is also a writer and artist, and was Salon.com’s art director prior to founding Flickr.

“Creativity flourishes when ideas are freed from legal impediments, when people are able to create and give,” Fake said. “In both my personal and professional work, I’ve seen Creative Commons remove obstacles, allowing the best of culture and ideas to be freely shared. I hope to be able to contribute to Creative Commons’ already significant success.”

“We’re thrilled that Caterina is joining the CC board,” said Joi Ito, Creative Commons’ CEO. “Her vast experience in business and social media make her a perfect addition to our team. We’re all honored and excited to be able to take advantage of her expertise and abilities to advance Creative Commons’ mission of increasing access and reducing barriers to collaboration.”

Fake has won many awards, including BusinessWeek’s Best Leaders of 2005, Forbes‘ 2005 E-Gang, Fast Company’s Fast 50, and Red Herring’s 20 Entrepreneurs Under 35. She was named to the Time 100, Time’s list of the world’s 100 most influential people. She sits on the boards of Etsy and Hunch, and advises a variety of startup companies.

Fake joins a board of directors that includes cyberlaw and intellectual property experts James Boyle, Michael Carroll, Lawrence Lessig, Eric Saltzman, and Molly Shaffer Van Houweling, as well as Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, education innovator Esther Wojcicki, filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, Public Knowledge founder Laurie Racine, and MIT computer science professor Hal Abelson.

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, 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 creativecommons.org.

Contact

Eric Steuer
Creative Director, Creative Commons
eric at creativecommons.org

Press Kit

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THE “IP” Court Supports Enforceability of CC Licenses

Brian Rowe, August 13th, 2008

San Francisco, CA, USA — August 13, 2008

The United States Court of Appeals held, in Jacobsen v. Katzer, that “Open Source” or public license licensors are entitled to copyright infringement relief.

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), the leading intellectual property court in the United States, has upheld a free copyright license, while explicitly pointing to the work of Creative Commons and others. The Court held that free licenses such as the CC licenses set conditions (rather than covenants) on the use of copyrighted work. As a result, licensors using public licenses are able to seek injunctive relief for alleged copyright infringement, rather than being limited to traditional contract remedies.

Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig explained the theory of all free software, open source, and Creative Commons licenses upheld by the court: “When you violate the condition, the license disappears, meaning you’re simply a copyright infringer. This is the theory of the GPL and all CC licenses. Put precisely, whether or not they are also contracts, they are copyright licenses which expire if you fail to abide by the terms of the license.” Lessig said the ruling provided “important clarity and certainty by a critically important US Court.”

In August of 2007 the Northern District of California ruled that breach of certain terms of the open source license at issue, the Artistic License, is a mere contract violation and is not a form of infringement. Today’s ruling vacated the district court’s decision and affirmed the availability of remedies based on copyright law for violations of open licenses. The federal court noted that ignoring attribution requirements contained in the license caused reputation and economic harm to the original licensor. This opinion demonstrates a strong understanding of a basic economic principles of the internet; attribution is a valuable economic right in the information economy. We strongly recommend reading the opinion.

Creative Commons filed an Amici (“friends of the court“) brief with the CAFC in this case. This brief was cosponsored by the Linux Foundation, The Open Source Initiative, Software Freedom Law Center, the Perl Foundation and Wikimedia Foundation. Significant pro bono work on this brief was provided by Anthony T. Falzone and Christopher K. Ridder of Stanford’s Center for Internet & Society.

Links

PDF of the Decision
http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions/08-1001.pdf

PDF of Amici Brief
http://jmri.sourceforge.net/k/docket/cafc-pi-1/ccc_brf.pdf

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, 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.