CC Guatemala: “Free to Choose, To Create, To Innovate, To Learn, To Imagine”

Michelle Thorne, October 22nd, 2008

[Text in English and Spanish]

Guatemala City, Guatemala and Berlin, Germany

On October 23 in Guatemala City, the University Francisco Marroquin will host an event to celebrate the localized Creative Commons licenses in Guatemala. Jimmy Wales, Creative Commons Board member, will hold the keynote address “Free to choose, to create, to innovate, to learn, to imagine” at a ceremony in the Auditorium Juan Bautista Gutierrez.

The Creative Commons Guatemala team is lead by Renata Avila, who coordinated the porting process and public consultation with local and international legal experts. At the launch, CC Guatemala’s institutional host, the University Francisco Marroquin and its New Media Center, will release a vast amount of material and education resources under the Guatemalan licenses. The Lienzo de Quauhquechollan: A Chronicle of Conquest will be available under a localized CC license as well. Plaza de la Libertad will host an exhibition Xelajú Lights at the launch venue.

Furthermore, the region’s first orphan works rescue program will be initiated by the Ludwig von Mises Library of the University Francisco Marroquín. The program will scan twentieth-century Central American works in cooperation with the Internet Archive.

The porting of the Guatemalan licenses is an important stride towards strengthening and building the global commons. The launch precedes the Latam Commons 2008 conference in Santiago, Chile, on November 19-21. The conference, focusing on the public domain and “open licensing, open technologies, and the future of education in Latin America” will be hosted by ccLearn and Derechos Digitales, and attended by CC Project Leads, ccLearn staff, and interested stakeholders from Latin America.

About University Francisco Marroquin and the New Media Centre

The University Francisco Marroquín`s mission is to teach and disseminate ethical, legal, and economic principles of a society for free and responsible persons. With the CC licenses, it will help creators and users liberate their creativity and share their knowledge and imagination without the burden of unnecessary legal obstacles.

Its New Media department, founded in 2001, was created to assist faculty members, researchers, and students in the use, creation, and management of digital resources that complement their academic work. It actively assist departments and professors who wish to incorporate digital media into their courses by teaching various short courses in video and multimedia production. These developments permit greater faculty and student participation in the creation and use of teaching resources and mean that digital video is becoming an important tool in the provision of course material at UFM. For more information, please visit http://newmedia.ufm.edu/.

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/gt

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CREATIVE COMMONS EN GUATEMALA: “LIBERTAD DE ELEGIR, CREAR, INNOVAR, APRENDER, IMAGINAR”

Guatemala, Guatemala y Berlín, Alemania

EL 23 de Octubre en la ciudad de Guatemala, la Universidad Francisco Marroquín será el anfitrión del lanzamiento de las licencias de Creative Commons en Guatemala. Jimmy Wales, miembro de la mesa directiva de Creative Commons, dará el discurso de apertura del la conferencia bajo el tema “Libertad de Elegir, Crear, Innovar, Aprender, Imaginar” en el Auditorio Juan Bautista Gutiérrez.

El equipo de Creative Commons Guatemala es dirigido por Renata Ávila, quien coordinó el proceso de adaptación y discusión pública con las entidades locales y expertos en derecho internacional. En el evento del lanzamiento de las licencias, la institución anfitriona de CC Guatemala, la Universidad Francisco Marroquín y el departamento New Media, dará a conocer una gran cantidad de material y recursos educativos bajo las licencias de Guatemala. El Lienzo de Quauhquechollan: Crónica de la conquista estará disponible también bajo una licencia de CC. La Plaza de la Libertad será la sede de la exposición de Luces de Xelajú en el evento del lanzamiento.

Además, el primer programa de rescate de obras huérfanas de la región será iniciado por la Biblioteca de la Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Ludwig von Mises. El programa digitalizará trabajos del siglo XX de América Latina en cooperación con el archivo de Internet .

El proceso de adaptación de las licencias Guatemaltecas es un importante paso hacia el fortalecimiento y fomento de “Global Commons.” Del 19 al 21 de Noviembre, después del evento del lanzamiento, se llevará a cabo la conferencia de Latam Commons 2008 en Santiago de Chile. La conferencia enfocada en el dominio público y “open licensing, open technologies, y el futuro de la educación en América Latina” será organizada por CCLearn y Derechos Digitales, a la que asistirán líderes del proyecto de CC en Latino América, miembros de CCLearn y otros representantes de América Latina.

Acerca de la Universidad Francisco Marroquín y el departamento New Media

A misión de la Universidad Francisco Marroquín es la enseñanza y difusión de los principios éticos, jurídicos y económicos de una sociedad de personas libres y responsables.

El departamento New Media, fundado en el 2001, fue creado con el objeto de apoyar a los miembros de las facultades, investigadores y estudiantes en el uso, creación y manejo de los recursos digitales que complementan y sirven para documentar su trabajo académico. Asiste activamente a los departamentos y profesores que deseen incorporar medios digitales en sus cursos mediante la enseñanza de diversos cursos de corta duración en vídeo y producción de multimedia. Estos recursos permiten una mayor participación a los catedráticos y estudiantes en la creación y uso de otros recursos relacionados con la enseñanza, y el video digital se está convirtiendo en una herramienta importante en la provisión de material docente en la UFM. http://newmedia.ufm.edu/

Sobre Creative Commons

Creative Commons es una organización sin ánimo de lucro. Fundada en 2001, promueve la reutilización creativa de obras intelectuales y artísticas, ya sean propias o de dominio público. A través de sus licencias exentas de costo, Creative Commons ofrece a autores, artistas, científicos, y educadores una flexible variedad de protecciones y libertades bajo el concepto tradicional de “Todos los derechos reservados” para permitir voluntariamente “Algunos derechos reservados”. Creative Commons nace y recibe un generoso apoyo de organizaciones, entre ellas el Centro para el Dominio Público, el Omidyar Network, The Rockefeller Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, y The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, además del público general. Para obtener más información sobre Creative Commons, puede visitar http://creativecommons.org.

Jesse Dylan’s “A Shared Culture” Video Released to Celebrate Creative Commons 2008 Fundraising Campaign

Eric Steuer, October 15th, 2008

Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization focused on building a body of openly shareable and reusable creative work, today announced the launch of its 2008 fundraising campaign. Information about how to support Creative Commons is available at http://support.creativecommons.org/.

To celebrate the campaign, Creative Commons today released “A Shared Culture,” a short video by renowned filmmaker Jesse Dylan. Known for helming a variety of films, music videos, and the Emmy Award-winning “Yes We Can” Barack Obama campaign video collaboration with rapper will.i.am, Dylan created “A Shared Culture” to help spread the word about the Creative Commons mission. The video is available online to watch and download at http://creativecommons.org/asharedculture.

In the video, some of the leading thinkers behind Creative Commons describe how the organization is helping “save the world from failed sharing” through free tools that enable creators to easily make their work available to the public for legal sharing and remix. Dylan puts the Creative Commons system into action by punctuating the interview footage with dozens of photos that have been offered to the public for use under CC licenses. Similarly, he used two CC-licensed instrumental pieces by Nine Inch Nails as the video’s soundtrack music. These tracks, “17 Ghosts II” and “21 Ghosts III,” come from the Nine Inch Nails album Ghosts I-IV, which was released earlier this year under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license.

“I wanted to give people a clear understanding of how Creative Commons works and why it’s an important system,” says Dylan. “I think the best way to do that is by actually putting to use some of the great stuff that’s been made available to the world under CC licenses. The images and music in the video were made by people all around the world who chose to publish their work in a way that says ‘Hey, see this thing I made? You can take it and use it to make something else. I’m giving you the legal right to use it, because I don’t think that copyright should be something that stands in the way of creativity.’ Without the amazing work of Nine Inch Nails and all of the photographers whose images I used, this kind of video simply wouldn’t have been possible to make.”

“A Shared Culture” is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license, meaning that anyone in the world can legally share, use, and remix it, as long as they abide by the license’s conditions. (The terms of the BY-NC-SA license are available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/). On its website and via LegalTorrents, Creative Commons has offered the video in several formats (ranging from Quicktime to Ogg Theora) and has provided photographer attribution through ImageStamper.

As part of the fundraising campaign, Creative Commons is calling on members of the public to use “A Shared Culture” as the basis for other videos that describe how CC licenses have enabled legal access, collaboration, and participation around the world.

“We hope that Jesse Dylan’s amazing video is just the first in a vast collection of videos and projects that address the idea of ‘A Shared Culture,’” says Joi Ito, Creative Commons’ CEO. “Take what Jesse has done and use it to make your own video. There are millions of CC-licensed songs, images, and video clips out there that you can use. Shoot some of your own interview footage that features your friends and people in your local communities talking about these issues. Take everything that you have at hand and use it to create, customize, remix, and share. Show the world that copyright should be a tool for fostering innovation, and not a barrier to creative progress.”

“We’re thrilled that Jesse made this amazing video to show the strength and importance of Creative Commons,” says Melissa Reeder, Creative Commons’ development manager. “We hope it inspires the public to create their own work, to use CC-licenses, and support Creative Commons financially during our fundraising drive and beyond.”

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

Melissa Reeder
Development Manager, Creative Commons
melissa at creativecommons dot org

Creative Commons Launches “CC Network” with Annual Campaign

Melissa Reeder, October 15th, 2008

Today Creative Commons launched the Creative Commons Network, as part of their annual fundraising campaign.

The CC Network offers users a profile and web badge, providing a means to express support of Creative Commons. The site also acts as a testbed for digital copyright registry technology. CC Network users may list their Creative Commons licensed works on their CC Network profile. The profile and web badge include metadata corresponding to the license used, allowing applications to consume information about the provenance of licensed works and licensors. Creative Commons’ own website is one such application and now displays provenance information on license web pages if available.

Creative Commons CTO Nathan Yergler said “The CC Network is where the semantic rubber meets the web road”, referring to the high expectations and underwhelming adoption of Semantic Web technologies. Yergler continued “With the CC Network we’re leveraging everything we’ve learned over the past five years about metadata on the web, including the new RDFa standard, along with the work of many other groups, including FOAF, POWDER, and SIOC.”

CC Network accounts also come with an OpenID login, allowing users to login to sites that support OpenID via a trusted provider. The CC Network aims to raise the bar for OpenID providers by taking all steps necessary to protect users’ privacy. “An OpenID provider knows every site a user logs into via OpenID, so it is important for a user to be able to trust their OpenID provider. We hope users think Creative Commons is trustworthy, but we’re also taking steps to bake user protections into the CC Network’s OpenID provider implementation, from the technology to terms of service to explanation of the risks and benefits to users” said security expert Ben Adida, a technology advisor to Creative Commons.

All of the standards the CC Network builds on are open, and the code that runs the site is free software. “The CC Network launch is a step toward a system of interoperable digital copyright registries as open as the web itself. Open registries allow users to discover more information about who’s licensing content, and as such are a necessary complement to our open copyright licenses” explained Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito.

CC Network accounts are offered as a benefit for annual CC supporters at a level of $50 or above ($25 for students). Creative Commons’ annual fundraising campaign, themed “Build the Commons”, has a goal of raising $500,000 as well as encouraging CC supporters to lead by example, educate others about the value of the CC approach to openness and access, and to help launch the CC Network.

Please visit the Build the Commons campaign webpage, for more information.

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, please visit the Creative Commons’ website.

Contact

Melissa Reeder, Development Manager, Creative Commons,
melissa@creativecommons.org

Press Kit

Creative Commons Launches Study of “Noncommercial Use”

Eric Steuer, September 18th, 2008

San Francisco, California, USA — September 18, 2008

The nonprofit organization Creative Commons has launched a research study that will explore differences between commercial and noncommercial uses of content, as those uses are understood among various communities and in connection with a wide variety of content. Generous support for the study has been provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Creative Commons provides free copyright licenses to creators who want to give the public certain permissions to use their works, in advance and without the need for one-to-one contact between the user and the creator. “Noncommercial” or “NC” is one of four different license terms that creators may choose to apply to their Creative Commons-licensed content. Works distributed under a Creative Commons license including the NC term may be used by anyone for any purpose that is not “primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation,” provided the use also complies with the other terms of the license. Works distributed under a Creative Commons license without the NC term may additionally be used for commercial purposes, an option that promotes creative reuse in a broader range of contexts.

“The study has direct relevance to Creative Commons’ mission of providing free, flexible copyright licenses that are easy to understand and simple to use,” said Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito. “The NC term is a popular option for creators choosing a Creative Commons license, and that tells us the term meets a need. However, as exponentially increasing numbers of works are made available under CC licenses, we want to provide additional information for creators about the contexts in which the NC term may further or impede their intentions with respect to the works they choose to share, and we want to make sure that users clearly understand those intentions. We expect the study findings will help us do a better job of explaining the licenses and to improve them, where possible. We also hope the findings, which will be made publicly available, will contribute to better understanding of some of the complexities of digital distribution of content.”

“Developments in technology, social practices, and business models are pressing the question of what should count as a commercial use,” explained Creative Commons Special Counsel Virginia Rutledge, who is leading the study. “The answer to that question should come from creators, who should be able to specify what uses they want to permit, subject to the limitations and exceptions to copyright or other applicable law. Creative Commons is fortunate to have a stellar group of legal, public policy, and information technology experts advising on this project, as well as the help of its extensive international network of affiliates.”

Research is expected to be completed early in 2009. The study will investigate understanding of noncommercial use and the Creative Commons NC license term through a random sample survey of online content creators in the U.S., a poll of the global Creative Commons community, and qualitative data gathered from interviews with thought leaders and focus groups with participants from around the world who create and use a wide variety of content and media.

Advisors on the project include distinguished academicians Christine L. Borgman, Ph.D., Professor and Presidential Chair in Information Studies, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, University of California, Los Angeles; William H. Dutton, Ph.D., Director of the Oxford Internet Institute, Professor of Internet Studies, University of Oxford, Fellow of Balliol College; Deborah R. Hensler, Ph.D., Judge John W. Ford Professor of Dispute Resolution and Associate Dean, Graduate Studies, Stanford Law School; and Daniel E. Ho, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Law and Robert E. Paradise Faculty Fellow for Excellence in Teaching and Research, Stanford Law School.

Research will be conducted by market research firm Netpop Research, LLC. “The potential impact of this study is profound, given the number of creators turning to the Web to distribute and share their works,” said Josh Crandall, managing director of Netpop Research. “We are excited to be a part of it.”

Since Creative Commons licenses were introduced in 2002, they have been translated into 47 legal jurisdictions and adopted by content creators around the globe, from remix musicians to educator consortia, bloggers to book publishers. At present over 130 million works are available on the Internet under Creative Commons licenses, each work tagged with metadata expressing the rights and permissions associated with it. This wealth of pre-cleared material is locatable through functionality built into major search engines Google and Yahoo!, as well as through the Creative Commons website and many online content providers and services.

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.

About Netpop Research, LLC

Netpop Research, LLC is a San Francisco-based strategic market research firm that specializes in online media, digital entertainment and user-generated content trends. Netpop Research has fielded numerous studies for major profit and nonprofit entities, and is the creator of the Netpop tracking study of Internet usage among broadband consumers in the United States and China.

Contact

Virginia Rutledge
Special Counsel, Creative Commons
virginia at creativecommons dot org

Press Kit

CC Romania Promotes Creativity with Localized Licenses

Michelle Thorne, September 1st, 2008

Text in English and Romanian

Bucharest, Romania and Berlin, Germany — September 2, 2008

Creators in Romania now have the option to license their creative works under one of the six Creative Commons licenses tailored to Romanian law. Available as of today, the ported Romanian licensing suite (BY through to BY-NC-ND of Version 3.0) is provided free of charge to rights holders wishing to signal that for a particular work, they have chosen a “some rights reserved” approach to copyright.

The Creative Commons team in Romania, led by Bogdan Manolea and Stefan Gavrilescu and supported by the Association for Technology and Internet, carried out the porting process and public discussion with local and international legal experts and in consultation with Creative Commons International.

The licenses will be launched in Bucharest on September 2 at 1600 during an event hosted by the Center for Independent Journalism. The event will be opened by Bogdan Manolea with a presentation about the philosophy of Creative Commons and an introduction to the Romanian licenses. A panel thereafter will outline practical uses of the CC licenses in Romania, with contributions from Razvan Rusu from Travka, the first Romanian band to license their entire album under a CC license; Ioana Avadani from the Center for Independent Journalism; and Florin Grozea from the popular Romanian band Hi-Q. Other Creative Commons users in Romania are invited to join the launch and participate in the conversation.

At the event, Hi-Q will launch a new contest offering a preview of their next single. The vocal tracks of the band’s three singers will be released under the Romanian CC BY-SA 3.0 license, and fans will be invited to create remixes of the tracks and upload them to http://eok.ro or other music-sharing websites.

Remarking on the completion of the porting process, CC Romania Project Lead Bogdan Manolea says, “With the launch of the localized Creative Commons licenses, more Romanian artists and users will learn about open licenses and its benefits. We hope to have more projects that will involve innovation in intellectual property and will promote open content concepts in Romania. We would like to thank everyone that has been involved in this process, including our partners for the launch of the Creative Commons licenses in Romania – Hi-Q band and the Center for Independent Journalism.”

The Romanian licenses are the 26th ported Creative Commons suite in Europe and the 47th worldwide. The licenses are available through the Creative Commons License Chooser at http://creativecommons.org/license/?lang=ro.

About the Association for Technology and Internet

APTI is an independent Romanian NGO that has the objective of promoting the fair use of information society services in balance with current legal norms. The organization aims to further human rights in the digital environment and support the digital civil rights in the Romanian society. For more information about APTI, visit http://www.apti.ro/.

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

Press Kit

http://creativecommons.org/presskit
http://creativecommons.org/international/ro

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CC ROMÂNIA PROMOVEAZĂ CREATIVITATEA PRIN LICENŢELE LOCALIZATE

Bucureşti, Romania şi Berlin, Germania — 2 Septembrie 2008

Creatorii români au acum posibilitatea de a-şi licenţia operele printr-una din cele şase licenţe Creative Commons adaptate la legea română. De astăzi, întreaga serie de licenţe adaptate (versiunea 3.0 de la Atribuire (BY) până la Atribuire-Necomercial-Fără Modificări (BY-NC-ND)) este disponibilă în mod gratuit pentru titularii de drepturi de autor care doresc să licenţieze opera lor doar cu “unele drepturi rezervate”.

Echipa Creative Commons din România, condusă de Bogdan Manolea şi Ştefan Gavrilescu şi susţinută de Asociaţia pentru Tehnologie si Internet – APTI, a parcurs procesul de adaptare al licenţelor şi discuţie publică cu experţi juridici naţionali şi internaţionali şi în consultare cu Creative Commons International.

Licenţele vor fi lansate pe data de 2 Septembrie 2008 în Bucureşti, la un eveniment găzduit de Centrul pentru Jurnalism Independent. Bogdan Manolea va deschide evenimentul cu o prezentare despre filozofia Creative Commons şi va introduce licenţele româneşti. Alţi participanţi vor contribui la discuţia privind utilizările practice ale licenţelor Creative Commons în România, printre care Răzvan Rusu (ex-Travka, prima formaţie românească care a licenţiat un întreg album sub o licenţă Creative Commons), Ioana Avădani (Centrul pentru Jurnalism Independent) sau Florin Grozea (HI-Q). Alţi utilizatori români de Creative Commons din România au fost invitaţi să participe la lansare şi la discuţia publică.

Cu ocazia acestui eveniment formaţia HI-Q va lansa un nou concurs oferind un preview al următorului lor single. Vocile celor 3 membri ai formaţiei vor fi oferite sub licenţa Creative Commons Atribuire–Distribuire în Condiţii Identice (BY-SA) 3.0 România şi astfel toata lumea va fi invitată să creeze remixuri pe aceste voci şi să pună rezultatele pe site-ul http://eok.ro sau alte site-uri de video-sharing de pe Internet.

Bogdan Manolea, Project Lead pentru Creative Commons Romania, a declarat pentru acest eveniment: “O dată cu lansare licenţelor Creative Commons în limba română, mai mulţi artişti si simpli utilizatori din România au posibilitatea să înveţe despre licenţele deschise şi avantajele lor. Sperăm să avem din ce în ce mai multe proiecte care vor susţine inovaţia în proprietatea intelectuală şi vor promova conceptele de conţinut deschis în România. Nu putem să nu mulţumim partenerilor lansării – Trupei HI-Q şi Centrului pentru Jurnalism Independent, ca şi tuturor celor care ne-au ajutat pe parcursul procesului de adaptare a licenţelor”

Licenţele în limba română sunt al 26-lea proiect Creative Commons adaptat în Europa şi al 47-lea în întreaga lume. Licenţele sunt disponibile prin aplicaţia disponibilă pe site-ul Creative Commons la http://creativecommons.org/license/?lang=ro.

Jurnaliştii interesaţi să participe la lansare sunt invitaţi pe data de 2 Septembrie 2008,  la ora 16 00 la sediul Centrului pentru Jurnalism Independent – B-dul Regina Elisabeta nr. 32, et. 1 (Cladirea Federatiei Sindicatelor Libere din Invatamant aflata intre Piata Kogalniceanu si Bd Schitu Magureanu), Sector 5, Bucuresti. Agenda evenimentului este ataşată la acest comunicat.

Licenţele Creative Commons permit autorilor schimbarea termenilor de licenţiere de la clasicul “Toate drepturile rezervate” la “Unele drepturi rezervate”. Licenţele Creative Commons nu sunt o alternativă la dreptul de autor, ci se aplică pe baza legislaţiei privind dreptul de autor, astfel încât să poţi modifica termenii de licenţiere pentru a permite o  licenţiere deschisă a operelor tale.

Asociaţia pentru Tehnologie şi Internet (APTI) este o organizaţie româneasca non-guvernamentală şi independentă care are drept obiectiv promovarea utilizării leale a serviciilor societăţii informaţionale în concordanţă cu normele legale în vigoare. Organizaţia susţine drepturile omului in mediul digital şi promovează drepturile civile digitale. Pentru mai multe informatii vizitati despre APTI vizitaţi http://www.apti.ro/

Creative Commons este o organizaţie non-profit, înfiinţată în 2001, care promovează re-utilizarea creativă a operelor intelectuale şi artistice, indiferent daca sunt proprietare sau în domeniul public. Prin sistemul său de licenţe gratuite privind dreptul de autor Creative Commons oferă autorilor, artistilor, oamenilor de ştiinţă şi profesorilor posibilitatea alegerii unui spectru flexibil de libertăţi şi drepturi care permit schimbarea sistemului tradiţional de “Toate drepturile rezervate” într-un sistem voluntar de “Unele drepturi rezervate”. Creative Commons a fost lansat şi este susţinut prin efortul generos al mai multpr organizaţii, incluzând Centrul pentru Domeniul Public, Omidyar Network, Fundaţia Rockefeller, Fundaţia John D. şi  Catherine T. MacArthur , şi Fundaţia William şi Flora Hewlett, ca şi alte persoane publice. Pentru ai multe informaţii despre Creative Commons, vizitează http://creativecommons.org.

Contact

Dr. Catharina Maracke
Director
Creative Commons International, Creative Commons

Bogdan Manolea
Director Executiv APTI
Creative Commons Romania Legal Lead

Press Kit
http://creativecommons.org/presskit
http://creativecommons.org/international/ro

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

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

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.

Contact

Diane Peters

General Counsel
Creative Commons
diane@creativecommons.org

Press Kit

http://creativecommons.org/presskit

Singapore Announces Ported Creative Commons Licenses

Patricia Escalera, July 25th, 2008

San Francisco, CA, USA and Singapore City, Singapore — July 27, 2008

Today Creative Commons Singapore announces the completion of the locally ported Creative Commons licensing suite. In close collaboration with Centre for Asia Pacific Technology Law & Policy (CAPTEL), the Creative Commons team in Singapore, led by Associate Professor Samtani Anil and Assistant Professor Giorgos Cheliotis, adapted the licenses both linguistically and legally to Singaporean national law. The Creative Commons licenses, now ported to 47 jurisdictions, enable authors, artists, scientists, and educators the choice of a flexible range of protections and freedoms in efforts to promote a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach to copyright.

The Singaporean Creative Commons licenses, available soon online, will be celebrated today in Singapore City at the International Symposium on Electronic Art. The event will also feature a panel, organized by CAPTEL and Creative Commons Singapore, to introduce the audience to key copyright issues in the digital age and also share tips for creators and users to avoid common pitfalls in the field of copyright law.

The panel will, in addition, explain the aims and philosophy of the Creative Commons initiative and the specific nature and uses of the Creative Commons licensing suite in Singapore. Stanford law professor and Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig will address the audience to commemorate the completion of the licenses.

Following the event, the CC Singapore team hopes to initiate a series of educational talks to explain the philosophy of Creative Commons and the practical ways in which users can implement the licenses.

Project Lead Samtani Anil adds, “We also believe the launch of the Singapore CC licenses will lead to a better appreciation of the ambit, contours, and limits of the existing copyright regime in Singapore in relation to the sharing and dissemination of culture and the advancement of innovation. This, we believe, will sensitize various stakeholders to the avenues that are open to them to share their works in accordance with their wishes and needs.”

The CC Singapore team is supported by team members Assistant Professor Warren Chik, Vinod Sabnani, Tham Kok Leong, Lam Chung Nian, Harish Pillay and Ankit Guglani.

About Centre for Asia Pacific Technology Law & Policy

Please visit http://captel.ntu.edu.sg for more information.

The Centre for Asia Pacific Technology Law & Policy (CAPTEL) is a research center founded to investigate and research issues on how businesses and economies are being affected by the challenges of new technologies on law, regulation and policy. CAPTEL is located at the Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University.

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 is sustained by the generous support of organizations including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Omidyar Network, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as members of the public.

Please visit http://creativecommons.org for more information about Creative Commons.

Contact

Dr. Catharina Maracke
Director
Creative Commons International
catharina@creativecommons.org
+49.30.280.93.909

Press Kit
http://creativecommons.org/presskit
http://creativecommons.org/international/sg/

Creative Commons Launches Web and Desktop License Integration Approach with LicenseChooser.js and liblicense Projects

Greg Grossmeier, July 23rd, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO, USA JULY 24, 2008

Creative Commons announced today the release of liblicense and LicenseChooser.js, content licensing tools which make integration of Creative Commons license functionality easy for developers building modern desktop and web applications. These tools enable reading and writing Creative Commons licensing information to a variety of media formats. Many projects already support the ability to read and write content license information through add-ons, including OpenOffice.org, Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office. Other programs, such as the open source vector graphics drawing tool Inkscape, include a default capability to read and write CC license information.

For the desktop, Creative Commons has updated the C language-based software library called liblicense. This Free Software (licensed under GNU LGPL) library provides functionality to read and write license information into many supported media files. Along with access to license information, the library offers a standard set of icons for graphical representation of selected or discovered licenses. As Creative Commons’ international team refreshes the licenses or adds a new jurisdiction, software developers can simply update liblicense to receive these changes. Currently, liblicense is distributed with development versions of the Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora Linux operating systems. The LGPL license permits adding it to both open source and proprietary software.

“LicenseChooser.js and liblicense will make open content licensing more valuable for developers, publishers, and users, by making such content more discoverable and manageable” said Mike Linksvayer, Vice President of Creative Commons.

One prominent project incorporating the use of liblicense in an upcoming release is One Laptop Per Child (OLPC). While the OLPC project wiki already uses Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licenses for contributions, Creative Commons has introduced licensing functionality for the XO laptops through the development of liblicense and a series of patches to be integrated. Once it is installed, it allows software interfacing with media on the device to be content license aware. Also, to explain Creative Commons licensing and the basics of copyright law, Creative Commons has created an educational licensing activity that anyone may install onto an OLPC XO laptop. This activity uses the previously released “Sharing Creative Works” comics.

For web applications, Creative Commons has developed LicenseChooser.js, which allows developers to add similar functionality into any web-based project. Creative Commons already provided an XML-based web services API. LicenseChooser.js provides an additional, lightweight method for integrating license selection into web applications. The widget is used by SixApart’s TypePad as well as the WordPress plugin WpLicense.

Today, liblicense will be demonstrated at this year’s Open Source Conference (OSCON) in Portland, OR. Integration with two Open Source applications will be showcased: the file viewer Eye of GNOME and media player Rhythmbox. The presentation will be given by Nathan Yergler, CTO of Creative Commons, and Asheesh Laroia, Software Engineer, on Thursday July 24th in room F150.

Links

Desktop Integration Software: liblicense
http://creativecommons.org/projects/liblicense

OSCON “Rights on the Desktop with liblicense” Presentation
http://en.oreilly.com/oscon2008/public/schedule/detail/2857

Web Integration Software: LicenseChooser.js
http://creativecommons.org/projects/LicenseChooser.js

OLPC Creative Commons Page
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Creative_Commons

Creative Commons Sharing Creative Works Public Domain Released Comics
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Sharing_Creative_Works

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

Jon Phillips
Community and Business
Development Manager
Creative Commons
jon@creativecommons.org
+1.510.499.0894

Press Kit

http://creativecommons.org/presskit