Press Releases
Creative Commons explores a digital copyright registry system
San Francisco, CA USA — May 22, 2008
Creative Commons today announced that it is exploring possible roles in connection with a digital copyright registry system.
Creative Commons is the San Francisco-based not-for-profit organization which provides free copyright licenses that allow creators to mark their works in advance with a range of permissions granted to others. This licensing model eliminates many of the high transaction costs entailed by the current default of copyright systems worldwide, which automatically grant full copyright to all creators. Creative Commons licenses have been attached to millions of artistic, scientific and educational works distributed by their creators over the Internet.
“Key to the success of the Creative Commons licenses is the fact that the metadata that expresses the rights associated with a digital copy of the work, also allows the work to be searchable,” says Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito. “For example, anyone who is looking for a great song to back a video, a photograph to illustrate an article, or curricular materials on ecology or astronomy for K-12 students, can go to the Creative Commons website or use Google or Yahoo to find works available under CC licenses. But we have come to believe that both creators and users would benefit from the greatly enhanced search and locate functionality that a comprehensive digital registry of copyrighted works would permit.”
While current US law does not require copyright owners to register their works with the Copyright Office, doing so provides some benefits under the law, particularly if the owner files a lawsuit for copyright infringement. The Copyright Office maintains a registry where copyright owners may now voluntarily register their works, for a fee. However, there has been interest in many sectors, including the commercial sector, in developing alternatives or supplements to the government registry. In particular, recent debate on the issue of “orphan works” — works whose authors are not known and cannot easily be found — has prompted much discussion of the ability of the existing government system to handle registration of certain kinds of works, particularly visual works.
“On the Internet, if something can’t be found, for practical purposes it doesn’t exist,” Ito continues. “Creative Commons is undertaking a logical extension of its mission by exploring what a truly open and interoperable registry would look like. CC may not create and operate a registry itself, although our doing that, perhaps as part of a distributed network, could prove to be a great solution for both creators and users of works. We are fundamentally interested in helping to establish standards and protocols that in principle would enable all digital works to be registered across various systems that might be managed by a number of different organizations.”
“We see that a registry could provide a service that is already viewed as important to the growth of the digital economy, and we believe that Creative Commons is well positioned to play an important role here, given the expertise we have gained through over five years of providing open licensing tools, and our ability to draw on the legal and technical expertise of an international group of partners. So we are excited to be undertaking this exploration of our possible role in building this piece of digital infrastructure, with the community,” Ito explains. “We also will be exploring possible additional fee based, value added services that CC might be able to provide, as a means of helping the organization to become self sustaining while we continue to serve the public interest. It is in everyone’s interest that Creative Commons develop sustainable methods of supporting our work: the global infrastructure of sharing has to be reliable and permanent. At the same time, we remain committed to maintaining CC’s role in providing free tools to everyone who wants to share their work with the world. That will never change.”
The first public meeting in connection with the Creative Commons registry initiative will be held in Silicon Valley on June 18. For more information, please visit http://creativecommons.org/projects/registry.
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
Mike Linksvayer
Vice President, Creative Commons
ml at creativecommons dot org
Press Kit
http://creativecommons.org/presskit
No Comments »Ecuador encourages learning, research, and creativity with localized CC licenses
Loja, Ecuador and San Francisco, CA, USA — April 22, 2008
Ecuador, the forty-fifth jurisdiction worldwide to port the Creative Commons licensing suite, will celebrate its launch today at the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja (UTPL).
The Creative Commons Ecuador team has coordinated the porting process and public discussion with local and international legal experts under the leadership of Project Leads Dr. Juan José Puertas Ortega and Carlos Correa Loyola, with team members Dra. Patricia Pacheco Montoya, Abg. Verónica Granda González, and Abg. Gabriela Armijos Maurad.
The launch event will be held at University Convention Center at 6:00pm, together with the opening ceremony of university’s open courseware initiative, “Open UTPL.” Open UTPL will offer entire courses, books, study guides, and multimedia content under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 Ecuador license, as part of UPTL’s initiatives dedicated to educational resources. Creative Commons Board Member Michael Carroll will join the CC Ecuador’s launch event as a keynote speaker.
The CC Ecuador team explains, “The UTPL is interested in promoting cultural production and research, so we have taken the initiative to launch the Creative Commons licenses as an alternative to ‘all-rights-reserved’ copyright. To achieve this, we have been going through a process of adapting the international license to our legislation, in discussions both public and private, and we have worked together with our community stakeholders and notable representatives in the field of copyright to reach a public presentation of its launch.”
The localized Ecuadorian Creative Commons licenses, soon available online, will be an important part of the annual Congress for Quality Assurance and Main Challenges in Distance Learning, a 3-day conference focusing on issues in education within Latin America.
About Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja
The Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja was founded by the Ecuadorian Marist Association (AME) on May 3rd, 1971. UTPL was officially recognized by the State of Ecuador under Executive Decree 646, in which it was constituted as an autonomous legal entity on the basis of the “Modus Vivendi” Agreement between the Holy See and the State of Ecuador, following the Church’s regulations in its organization and government.
The UTPL educational model is centered on “Productive Entrepreneurship” in which the students and the professors take part in real projects in the Centers for Research, Technology Transfer, Extension and Service (CITTES). The academic life of UTPL combines all the dimensions of the university: the CITTES, the Schools, their programs in the Traditional and Distance Modalities, and service to society, with a strong humanist perspective. For more information, please visit: http://www.utpl.edu.ec/.
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/ec/
*****************
Ecuador estimula el aprendizaje, la investigación, y la creatividad con las licencias de CC
Loja, Ecuador y San Francisco, CA, USA — 22 de Abril del 2008
Ecuador, la cuadragésima quinta jurisdicción a nivel mundial en adaptar el conjunto de licencias de Creative Commons, celebrará el día de hoy el lanzamiento de dichas licencias en la Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja (UTPL).
El equipo de Creative Commons Ecuador ha coordinado el proceso de adaptación y discusión pública con las entidades locales y expertos en derecho internacional, bajo la dirección de líderes del proyecto Dr. Juan José Puertas Ortega y Carlos Correa Loyola, acompañados con los miembros del equipo, Dra. Patricia Pacheco Montoya, Lic. Verónica González Granda, y Lic. Gabriela Armijos Maurad.
El evento del lanzamiento se llevará a cabo en el Centro de Convención de la UTPL a las 6:00 p.m., junto con la apertura ceremonial de los cursos “Open UTPL.” Los cursos “Open UTPL” ofrecerán clases, libros, guías de estudio, y contenido de multimedia bajo la licencia CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 de Ecuador como muestra de dedicación de la UTPL hacia la investigación educativa. Michael Carroll, miembro de la mesa directiva de Creative Commons, se unirá al evento como ponente principal.
El equipo de CC Ecuador explica, „El interés de la UTPL es difundir la producción cultural y de investigación. Por lo tanto, hemos tomado la iniciativa de poner en marcha las Licencias Creative Commons como una alternativa a ‘Todos los derechos reservados.’ Para lograrlo se ha tenido que pasar por un proceso de adaptación de la licencia internacional a nuestra legislación, con discusiones tanto públicas como privadas, en donde han colaborado para ello actores de la sociedad con notoria representación en el campo de los Derechos de Autor, dando origen a este lanzamiento público del proyecto.”
La finalización de las licencias de Creative Commons en Ecuador, disponibles virtualmente dentro de poco, será un tema muy importante durante el congreso anual Los Nuevos Retos de la Educación a Distancia en Iberoamérica y el Aseguramiento de la Calidad. Se trata de una reunión de tres días para revisar algunas cuestiones de educación en Latinoamérica.
Acerca de la Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja
La Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja (UTPL) fue fundada el 3 de Mayo de 1971 por la Comunidad Marista Ecuatoriana (AME). La UTPL fue reconocida oficialmente por el Estado del Ecuador bajo el Decreto Ejecutivo 646, en el que se constituyó como una entidad jurídica autónoma creada bajo el “Convenio de Modus Vivendi” firmado entre la Santa Sede y el Estado Ecuatoriano, siguiendo las regulaciones de la Iglesia en su organización y gobierno.
El modelo educativo de la UTPL se centra en el “Desarrollo Empresarial”, según el cual los estudiantes y los profesores participan en proyectos reales que se llevan a cabo en los Centros de Investigación, Transferencia de Tecnología, Extensión y Servicio (CITTES). La vida académica de la UTPL conjuga todas las dimensiones de la universidad con una filosofía humanista: los CITTES, las escuelas y sus programas en las modalidades a distancia o tradicional, y el servicio a la sociedad. Para más información, por favor visite: http://www.utpl.edu.ec/.
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.
Contacto
Dr. Catharina Maracke
Director
Creative Commons International, Creative Commons
catharina [at] creativecommons [dot] org
Press Kit
http://creativecommons.org/presskit
http://creativecommons.org/international/ec/
Creative Commons Announces New Leadership, New Funding
San Francisco, CA, USA — April 1, 2008
Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that works to expand the body of creative work available to the public for legal sharing and use, today announced both a leadership evolution and a major new grant of $4 million from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to support its activities. “Both pieces of news we are announcing today reflect Creative Commons’ maturation from a startup into crucial infrastructure for creativity, education, and research in the digital age,” said the organization’s founder, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig. Creative Commons celebrated its fifth anniversary last December.
Lessig has announced a shift of academic focus from copyright to political corruption. He recently launched Change Congress, a movement to increase transparency in the US government’s legislative branch. In order to concentrate on this effort, Lessig is stepping down as CEO of Creative Commons. He will be replaced by entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and free culture advocate Joi Ito. Lessig will remain on the Creative Commons board.
“Although I have changed my focus, I’m still very much committed to Creative Commons and the Free Culture cause,” Lessig said. “The work I intend to do with Change Congress is in many ways complementary to the work of Creative Commons. Both projects are about putting people in power and enabling them to build a better system. I could not be more pleased to hand off the leadership of Creative Commons to the extraordinarily passionate and qualified Joi Ito.”
“Under Larry’s management, Creative Commons has grown from an inspirational idea to an essential part of the technical, social, and legal landscape involving organizations and people in 80 countries,” said Ito. “With it, the organization has grown in size and complexity, and I am excited to increase the level of my participation to help manage this amazing group of people. The Hewlett Foundation has been a major supporter of ours from the beginning and we could not be more grateful for their support going forward into the future.”
Founding board member and Duke law professor James Boyle will become chair of the board, replacing Ito, who remains on the board. “Jamie has demonstrated his commitment to Creative Commons from its founding,” said Lessig. “He led the formation of Science Commons and ccLearn, our divisions focused on scientific research and education respectively. There is no person better suited to lead the Creative Commons board.”
Boyle is optimistic about Creative Commons’ future. “If one looks at all the amazing material that has been placed under our licenses – from MIT’s Open Courseware and the Public Library of Science to great music, from countless photographs and blogs to open textbooks – one realizes that, under Larry’s leadership, the organization has actually helped build a global ‘creative commons’ in which millions of people around the world participate, either as creators or users. My job will be to use the skills of the remarkable people on our board – including a guy called Larry Lessig, who has promised me he isn’t going away any time soon – to make sure that mission continues and expands.”
The Hewlett Foundation grant consists of $2.5 million to provide general support to Creative Commons over five years and $1.5 million to support ccLearn, the division of Creative Commons that is focused on open educational resources. “The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has been a strong supporter of openness and open educational resources in particular,” said Catherine Casserly, the Director of the Open Educational Resources Initiative at Hewlett. “Creative Commons licenses are a critical part of the infrastructure of openness on which those efforts depend.” The Hewlett grant was a vital part of a five-year funding plan which also saw promises of support from Omidyar Network, Google, Mozilla, Red Hat, and the Creative Commons board.
Creative Commons also announces two other senior staff changes. Diane Peters joins the organization as General Counsel. Peters arrives from the Mozilla Corporation, serves on the board of the Software Freedom Law Center, and was previously General Counsel for Open Source Development Labs and the Linux Foundation. She has extensive experience collaborating with and advising nonprofit organizations, development communities, and high-tech companies on a variety of matters.
Vice President and General Counsel Virginia Rutledge, who joined Creative Commons last year from Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, will take on a new role as Vice President and Special Counsel. In her new role, Rutledge will focus on development and external relations, while continuing to lead special legal projects.
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
Email
Creative Commons Expands Documentation Project
San Francisco, CA, USA — March 24, 2008
Creative Commons today announced the expansion of a documentation project to explain various facets of Creative Commons licensing. The initiative includes links and PDF downloads to information on critical CC specifications, recommendations, research studies and tutorials. Some of the topics covered include the CC+ and CC0 projects, a simple licensing how-to, and best practices for integrating Creative Commons licensing in websites. The documentation project also offers posters, flyers and other creative media such as the “Sharing Creative Works” comic book. These documents may be downloaded directly from the Creative Commons Documentation page (http://creativecommons.org/projects/documentation) and are suitable for high quality printing and display.
Alex Roberts, Senior Designer at Creative Commons, explained the benefits of the documentation initiative. “We’re always trying to make Creative Commons licenses easier to understand and use. From the beginning, CC has championed human-readable copyright licenses. Our documentation project works to extend this practice by offering short guides and explanations to a variety of CC topics.” All of the documentation is released under a Creative Commons Attribution license for redistribution, reuse and remix.
In addition to the documents created by staff, Creative Commons called upon the larger community to help build a rich documentation portfolio. Jon Phillips, Community & Business Development Manager at Creative Commons, said that user participation is crucial in the documentation process. “There are so many interesting projects using Creative Commons licenses. We need to be able to draw upon these innovative organizations and talented individuals to help define and share their best practices. We’ve provided the framework and source files for many of our documents to get this process rolling.” Creative Commons also asked for help from the broad community of CC adopters and open content supporters to help translate the PDF documents into other languages.
Visit http://creativecommons.org/projects/documentation to learn more about the project and get involved.
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
Jon Phillips
Business + Community Development Manager
jon@creativecommons.org
+86 1-360-282-8624
Creative Commons
http://creativecommons.org
Press Kit
http://creativecommons.org/presskit
Creative Commons LiveContent 2.0 Demonstrates Autocuration of Open Content
San Francisco, CA — March 10, 2008
Creative Commons today announced the release of LiveContent 2.0, a LiveDVD full of Creative Commons-licensed multimedia content and free and open source software. LiveContent allows users to explore open content such as music, video, photography, books, and educational materials that can be freely used, copied, and built upon. LiveContent boots directly from the LiveDVD, making it easy for users to interact with Creative Commons-licensed content and test-drive open source software. The LiveDVD is built upon Fedora 8, a Linux-based operating system, and the disc includes a number of open source software applications like OpenOffice, The Gimp, Inkscape, and Firefox.
The LiveContent project draws CC-licensed multimedia content from a variety of diverse projects aiming to share creativity and culture more openly. Included are photographs from Flickr.com and Wikimedia Commons, music from Jamendo.com and Simuze.nl, videos from Make Magazine, Boing Boing TV and others, books from Manybooks.net, and open educational resources from MIT’s OpenCourseWare initiative.
For version 2.0, LiveContent transitions from a LiveCD to a LiveDVD platform, providing more space for open content and software. Beginning with the popular photo-sharing website Flickr.com, LiveContent 2.0 demonstrates a unique content “autocuration” process. This technique manipulates web services provided by Flickr and automatically compiles photos onto the LiveDVD build. With the success of the Flickr autocuration process, Creative Commons aims to push for further standardization of CC content syndication feeds and APIs.
Creative Commons calls for increased community participation in curating open content and developing technologies that spread CC-licensed content. “Creative Commons doesn’t maintain a centralized repository of the work published under the suite of CC licenses,” said Jon Phillips, Business and Community Development Manager at Creative Commons. “But our Content Directories project has been a useful tool for organizations to list their CC-powered projects. It’s important that we develop a standardized process for the community to be able to learn about and reuse open content.”
LiveContent is a product of collaboration across a number of organizations including Red Hat (http://www.redhat.com), Worldlabel.com (http://www.worldlabel.com) and various CC content providers. LiveContent 2.0 is now available for free download at http://spins.fedoraproject.org. A pre-burned disc may be purchased at http://www.on-disk.com.
For more information visit http://creativecommons.org/projects/livecontent
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
Jon Phillips
Business + Community Development Manager
jon AT creativecommons.org
+86 1-360-282-8624
Creative Commons
www.creativecommons.org
Press Kit
http://creativecommons.org/presskit
No Comments »Puerto Rico Launches Localized Creative Commons Licenses
San Francisco, California and San Juan, Puerto Rico — February 22, 2008
Today in San Juan, the University of Puerto Rico Cyberlaw Clinic will host the launch of localized Creative Commons licenses, marking the forty-fourth jurisdiction worldwide to port the Creative Commons licensing suite. The event will be held at 7:00pm at U.P.R.’s School of Law, featuring an exhibition by Puerto Rican artists, a promotional CD release, and keynote by Creative Commons Chairman Joichi Ito.
The Creative Commons Puerto Rico team is lead by Hiram A. Meléndez-Juarbe, Carlos González-Yanes, and Chloé Georas, who coordinated the porting process and public consultation with local and international legal experts. In preparation for the public discussion, a memorandum was prepared by the 2006-2007 class of the University of Puerto Cyberlaw Clinic to analyze the role of moral rights in Puerto Rico‘s mixed legal tradition. The memorandum is available for download: http://creativecommons.org
“The Cyberlaw Clinic’s commitment to ‘free culture’ has provided the ideal context for the development of the Creative Commons Puerto Rico (CCPR) project,” notes María L. Jiménez, Director of U.P.R.’s Legal Aid Clinic. “The university has a longstanding tradition as an innovative institution in many legal fields and is deeply committed to the advancement of important social values such as the ones embraced by the Creative Commons project.”
The CCPR Project Leads add that they are “fully aware the importance of a rich and culturally diverse public domain for a vigorous democratic society and of the many ways in which cultural growth is stifled by a combination of technology, copyright law and practice, and the entertainment industry’s hold on the creation and dissemination of cultural products.” They confirm that “CCPR understands what is at stake and is, thus, very serious about consistently following up on the essential community building and internationalizing dimension of this enterprise.”
One of the major assets to the CCPR licenses is the avoidance of unnecessary legal obstacles to creative exchanges. As Rolando Silva, photographer, graphic artist and professor, confirms, “Creative Commons licenses are a neat alternative to the categorical copyright. We were in dire need of more flexible possibilities within copyright laws that permit the dissemination of artistic work without the fear of lawsuits or any such foolishness.”
About the University of Puerto Rico School of Law
Founded in 1913, the University of Puerto Rico School of Law is the oldest of its kind in Puerto Rico. The School of Law has been accredited by the American Bar Association since 1945, has been a member of the American Association of Law Schools since 1944 and is the only public law school in Puerto Rico.
The Cyberlaw Clinic of the U.P.R. School of Law promotes principles of liberty and freedom of expression on the internet as well as the development of a technological and legal context that encourages individual and collective creativity. For more information, visit http://cyberclinicpr.org/.
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
http://creativecommons.org
Lawrence Lessig to Give Final Presentation on Free Culture and Copyright
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
Philippine Launch Celebration: a vibrant member of the global commons
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
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
No Comments »Creative Commons Launches CC0 and CC+ Programs
San Francisco — December 17, 2007
Today, Creative Commons announced the launch of CC0 (aka CC Zero) and CC+ (aka CC Plus). These programs are major additions to CC’s array of free legal tools.
CC+
CC+ is a protocol to enable a simple way for users to get rights beyond the rights granted by a CC license. For example, a Creative Commons license might offer noncommercial rights. With CC+, the license can also provide a link to enter into transactions beyond access to noncommercial rights — most obviously commercial rights, but also services of use such as warranty and ability to use without attribution, or even access to physical media.
“Imagine you have all of your photos on Flickr, offered to the world under the CC Attribution-NonCommercial license,” said Lawrence Lessig, CEO of Creative Commons. “CC+ will enable you to continue offering your work to the public for noncommercial use, but will also give you an easy way to sell commercial licensing rights to those who want to use your work for profit.”
The CC+ architecture was pioneered by early adopter CC-enabled businesses such as Magnatune.com and is effectively implemented by numerous creators and intermediaries who enable a simple way to move between the sharing and commercial economies. CC+ provides a lightweight standard around these best practices and is available for implementation immediately.
Creative Commons will collaborate with commercial rights agencies and other companies to build upon CC’s metadata architecture and give the public simple “click-through” access to commercial rights and other opportunities beyond the scope of a public CC license. Companies and organizations announcing support for CC+ include Yahoo!, Blip.tv, Beatpick, Jamendo, RightsAgent, Youlicense, Strayform, Cloakx, and Copyright Clearance Center.
“The CC+ initiative adds an exciting new dimension that enables a commercial element to co-exist within the Creative Commons framework,” said Rudy Rouhana, co-founder of RightsAgent, Inc — provider of a new service that automates licensing to permit re-use and monetization of user-generated content. “RightsAgent is delighted to be one of the first companies to implement the CC+ standard. The working relationship between RightsAgent and Creative Commons now provides both a transactional and commercial layer that will help further the success of Creative Commons and the success of this initiative,” said Rouhana.
CC0
CC0 is a protocol that enables people to either (a) ASSERT that a work has no legal restrictions attached to it, or (b) WAIVE any rights associated with a work so it has no legal restrictions attached to it, and (c) SIGN the assertion or waiver.
“In some ways, CC0 is similar to what our public domain dedication does now,” said Lessig. “But with CC0, the waiver of rights will be more robust internationally, and both the waiver and assertion will be vouched for, so that there is a platform for reputation systems to develop. People will then be able to judge the reliability of content’s copyright status based on who has done the certifying.”
CC0 was previewed at Creative Commons’ 5th birthday event this past weekend in San Francisco. A beta version of the protocol will be released for public discussion on January 15, 2008. This will include the traditional components of the CC architecture — legal code, human-readable explanation, machine-readable metadata, and tools. The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School will collaborate with Creative Commons on drafting the legal code for CC0.
In conjunction with the CC0 announcement, Creative Commons’ project Science Commons launched the “Protocol for Implementing Open Access Data” — a method for ensuring that scientific databases can be legally integrated with one another. The protocol is built on the public domain status of data in many countries (including the United States) and provides legal certainty to both data deposit and data use. Science Commons has worked with data licensing thought leaders and is pleased to announce partnerships with Jordan Hatcher and Dr. Charlotte Waelde, the legal team behind the Open Database License; Talis, the company behind the Open Database License process; and the Open Knowledge Foundation, creators of the Open Knowledge Definition.
“The ‘freedom to integrate’ is one of the fundamental freedoms for data on the Web, and in one stroke, the Science Commons protocol integrates the primary legal options around data into a single Open Access regime,” said John Wilbanks, Vice President for Science Commons. Data in the sciences is most useful when it’s in the public domain, like the human genome and all the information at the US National Center for Biotechnology Information. This protocol, and its implementation by Talis and the Open Database License, creates a legal tool for data creators to put their data into the same legal zone as the genome and other key fundamental research resources.”
“We’ve recognized the importance of Open Access data at Talis for a number of years, and it was an obvious step for us to work with Jordan Hatcher and Dr. Charlotte Waelde to validate our earlier efforts and to place them in a sound legal framework from which others could also benefit,” said Dr. Paul Miller, Talis’ Technology Evangelist. “Looking at CC0 and the Creative Commons’ Science Commons project, the synergies with our own license development were immediately apparent. We shall now be working together with Creative Commons and the license’s new hosts at the Open Knowledge Foundation to see the pool of remixable data grow, for the benefit of all.”
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
Mike Linksvayer
Vice President, Creative Commons
ml@creativecommons.org
Press Kit
http://creativecommons.org/presskit
No Comments »
