Press Releases
Education Innovator Esther Wojcicki Joins Creative Commons Board
San Francisco, CA – July 10, 2008
Creative Commons (CC), a global non-profit focused on the preservation and growth of a openly shareable and remixable media landscape, officially announced today that education innovator Esther Wojcicki has joined its Board of Directors.
Wojcicki has been a prominent figure in American education. As the leading mind behind the creation of the country’s largest high school journalism program, she has won numerous awards, including the prestigious title of Teacher of the Year from the California State Teacher Credentialing Commission. Most recently, she received special recognition for her work from the National Scholastic Press Association.
“We’re truly excited to have Esther on board. Her presence marks an important step in the developing role Creative Commons seeks to play in supporting open educational content” commented Joi Ito, CEO of CC, “Her experience and advice will be an invaluable part of shaping our future in that arena.
Esther Wojcicki said, “I am thrilled to be joining the talented team of directors, advisors, and staff at Creative Commons, whose collaborative efforts are supporting the expansion of the public domain. I look forward to applying my experience in education and technology, and am eager to work closely with the Board as this pioneering organization continues to grow.”
Wojcicki has also been a key pioneer in exploring the emerging interface between education and technology. She helped lay the groundwork for the design of the Google Teacher Outreach Program and Google Teacher Academy, a professional development event which trains teachers to leverage innovative technologies to enhance their classrooms.
Wojcicki joins a board of directors that includes technologist Joi Ito, cyberlaw and intellectual property experts James Boyle, Michael Carroll, Molly Shaffer Van Houweling, Eric Saltzman, and Lawrence Lessig, MIT computer science professor Hal Abelson, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, documentary filmmaker Davis Guggenheim, and Public Knowledge founder Laurie Racine.
More About Esther Wojcicki
Esther Wojcicki has been teaching Journalism and English at Palo Alto High School, Palo Alto, California for the past 25 years, where she has been the driving force behind the development of its award-winning journalism program. It is now the largest high school journalism program in the U.S involving 400 students. All the publications can be found at http://voice.paly.net which is the school publication website. In the spring of 2008, she was recognized for inspiration and excellence in scholastic journalism advising by the National Scholastic Press Association. She has won multiple awards throughout the years. A couple of others included the 1990 Northern California Journalism teacher of the year in 1990 and California State Teacher Credentialing Commission Teacher of the Year in 2002. She served on the University of California Office of the President Curriculum Committee where she helped revise the beginning and advanced journalism curriculum for the state of California. In 2005–6 she worked as the Google educational consultant and helped design the Google Teacher Outreach program, which includes the website www.google.com/educators and the Google Teacher Academy. She holds a B.A. degree from UC Berkeley in English and Political Science, a general secondary teaching credential from UC Berkeley, a graduate degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley, an advanced degree in French and French History from the Sorbonne, Paris, a Secondary School Administrative Credential from San Jose State University, and a M.A. in Educational Technology from San Jose State University. She has also worked as a professional journalist for multiple publications and now blogs regularly for HuffingtonPost and HotChalk.
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
Ahrash Bissell
Executive Director, ccLearn
Creative Commons
ahrash@creativecommons.org
PRESS KIT
http://creativecommons.org/presskit
No Comments »Creative Commons Launches Metrics Research Project
San Francisco, CA – July 9, 2008
Today Creative Commons (CC) announced the official launch of the Metrics project, a broad-based open web-based initiative to encourage and collect research efforts on the adoption of CC licenses worldwide. With the launch of the Creative Commons Case Studies project last month, CC expanded the qualitative information available about license usage. The release of the Metrics project today extends the quantitative data available for further exploration and understanding of how Creative Commons licenses are spreading globally. The project wiki also extends an open invitation for users to join the research community to participate in analyzing data about Creative Commons licenses.
Nathan Yergler, CC’s CTO commented, “We’re extremely excited about the possibilities of opening up research on this topic to the public. Semantic Mediawiki, an extension that adds database-like capabilities to wikis, is a huge help in building a community around these issues.” Anyone is able to review the research aggregated at the Metrics portal, contribute information on existing works, or add their own original research. While it is impossible to do an authoritative search and calculation of the number of licensed works on the entire Internet, this project’s intent is to lower the barrier for participation in discovering more accurate statistics on CC licensing collaboratively.
Creative Commons license use is growing. As of June 2008, Creative Commons estimates that a minimum of 130 million creative works are licensed by creators opting to provide clear expression of how their works may be used. The Metrics project aims to facilitate understanding of how this mass adoption is shaping business and culture at-large. As Mike Linksvayer, Vice-President of CC, stated, “If we’re doing our job well, Creative Commons is enabling more creativity, innovation, and participation in culture. Metrics are vital to understanding how CC is transforming the creative ecosystem.”
Linksvayer added, “The Metrics project complements existing collaboration between CC and research groups internationally.” This includes the work by Giorgos Cheliotis and Warren Chik at the Participatory Media Lab, a research center based in Singapore, that is working with CC to tackle some of the analytical questions surrounding its progress worldwide. Cheliotis recently launched the Commons-Research website and mailing list which supports interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers studying commons-based peer production.
The release of the Metrics project is set to coincide with the First Interdisciplinary Research Workshop on Free Culture being held in Sapporo, Japan from July 30th to August 1st. This workshop, spearheaded by Cheliotis with Tyng-Ruey Chuang and Jonathan Zittrain, will bring together researchers and scholars from around the world to discuss commons-based peer production research and present their latest works in progress publicly. More information on how to participate in the Metrics project and relevant upcoming events are available on the Creative Commons Metrics project website.
LINKS
Commons-Research Website and Conference
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.
CONTACTS
Jon Phillips
Community and Business Development Manager
Creative Commons
jon@creativecommons.org
+1.510.499.0894
PRESS KIT
http://creativecommons.org/presskit
No Comments »Creative Commons Launches Global Case Studies Project
Brisbane, Australia & San Francisco, USA — 2008 June 24
Today Creative Commons (CC), in association with Creative Commons Australia, officially announced the release of the Case Studies Project, which is a large-scale community effort to encourage all to explore and add noteworthy global CC stories. Creative Commons provides free tools to allow copyright-holders to clearly show rights associated with creative works, and now this project shows how notable adopters like author Cory Doctorow, web video-sharing company Blip.tv, and open film project “A Swarm of Angels” have successfully used CC licenses. And, to underline the collaborative global nature of this project, this launch coincides with Creative Commons Australia’s Conference “Building an Australasian Commons” today in Brisbane, where this project is also being announced along with the publication of a publicly available booklet with some of the best global case studies.
This wiki project aims to examine the motivations and outcomes of CC license adoption in a variety of different situations and highlights the work being done by the creators and content aggregators in the CC community. Anyone can explore the global CC landscape by browsing with a variety of filters including the license-types used, the media created, and whether the project curates or creates material. Some examples include the Google Summer of Code program, the Big Buck Bunny 2nd Open Source 3D animation led by the Blender Foundation, and Sony’s EyeVio video sharing social network service.
Beyond easily viewing the compilation, the Case Studies Project encourages users to edit the wiki and add innovative and noteworthy CC projects happening in jurisdictions worldwide. To lower the barriers for participation, the Case Studies Project provides contributors with an easy form to enter data into the wiki and examples of other featured initiatives. Instructions are available on the Case Studies site at: http://creativecommons.org/projects/casestudies.
The “Some Rights Reserved” model of Creative Commons licensing has had a significant impact world-wide, with millions of creators opting to share their content with their peers. Since its inception in 2002, the Creative Commons initiative has shown rapid growth, with more than 90 million works licensed as of December 2007. Numerous communities have also emerged, inspired by and founded on the CC licensing scheme, and the recognition, collaboration, and commercialization opportunities it provides. “It is important for both long-standing members of the community and new adopters alike to gain a sense of the motivations and experiences of others using Creative Commons licenses,” stated Creative Commons CEO, Joi Ito. “The Case Studies project provides all with a platform to explore how important adopters like Google, Nine Inch Nails, and Sony successfully use Creative Commons while also allowing anyone to add their own Creative Commons success story. Case studies are important to show that the idea of businesses using CC isn’t just a cute idea, but a fact in their success story.”
Since this is a community-based open project, the roadmap for participation is available on the project website, and communication is encouraged on the cc-community mailing list. The next milestones for contributing to this project are the Communia/CC Europe meetings June 30-July 1 in Belgium, FSCONS on October 25-26 in Gothenburg, Sweden, and iSummit on July 29-August 1 in Sapporo, Japan. Each of these events will have presentations about the progress of this project along with community contributions presented publicly.
The initiative will also find its way into the print medium regularly. Working with the user-generated Case Studies material, CC Australia is releasing “Building an Australasian Commons Booklet,” the first of a number of planned printed publications based on the project. The book is a first attempt to chronicle the tales of the Australasian commons. Featuring over 60 case studies, it maps the current state of play surrounding free culture in the region. From private individuals to large corporations, the studies clearly show the mechanisms and motivations to share and experiment without the restrictions of the pre-digital era. Across the domains of democratic change, filmmaking, music, visual arts, libraries, museums, government, education and research, the book will explore how Australasian creators working with CC licensing are making their mark. This follows past projects in the same vein, such as their report “Asia and the Commons Case Studies,” a review of CC-based initiatives in the region.
Links
CC Case Studies Project
http://creativecommons.org/projects/casestudies
Building an Australasian Commons Conference in Brisbane, Australia
http://creativecommons.org.au/australasiancommons
Case Studies Roadmap
http://creativecommons.org/projects/casestudies_roadmap
Creative Commons Community Mailing List (cc-community)
http://creativecommons.org/contact
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 Creative Commons Australia
Creative Commons Australia (CCau) is the Australian derivative project of the Creative Commons project in the United States of America. Currently, they are engaged in porting the Creative Commons licenses into Australian domestic law and fostering a creative community premised on remixable creativity. Hosted at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, CCau is devoted to the promotion of Creative Commons in Australia. Australia is one of 43 countries world wide who have taken up the Creative Commons project. For more information about Creative Commons Australia, visit: http://creativecommons.org.au
Contact
Jon Phillips
Community + Business Development Manager
Creative Commons
jon@creativecommons.org
Press Kit
http://creativecommons.org/presskit
No Comments »Experts in Norway adapt CC licenses to national law / Eksperter i Norge tilpasser CC-lisenser til nasjonal lovgivning
[Text in English and Norwegian]
Oslo, Norway and Berlin, Germany — June 6, 2008
The Creative Commons Norway team has successfully ported the Creative Commons licensing suite to Norwegian law. The localized licenses will be unveiled today at a press conference at Oslo University College.
The team responsible for coordinating the porting process and public discussion with local and international legal experts consists of Haakon Flage Bratsberg, Thomas Gramstad, Gisle Hannemyr (Public Project Lead), Tore Hoel, Peter Lenda (Legal Project Lead), and Vebjørn Søndersrød.
“We have taken the initiative to launch the Creative Commons licenses in Norway to promote new forms of production, sharing and distribution of creative works,” explains the team’s Public Project Lead, Gisle Hannemyr. “To achieve this, we have been going through a process of adapting the international license to Norwegian copyright legislation. During this process, we have worked together with community stakeholders and copyright experts to reach a result that both reflects the spirit of Creative Commons and the letter of Norwegian copyright law.”
The launch event will be held as a press conference at Oslo University College on June 6th at 10:00 am. The Creative Commons Norway team will be present and give a brief presentation about Creative Commons and the licenses translated into Norwegian. The team will also be available to answer questions.
Norway is the forty-sixth jurisdiction worldwide to port the Creative Commons licensing suite.
About Oslo University College
Oslo University College is a young, dynamic institution based on strong traditions. It was established in 1994 when the Norwegian college system was restructured and 18 smaller colleges in the Oslo area merged. Oslo University College offers the broadest portfolio of professional studies available in Norway. OUC is a dynamic institution based on strong traditions in professional education and research. With 11,000 students, OUC are the fourth largest educational institution in Norway. For more information about Oslo University College, please visit: http://www.hio.no/content/view/full/4563.
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/no/
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Eksperter i Norge tilpasser CC-lisenser til nasjonal lovgivning
Oslo, Norge og Berlin, Tyskland – 6. juni 2008
Arbeidsgruppen i Creative Commons Norge har fullført arbeidet med å oversette og tilpasse Creative Commons-lisensene til norsk. De ferdige lisensene vil bli offentliggjort i dag på en pressekonferanse på Høgskolen i Oslo.
Arbeidsgruppen som har koordinert arbeidet med å tilpasse lisensene, og gjennomført en offentlig diskusjon om innholdet i dem med lokale og internasjonale opphavsrettseksperter, har bestått av Haakon Flage Bratsberg, Thomas Gramstad, Gisle Hannemyr (offentlig prosjektleder), Tore Hoel, Peter Lenda (juridisk prosjektleder), og Vebjørn Søndersrød.
“Vi har ønsker å gjøre Creative Commons-lisensene tilgjengelig i Norge for å fremme nye former for produksjon, deling og distribusjon av kreative verk,” forklarer arbeidsgruppens offentlig prosjektleder, Gisle Hannemyr. “For å oppnå dette, har vi tilpasset de internasjonale lisensene til norsk opphavsrettlovgivning. I løpet av denne prosessen har vi jobbet sammen med interessenter og opphavsrettseksperter for å komme fram til et resultat som reflekterer både Creative Commons’ ånd og åndsverklovens bestemmelser.”
I samband med lanseringen vil det bli holdt en pressekonferanse på Høgskolen i Oslo på 6 juni på 10:00. Arbeidsgruppen i Creative Commons Norge vil være tilstede og gi en kort presentasjon om Creative Commons og de norske lisensene. Arbeidsgruppen vil også være tilgjengelig for å svare på spørsmål.
Norge er den førti-sjette jurisdiksjon i verden som har tilpasset Creative Commons-lisensene til nasjonal lovgiving.
Om Høgskolen i Oslo
Høgskolen i Oslo er en ung, dynamisk institusjon basert på sterke tradisjoner. Den ble etablert i 1994 når norsk det norske høyskole-systemet ble omstrukturert og 18 mindre høyskoler i Oslo-området ble slått sammen. Høgskolen i Oslo har det bredeste tilbud av faglige studier i Norge. HiO er en dynamisk institusjon basert på sterke tradisjoner i faglig utdanning og forskning. Med 11000 studenter, HiO er den fjerde største utdanningsinstitusjon i Norge. For mer informasjon om Høgskolen i Oslo, se: http://www.hio.no/content/view/full/4563.
Om Creative Commons
Creative Commons er en ideell organisasjon, grunnlagt i 2001, med det mål å fremme fremmer kreativ gjen bruk av litterære og kunstneriske arbeider, enten disse er opphavsrettslig beskyttet eller er i det fri. Gjennom sine opphavsretts-lisenser tilbyr Creative Commons forfattere, kunstnere, forskere, og lærere muligheten til å velge mellom beskyttelser og friheter som muliggjør deling gjennom en tilnærming som best kan beskrives med ordene: “noen rettigheter reservert”. Creative Commons mottar støtte fra blant annet: Center for the Public Domain, the Omidyar Network, The Rockefeller Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, og The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, samt private donasjoner. For mer informasjon om Creative Commons, se: http://creativecommons.org.
Dr. Catharina Maracke
Director
Creative Commons International, Creative Commons
catharina [at] creativecommons [dot] org
Press Kit
http://creativecommons.org/presskit
http://creativecommons.org/international/no/
Creative Commons announces major funding support from Omidyar Network
San Francisco — 2008 May 28
Creative Commons announces that it has received $500,000 as the first installment of a gift of $2.5 million over five years from Omidyar Network. This gift is made to Creative Commons as part of the “5×5 Challenge” grant program, from which Creative Commons expects to receive $2.5 million annually in general operating support for each of the next five years. The 5×5 program was initiated at the invitation of The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. In addition to the Hewlett Foundation and Omidyar Network, other major funders participating in the 5×5 Challenge include the International Electronic Trade and Services Initiative (“IETSI”), a nonprofit trust founded to support the development of ecommerce, globally, as well as Google, Mozilla, and Red Hat.
Creative Commons is the San Francisco-based not-for-profit organization that provides free copyright licenses that allow creators to mark their works with a range of permissions granted to others. To date, Creative Commons licenses are attached to millions of artistic, scientific, and educational works distributed by their creators over the Internet.
This gift comes at a historic moment for Creative Commons, which recently launched an initiative to explore its possible roles in connection with a digital copyright registry system.
“Omidyar Network has been a leader in encouraging nonprofit organizations to become both more finely tuned to their users’ needs and more self-sustaining,” said Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito. “Omidyar Network’s grant will support Creative Commons’ basic promise: to provide free, simple tools that allow the creators of the world to share their works on generous terms. In addition, the grant will allow us to explore providing fee-based, value-added services, which can benefit our community and help support the organization financially. The registry is our first big project in which we plan to explore these possibilities.”
“Creative Commons has transformed the way people think about intellectual property,” said Matt Bannick, managing partner of Omidyar Network. “Creative Commons licenses have dramatically lowered the transaction costs for use of many digital works, and an open, interoperable digital copyright registry system would continue to decrease those costs, as well as increase the visibility of many more creative works. We are delighted to help enable the exploration of this system and to see Creative Commons, an organization that we have long supported, take an important step in its growth toward sustainability.”
For more information on the Creative Commons registry project, see 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 »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/
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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
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