This “Digital Engagement Commission” will question the role of digital arts and its meaning and benefits for audiences in Lancashire – people who live or work in the county, visitors and those who have an interest in engaging with it virtually.

… The artist will make the consultation process publicly visible in an engaging and creative online platform. The participatory consultation activities should take the form of both unique and engaging physical sessions and virtual engagement via the publicly accessible online platform. This platform could be developed especially by the artist or could make use of existing social networks. Any software developed for the project would be licensed under the latest general public license and any other works developed as part of the project would be licensed under creative commons attributions share alike. (emphasis added)

There are plenty of more details to the commission, so be sure to read the whole call for proposals. (via Rhizome.org)

The aptly named Funny or Die comedy community has launched a competition with the free on-line screen writing software site Zhura. All contributions must be licensed under our copyleft license, Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA) so that Funny or Die’s producers can create the shows freely. Consequently, Funny or Die episodes based on submissions to the competition will be reciprocally licensed under BY-SA as well:

Q. What if I don’t want anyone to touch my script?
A. In order to be considered by the head writers for production, your script MUST carry the BY-SA Creative Commons License. This does two things: It lets Funny Or Die UK produce your sketch and it allows Zhura members (and Funny or Die UK head writers) edit your script as necessary to make it better (sorry).

If you’ve been itching to show the web how funny you are, now’s your chance. Read more about the competition over at Zhura’s site.

What would happen if you combined digg‘s voting structure with Jamendo‘s CC business model and a healthy dose of free culture? You would end up with Nodes.fm.

Nodes.fm encourages musicians to upload their music so that it can be voted upon. Besides operating at no cost to musicians, and using our copyleft Attribution-ShareAlike license, Nodes.fm is free software as its codebase is released under the Free Software Foundation’s AGPL license.

This is a crucial step toward de-fracturing the free (culture) as in (software) freedom world, which should have the impact of greatly accelerating the growth of that world. Last December the Wikimedia Foundation requested that the FSF make this step.

Thanks and congratulations to the WMF and FSF (if you haven’t wished the latter a hearty 25th anniversary yet, please do so) and to the free world.

The next step is for the Wikipedia/Wikimedia community (and other FDL-licensed wikis) to decide to offer wiki content under CC BY-SA 3.0.

We hope that these communities find CC the best steward for free culture licenses to be relied upon for massively collaborative works. See our Statement of Intent for Attribution-ShareAlike Licenses and Approved for Free Cultural Works branding rolled out in February and April of this year respectively for some background on this.

In the longer term (i.e., in a future version of the CC BY-SA license, which as the FSF does their licenses, we version very carefully and deliberately) we will address other issues of particular interest to communities creating massively collaborative works, in particular attribution for such situations (our version 2.5 licenses begin to do this) and how strongly copyleft (ShareAlike in CC parlance) attaches to the context in which CC BY-SA licensed images are used (as we did for video synced to music in version 2.0).

Thanks again to the FSF and WMF, which as CC does, build critical infrastructure for a free world. All of these organizations are nonprofits deserving of your support. CC is running its annual fundraising campaign right now. :)

Also see Lawrence Lessig’s post on Enormously important news from the Free Software Foundation.

Delia Browne will be presenting on behalf of CCau, along with David Noakes from the Film Finance Corporation (FFC) and Scot Morris from the Australasian Performing Rights Association (APRA). Details below:

When: 6pm – 8pm, Monday 29 September 2008
Where: Australia Council: 372 Elizabeth Street, Surry Hills
How: RSVP by 9/25 to Janelle Prescott – info AT samag DOT org – or (02) 8250 5722 (msg only)
Cost: FREE ENTRY for 2008 SAMAG Members / $10 for non-members / $5 for students

The Copyleft Festival 2008 kicked off yesterday in Arezzo, Italy (located in Tuscany) with a great looking lineup of speakers and events. From CF2K8:

Four days full of debates, meetings, music and shows that speak about Copyleft and Creative Commons licences. From the 11th to the 15th of September, the city of Arezzo in Tuscany will be the capital of free circulation of ideas. The festival will take place in Arrezo’s two central squares and will host a bevy of guests including the collective of writers Kai Zen, the French mathematician Philippe Aigrain and new media expert Gabriele Lunati (who will explore copyleft and CC applied to music).

On Sunday the 14th, a ‘barcamp’ about new media and citizen journalism will take place from 11AM to 5PM. Space to debate, with round tables dedicated to open source/public administration, bank loans, music and CC-using professionals will also be available. Every day features book presentations, projections, shows.