Tim Hadley on licensing your weblog

Matt Haughey, February 26th, 2003

Last month, a few folks in the world of weblogs asked some good, hard questions about Creative Commons licensing of their works. (We covered that discussion here). At the time, Denise Howell put a request out to other lawyers to weigh in on the issue, and recently, attorney Tim Hadley did so.

Tim’s exhaustive analysis examines the ins and outs of applying a license to a weblog (specifically in the context of Movable Type’s recent support for Creative Commons licenses). He takes a long look, in particular, at the issue of license revocation and echoes our chairman’s take on the subject not long ago.

Tim has also posted a follow-up based on feedback and posts from other sites and is planning a complete revision of his first post on the subject — the goal being to cover as many sides of the issue as possible.

Thanks, Tim — and to the rest of you sparking discussion about the licenses.

Cat Power + Creative Commons = Rock

Glenn Otis Brown, February 26th, 2003

Creative Commons will sponsor acclaimed singer-songwriter Cat Power (a.k.a. Chan Marshall) at the San Francisco NoisePop music festival this Wednesday, Feb. 26. Advanced tickets are sold out, but some tickets may still be available at the door (Bimbo’s 365) the night of the show.

Creative Commons staffers will be in the lobby handing out copies of our new “enchanced CD.” It’s hot off the press and features our Flash animation plus Creative Commons-licensed tracks by D.J. Spooky, Roger McGuinn, Dealership, The Walkingbirds, and Gamelan Nyai Saraswati.  

The San Francisco Bay Guardian ran a cover story on Cat Power this week.

Swarm Radio in the commons

Matt Haughey, February 25th, 2003

Brandon Wiley, an early developer of Freenet, unveiled his newest work at CodeCon. Using various cutting-edge peer-to-peer technologies, he’s developed a shared radio streaming system, dubbed Alluvium, that allows listeners to share their connections with others as they tune in. In a Register write-up today, Wiley mentions that the project may include spidering the web for Creative Commons-licensed music to play (all Creative Commons-licensed music can be webcast freely).

Wiley will be on a panel discussion featuring Creative Commons executive director Glenn Otis Brown and Metadata Advisor Aaron Swartz at the upcoming SXSW festival.

Notable recent CC licensors

Matt Haughey, February 20th, 2003

In the world of weblogs, we’ve noticed a couple notable recent adopters of Creative Commons licenses. Jon Johansen, the teenage hacker that famously cracked DVD encryption so he could watch a movie he purchased on his computer, started a blog called “So Sue Me.” He was recently acquitted of charges he did anything wrong.

A great looking blog centered around the design of books, called Foreword, is another interesting new site carrying a Creative Commons license.

Also of note is Accessify.com, a site aimed at helping webmasters build websites that are accessible to everyone (which is also under a Creative Commons license). They offer articles and tools to help you attain Bobby and Section 508 compliance with your sites.

Movie Mashin’ Mike Meyers

Matt Haughey, February 14th, 2003

Mike Meyers, star of the popular Austin Powers series, has just scored an unusual movie deal with Dreamworks that will allow him to make films from sampling earlier movies. DreamWorks will acquire the necessary rights so the actor can be digitally inserted in the old flicks.

Today, people practicing in music and movie “mash-ups” are usually operating in a muddy area of legality (or they do it illegally). How cool would it be if those of us without the backing of Dreamworks’ lawyers could do this sort of thing? Or, as we say in our demo movie, “Shouldn’t it be easier still?”

Movable Type 2.6 released

Matt Haughey, February 14th, 2003

As we reported last month when it was first announced, the new version of Movable Type, a popular application for managing weblogs, was released today with full support for adding a Creative Commons license to your website. If you have a weblog, or are thinking about starting one, you might want to check out the lastest MT software.

Scientific American

Press Robot, February 13th, 2003

“Some Rights Reserved,” by Gary Stix

Duct and Cover

Glenn Otis Brown, February 13th, 2003

In a story about the U.S. Homeland Security office’s recent suggestion that American citizens apply plastic sheeting and duct tape to doors and windows in case of terrorist attack, CNNfn last night aired several scenes from “Duck and Cover,” a public domain film from 1951 that famously advised American school children to take shelter beneath their desks or under blankets in case of nuclear warfare.

As a product of the U.S. government, “Duck and Cover” was uncopyrightable and immediately entered the public domain. It is available for viewing online at the Prelinger Archives. 

(Film archivist Rick Prelinger, you may recall, was our first featured commoner.)

Scientific American & Creative Commons

Glenn Otis Brown, February 12th, 2003

There’s a great piece about Creative Commons in the March issue of Scientific American.

You may remember that Scientific American recently named our chairman Lawrence Lessig one of the 50 top innovators of 2002.

MusicBrainz launches with CC licensed metadata

Matt Haughey, February 11th, 2003

MusicBrainz, one of our collaborators, has announced they’re releasing their database of music metadata under a CC license. MusicBrainz metadata lets you take all your assorted music files and organize them with consistent title, author, and album information.