zug.com’s prank song

Matt Haughey, February 19th, 2004

This week’s featured content is a protest song at zug.com. Zug.com has been producing humorous articles for almost ten years online and this protest song is part of a larger set of RIAA pranks they pulled last summer. The song has been remixed as well and they actively encourage others to share the song online to get their message across, in a humorous way.

The Grey Album

Matt Haughey, February 16th, 2004

A few months ago, hip-hop artist Jay Z released what is reportedly his last album, titled The Black Album. He also released a vocals-only version, specifically for DJs to incorporate into new mixes. One of those mixes was done by DJ Dangermouse, using only samples from The Beatles’ White Album. This new mix was dubbed The Grey Album and a limited pressing was made. After a mention in the New Yorker, copies quickly showed up online and spread like wildfire.

EMI, the rights holders to The Beatles’ recordings issued a cease and desist order to record stores and online merchants selling it last week, since the sampling was done without permission from either Jay Z or The Beatles. Executive Director of the Creative Commons, Glenn Otis Brown was quoted in a Wired News piece about the album and points out the problems of copyright being used to silence DJ Dangermouse and his popular mix.

CC metadata in PDFs, images with XMP

Mike Linksvayer, February 13th, 2004

You can now add Creative Commons license metadata to PDFs and image files, enabled by XMP (eXtensible Metadata Platform). XMP is an open, RDF/XML-based format developed by Adobe for managing metadata embedded in files.

Please see information about Creative Commons metadata in XMP, instructions for marking files with Creative Commons metadata for users of Adobe’s Creative Suite, and a “custom panel” to enhance viewing of Creative Commons metadata within Adobe apps.

We’ve also posted a related technology challenge: add XMP and Creative Commons licensing support to open source apps, including Open Office.

Down and Out relicensed today

Matt Haughey, February 12th, 2004

Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Cory Doctorow’s first novel released a little over a year ago, has just been relicensed under an Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license. Previously the book did not allow derivative works and any “lost chapters” or comic versions were unauthorized. With this change in place, the door is wide open to people writing prequels, sequels, and side stories, you can make a movie, cartoon, or graphic novel, you can write songs for it, rewrite it in haiku, and/or turn it all into one giant flowchart, as long as your new Down and Out-inspired work isn’t released in a commercial context or sold.

Let the re-creativity begin!

mozCC Gets Better and Gets Noticed

Mike Linksvayer, February 12th, 2004

mozCC, an extension for Mozilla-based browsers that exposes Creative Commons license metadata as you surf, got noticed by Slashdot last weekend. The resulting surge of new users brought new bug reports, fixes for which creator Nathan Yergler has already incorporated in mozCC 0.7.7 along with new features. The new version looks for license metadata in SMIL and SVG multimedia files in addition to HTML.

Install mozCC with the latest Mozilla Firefox browser for the best CC-enhanced browsing experience available.

mozCC was inspired by one of our technology challenges. The challenge remains open for non-Mozilla browsers (e.g., Safari, Opera, IE, hint, hint, hint).

Creative Commons in Europe

Glenn Otis Brown, February 11th, 2004

Neeru Paharia, our assistant director, will be in Holland over the next few days to attend the Third Zwolle Conference, entitled “Optimal management of copyright: Making it happen,” on February 13 and 14. Neeru will also be checking in with friends of CC in Holland.

Meanwhile, iCommons coordinator Christiane Asschenfeldt will be visiting Switzerland over the next couple of days to speak about Creative Commons at the CERN Workshop Series on Innovation in Scholarly Communication.

If you’re at either event or nearby and would like to meet up with Neeru or Christiane, let us know.

CC at SXSW

Neeru Paharia, February 11th, 2004

Keep an eye out for Creative Commons at the South By Southwest Music and Media Conference this March in Austin, Texas. We’ll be hosting two panels, announcing two projects that encourage collaboration and distribution of music and film. Details coming soon.

Ads and Copyright

Glenn Otis Brown, February 9th, 2004

Never thought I’d say this, but the Super Bowl got me thinking.

Why shouldn’t every advertiser release every print, audio, or multimedia ad they create under a Creative Commons license? Choose BY-NC-ND, and make clear you’re protecting your trademark. Forget the cultural effect — I’m talking pure business: What principle drives someone to enforce the full copyright in a work they’d normally pay millions to get in front of people’s faces? Isn’t it irrational NOT to free up distribution completely? Or am I missing something?

The insanely great MacBand

Matt Haughey, February 6th, 2004

Last month, Apple released Garageband at MacWorld, letting any budding musician create music from its suite of sophisticated but simple audio tools. Given the potential for thousands of musicians recording new songs at home, we knew it was a great fit for Creative Commons and we’re very happy to see a new community has sprung up around the software, at MacBand. They’ve just launched but have a system setup to categorize dozens of song styles and loops, with every song available under a Creative Commons license, letting you make remixes and new songs from others work. Garageband has the great potential to become a collaborative music tool and MacBand looks like a great way to facilitate that.

Ron Suskind posts government public domain documents online

Neeru Paharia, February 5th, 2004

Government documents supplied by Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Ron Suskind for his book, The Price of Loyalty, are now available online. The site makes use of the Creative Commons public domain mark.  

These documents, drawn from a collection of 19,000 files, are called “The Bush Files” and Suskind is encouraging other administration officials to contribute to the database, “to encourage more productive, fact-based public dialogues,” as stated on the website.