Creative Commons licensed journal online

Matt Haughey, May 6th, 2004

The Center for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University has started applying Creative Commons licenses to its journals. Classics@ is available online at their site. It’s great to see further uptake in the educational world, as the ideals of academic publishing are pretty close to the goals of Creative Commons.

Online music selling like hotcakes

Matt Haughey, May 6th, 2004

Apple just announced they sold 3.3 million songs in 7 days on the iTunes Music Store. To put this in perspective, the entire top ten of the Billboard music chart is tracking just over 2 million units. If anyone in the music industry doubted that people would ever want to pay for music online, Apple’s recent sales explosion clearly points out that it’s here to stay.

DRUMS, a new P2P idea

Matt Haughey, May 6th, 2004

Scott Matthews, of turnstyle web mp3 player fame, has launched a new project called DRUMS. It’s slighty inspired by Creative Commons and the goal is to create a P2P network that is fair to both copyright owners and folks seeking content. If you have something to add to his proposal, pop on over and drop Scott a line.

Planet Spreadsheet

Glenn Otis Brown, May 5th, 2004

Here’s a good piece from Wired News on the always excellent Future of Music Conference, held this weekend in Washington, DC.

(Sadly no one from Creative Commons HQ was able to make it this year, but plenty of our friends did. Check out Siva Vaidhyanathan’s guest spot on our chairman’s blog for his take on the event.)

Creative Commons wins major award

Matt Haughey, May 4th, 2004

Prix Ars Electronica, a 25 year-old international arts award, has announced their 2004 prize winners. We are honored to learn that Creative Commons has been awarded one of the top honors, the Golden Nicas, in the “Net Vision” category.

New Names & Guest Bloggers

Glenn Otis Brown, May 4th, 2004

You may have noticed some new names on our blog of late. Roland Honekamp, an Internet entrepreneur in Germany, recently joined Creative Commons as Christiane Asschenfeldt’s right-hand-man at iCommons HQ in Berlin. Heather Ford, a Reuters Digital Vision Fellow here at Stanford, is helping lead iCommons Africa’s development, with a focus on South Africa, her home. Victor Stone, who submitted tracks to our Remix contest last year, has joined as an occasional guest blogger on matters of music and bricolage. And last but certainly not least, Creative Commons poster boy Cory Doctorow — blogger, EFF activist, and award-winning science fiction author — is now Creative Commons’ advisor on iCommons UK. (Cory liked us so much — and we, him — that he joined the company.)

Stay tuned for more guest-blogging. In the meantime, welcome our new friends.

Swiss Action Film

Roland, May 4th, 2004

The Swiss movie CH7 was released on the internet under a CC licence at the end of April. The 90min action film – featuring Denise Meili, Yvan Piccino and Noe Muller – is currently being shown exclusively in Switzerland but can be downloaded for free (www.CH7.ch). CH7 is a production of Cineartis, an organisation seeking to support independent filmmakers.

International Journalists Network

Press Robot, May 4th, 2004

“Listen Up to host, distribute youth media projects.”

Picture of the Eiffel Tower for noncommercial use

Neeru Paharia, May 3rd, 2004

When Creative Commons’ model was forming, members of the founding team often cited an example of one day being able to search for photos of the Eiffel Tower that could be used noncommercially — an arbitrary example to articulate our vision. Our licenses, and metadata schema were built to make this a reality.

We can now proudly say that there are photos [1] [2] of the Eiffel Tower available for noncommercial use, and the search engine is beginning to find them — a milestone to say the least.

Pew Musician Survey

Matt Haughey, May 3rd, 2004

The Pew Internet Project released a report today, which surveyed musicians and internet users. While the downloading habits portion of the results were covered in the NY Times today, the most compelling statistic from the artist report was this:

83% [of musicians] have provided free samples of their work online and significant numbers say free downloading has helped them sell CDs and increase the crowds at concerts

That’s great to hear, and it’s my hope these same musicians come to understand how Creative Commons can help them share their samples and also let fans rip, mix, and burn, while still increasing CD and ticket sales.