Sex and Cash Theory

Mike Linksvayer, December 29th, 2004

Read Hugh MacLeod’s How to Be Creative now. Nearly any sentence could be lifted as a pull quote, so I won’t bother lifting any. Only fifty pages, super easy to read ebook formatting, great cartoons, tremendous relevance to creating free culture while surviving and thriving, and it’s CC licensed.

Also check out the few dozen other ebook manifestos at ChangeThis. Same great ebook presentation, same great licensing.

Via Boing Boing. More CC content via Boing Boing yesterday: Banjo manuals and a science fiction novel. BB is hot, CC is hot!

sta(cc)ato

Mike Linksvayer, December 29th, 2004

Staccato is a music program featuring all Creative Commons licensed tracks selected by Matt May.

If you dig the sort of super eclectic show often found on the best community and college radio stations where the dj cares about nothing but the music and knows the music, sometimes producing transcendent experiences … you’ll be comfortable with Staccato. Nothing transcendent yet, but pretty good, and he’s only four shows in.

It’s about discovery now.

CC Party Jan. 6 San Francisco

Mike Linksvayer, December 29th, 2004

Update: Missed the party? The important public parts are recorded on video. Download with BitTorrent.

A tour of open audio

Mike Linksvayer, December 28th, 2004

Jon Udell takes a twenty minute tour of open audio, with virtual stops at Creative Commons, the Internet Archive, Webjay, and Magnatune. Listen (mp3) and read.

[Via Lucas Gonze.]

ccPublisher 1.0

Nathan Yergler, December 27th, 2004

After six busy months, I’m very pleased to announce the release of ccPublisher 1.0. ccPublisher 1.0 is a feature complete, stable tool which allows users (that’s you) to easily license your work, and optionally upload it to the Internet Archive for free hosting and cataloging.

You can download ccPublisher for Windows (.msi) or Mac OS X (.dmg) from our servers or from the SourceForge.net project. Linux distributions will be available soon.

We’re not done developing ccPublisher, and have lots of improvements planned. But I’m confident there are features and ideas we haven’t thought of. So write them down or join the discussion.

Science Commons Interview

Mike Linksvayer, December 21st, 2004

Open Access Now’s current feature is an interview with Science Commons executive director John Wilbanks.

Creative Commons launches in Belgium

Roland, December 20th, 2004

The launch ceremony of the Belgian CC Licences took place in the Bibliotheque Royale in Brussels on 10 December as part of the electronic music and free software festival Jonctions 8.

Creative Commons country head Severine Dusollier – a young researcher of copyright law at the University of Namur – had invited an interesting panel comprising artists, publishers, academics, lawyers and representatives from the collecting societies. With more than 150 participants in the audience, the panel discussion took place in a splendid setting and was lead by Suzanne Capiau, a prominent avocate in Brussels. It focussed (1) on the legal viability of the licences under Belgian law, (2) on a comparative analysis of the licences within an EU perspective as well as (3) on the necessary adjustments collecting societies will have to make to accommodate the growing desire of artists to distribute their works on a ‘Some Rights Reserved’ basis. The latter issue in particular is becoming increasingly urgent and was much debated at various conferences I attended throughout Europe in the second half of 2004.

The launch event ended on a somewhat lighter note, as local DJ Lo-bat was showing off some of his new works licenced under CC in an exclusive concert for us. Here’s Lo-bat’s personal introduction to what he’s doing:
“Lo-bat is all about squeezing dirt cheap computers so hard they start moaning and rattling like nothing you heard before […] No style is safe: from brutal experiments to soft pop, he can do it all. He picked up the guitar again […] so watch out, maybe you’re lucky enough to be the first one seeing him torturing it live.” So we all relaxed to Lo-bat’s music!

Many thanks are due to Severine for her outstanding efforts during the last months. Belgium was the seventh EU country to launch.

Drupal handbook going CC

Mike Linksvayer, December 18th, 2004

The handbook for Drupal, one of the most popular web content management systems (Spread Firefox is a recent high-profile example) has adopted Creative Commons licensing so as to

• make clear that Drupal community members can use the documentation in the Drupal handbook in other contexts, such as revising and developing site specific help docs.
• allow the integration of already existing Drupal documentation being developed outside of drupal.org by Bryght, CivicSpace, and others.
• eliminate potential legal conflicts over rights of use.

This is a good example of a community taking an existing work with a large number of contributors and obtaining the agreement necessary to take advantage of a standard Creative Commons license.

Thanks to Victor Stone for the pointer.

Creative Remix airing in Seattle and Chicago

Neeru Paharia, December 17th, 2004

The Creative Remix, an hour-long “lawyer free” examination of the art, culture, and history of the remix, will be airing on public radio station KUOW in Seattle on December 20th at 8pm. It will also be airing on WBEZ in Chicago, on December 26th at 5pm. Check it out!

Support Creative Commons

Mike Linksvayer, December 17th, 2004

Friends of Creative Commons,

As 2004 draws to a close, Creative Commons is strong. In the past two
years since Creative Commons licenses have been available, we’ve taken
our first large first steps with you–building some of the essential
tools, adding critical pieces of infrastructure and assembling a vibrant
community.

In 2004, Glenn, Larry, and the legal team made huge improvements and
released version 2.0 of the main Creative Commons licenses. These new
versions added many needed features while at the same time they reduced
the complexity of the licenses for our users. Christine, Roland and all
of the iCommons volunteers worldwide took that work, and have ported
Creative Commons licenses to 12 countries. We expect to add another
dozen countries early next year, and we’re in conversation with more
than 70.

We’ve found more than 5,000,000 pages with content and links back to our
licenses. But the commons is about more than simply putting the work out
there. So, Mike, Neeru, Matt, and Nutch.org have collaborated to develop
and debut a metadata search engine that makes it easy to find content
marked with Creative Commons licenses. As if that were not enough, that
search functionality now ships with the amazing Firefox browser from
mozilla.org.

Neeru and the tech team have also worked with other software developers
to make it easy to integrate Creative Commons licenses. The list is
long, and includes Flickr, Moveable Type, Squarespace, Manila,
Archive.org, WinkSite, plus DMusic, Soundclick, Garageband.com, and
others I’m sure I’ve forgotten.

We’re nearer to making worry-free sampling and re-creativity mainstream.
What better place to start than the cover of WIRED magazine? The WIRED
CD contains sixteen sampling-friendly tunes — and includes the Beastie
Boys, David Byrne, Gilberto Gil, Chuck D and more.

In 2005 we will continue to build our worldwide community of
contributors to free culture. We will continue to enable more images,
music, films and text, and we’ll start to work on the Science Commons.
We’ll have much more to tell you about it at the start of the year.

ou can help make Creative Commons and “some rights reserved” household
phrases. Visit http://creativecommons.org/support/ and you’ll find out
how you can make your contribution via PayPal, Amazon’s Honor
System, or by sending a check to Creative Commons at 543 Howard Street,
5th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105.

Thank you for your support. It’s not the commons without you.

Mark Resch, CEO

Creative Commons

Creative Commons a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization. Contributions
are tax-deductible in the U.S. to the extent allowed by law.