Derivative works and effects on book sales

Matt Haughey, May 24th, 2004

Suw Charman has a great article on The Free Culture AudioBook Project that touches on all the reasons why an author would use a Creative Commons license, and what can come out of such an exercise. The issues around business models in publishing are also covered.

Rip-Mix-Burning DVD players

Matt Haughey, May 21st, 2004

Copyfight has an interesting post on the discrepancy in congress over ClearPlay DVD players. The players automatically remove scenes that would be offensive to sensitive viewers, but do so in the comfort of one’s own home while playing standard movies on DVD. Some politicians oppose it because individuals are creating derivative works and they also see it as opening the door to “recipe hacking”, which would be like producing the Grey Album by purchasing two legal records (the original Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album) and combining them at home to produce a derivative work (if DJ Dangermouse produced software that could create his mixes).

On top of all that, since the motivation behind ClearPlay technology is largely religious, it turns the argument on its ear to many participants and observers. It’s not hard to find folks that loved the Grey Album but see ClearPlay technology as something to be frowned upon, but the underlying technology and law is largely the same. It’s an interesting case and hopefully does open the doors to all sorts of creative uses of derivative works.

New fourstones album

Matt Haughey, May 21st, 2004

Previous winner of a Creative Commons remix contest, Victor Stone has released a new record on Magnatune. Like his earlier Magnatune works, it is a remix album of other Magnatune artists. He’s written a great background post on the album and why he chose the artists he did.

Defamer

Glenn Otis Brown, May 20th, 2004

I’m beginning to think that the excellently named Defamer is a daily must-read for media freaks and IP watchers. Today Defamer describes a brewing credit dispute over the Shrek 2 screenplay.

/run and Nothing Severed Yet

Matt Haughey, May 19th, 2004

This week’s featured content are two new blogs, /run and Nothing Severed Yet.

/run is one man’s obsession with all sorts of geek gadgets related to running. While you’d think running is just shoes and shorts, there’s a whole industry of other essential stuff like iPods, pedometers, and high-tech watches that do everything from time your run to mapping where you’ve been. Personally, I find running these days to be much more comfortable than it used to thanks to advances in shoe support, ultra-lightweight fabrics, and my iPod.

Nothing Severed Yet is a joke title for a woodworking blog setup by someone new to the hobby. Dan shares reviews, photos, and tips on all the projects he has done. He even offers blueprints of his own projects, specifically shared and licensed to allow others to build similar projects. As a new homeowner and casual do-it-yourselfer I’ve always wanted to do a blog like this to share my experiences building and fixing stuff. The more I learn, the more I’ve found that the only difference between a seasoned veteran and a new enthusiast is experience, and having a blog to share experiences can go a long way to teaching people new trades.

Both blogs embody the spirit of the licenses by sharing information with others and encouraging others to comment and learn from their work.

Creative Commons Moving Image Contest: Staff Picks

Neeru Paharia, May 19th, 2004

Our panel of judges announced the winners of our Moving Image Contest a few months ago, but the CC team never got a chance to announce our favorite entries. Though these entries didn’t win the contest, they are excellent contributions:

Content Collage by Mike Telford, is a fun, interactive piece. Click on the boxes and a brief movie clips appear, along with sound.

Shape Shifters by Peter Lewis, has a great animation at the end featuring many of the Creative Commons logos.

And my favorite, A Real Marketplace by Chris Hamilton, it a beautiful flash animation detailing an adventure with Creative Commons, and copyright.

The Hollywood Ouroboros

Glenn Otis Brown, May 18th, 2004

Today the wonderfully nasty Hollywood gossip blog Defamer points to the media blog Low Culture, which noted that a recent Entertainment Weekly story looks awfully familiar to one of Low Culture’s own pieces, which itself noted that several elements of the new Olson Twins “film” New York Minute look awfully familiar to scenes from the movies Ferris Bueller, Moonstruck, The First Wives Club, and There’s Something About Mary.

Is piracy v. hot or what?

(And, yes, I stole the idea for this entry’s title from Charlie Kaufman’s and Spike Jonze’s self-reflexive flick, Adaptation, which itself lifted an Ouroborus reference from the Folklore and Mythology Corporation, also known as — gasp! — the public domain.)

Finding Creative Commons in all the weirdest places

Matt Haughey, May 18th, 2004

Cellphone ringtones were a $3 billion business last year, but a new bit of software from Xingtone finally makes it possible to easily create your own sounds. I always thought much of the Opsound archive would make good ringtones. It’ll be interesting to see if more CC music makes its way onto phones everywhere.

In other CC-in-other-media news, some people working on MythTV (a sort of open source TiVo that can run on any linux PC) are trying to find ways to import movies from the Internet Archive and under CC license to their TV systems.

Pixagogo supports Creative Commons

Neeru Paharia, May 18th, 2004

Pixagogo, an online photo site, now offers Creative Commons licenses to its contributing photographers. Pixagogo allows you to upload and share photos via its web site. They also let you purchase prints. Check out their toolbar, that includes an option to choose Creative Commons:

Free Culture at ILAW

Matt Haughey, May 14th, 2004

Chairman and co-founder of Creative Commons, Larry Lessig, spent most of this week speaking at the ILAW conference at Harvard. There are some great notes and transcripts on Furdlog and Copyfight of Lessig’s “Free Culture” talk. There are a lot of great questions from the moderator and audience, and a lot of great ideas being debated.