Flickr’s Creative Commons area back, grown way over a million images licensed

Matt Haughey, April 29th, 2005

Flickr, who we interviewed last year, has reopened the area of their site devoted to Creative Commons licensed images. If you’re looking for a photo to drop into a collage, a report for school, or even onto a t-shirt, this is a great place to browse and search for specific licensed photos. We’re also happy to see growth at Flickr has gone way beyond our expectations to nearly 1.5 million photos licensed for reuse.

What’s the Bzzzzz?

Francesca Rodriquez, April 29th, 2005

Creative Commons is fortunate to have a partnership with BzzAgent Inc., a word-of-mouth marketing firm based in Boston. Today, BzzAgent launched a grass roots marketing campaign to promote Creative Commons. What does this mean? The marketing campaign is a network of volunteer brand evangelists who share their honest opinions about products and services with other consumers. The Bzz agents are regular joes like you and me who bzzz (or promote) different campaigns.

BzzAgent’s GoodBzz Partnership provides selected non-profits with a pro bono 12 week marketing campaign. To become a BzzAgent and help support Creative Commons in this BzzCampaign, visit BzzAgent.com.

Update: Many find this program disagreeable. Please leave comments and advice at Bzzzz: seeking advice on our chairperson’s blog.

Update: We took your advice. Now help us Spread CC.

Slate to George Lucas: slap a Creative Commons license on Star Wars

Matt Haughey, April 29th, 2005

The online magazine Slate has a great review article on the Star Wars fan-created movie Revelations. Slate’s Clive Thompson gives the film high marks saying the story and special effects are better than the recent Star Wars prequels and even goes so far as to say:

George Lucas has always encouraged Star Wars­-inspired fan movies, so long as the wannabe auteurs didn’t try to make a profit. (That’s the case with Felux—he isn’t selling his movie or any associated merchandise.) Lucas should do more, though. Once he stops polluting the world with prequels, he should slap a liberal “Creative Commons” copyright license on the Star Wars franchise. That would explicitly allow any fan to remix an existing movie, or create a new one in homage, so long as there’s no profit involved. Everyone wins: Movies like Revelations keep the fan base alive, and Lucas can continue selling figurines until the sun explodes.

Sounds like an idea we at Creative Commons could get behind. An attribution-noncommercial-sharealike license would allow fan created side stories, prequels, or follow-ups, and they’d never be sold or charged for and a credit would always be given to Lucas. It’ll be interesting to see if any aging properties with a large cult-like fan following adopt something like this. One could speculate that fan art would drive sales of the original, when outsiders take a liking to these offshoots, and in the end mean more sales of DVDs and toys for creators like Lucas.

Diane Cabell

Glenn Otis Brown, April 25th, 2005

(Next in a continuing series of posts about core Commoners I’m happy to have worked with. Apologies for the intermittent, serial nature of these entries; it’s taken longer than I thought.)

I’ve known our corporate counsel Diane Cabell for about seven years, since first meeting her back in the early days of the Berkman Center. As far as I can remember, my first conversation with Diane was to ask her what the letters URL stood for. She tried hard to not look too concerned — this was an Internet research center I was volunteering for, after all — then pointed me to a good glossary of terms and loaned me a copy of Where Wizards Stay Up Late.

It was the first of many times at Berkman that Diane took the time to help me out with one thing or another, whether an ignorant technical question or a life lesson. Like a lot of things at Creative Commons, the chance to work with Diane again has felt like a natural and welcome continuation of the good old Berkman days.

A fixture at CC since day one, Diane has ably handled a wide range of crucial behind-the-scenes tasks ranging from the often byzantine government hoops a nonprofit has to jump through, to legal research on trademark, to dotting all i’s and crossing all t’s in all our corporate records, to helping develop the infrastructure for this increasingly international organization — precisely the sort of work, largely invisible from the outside, that keeps CC a steady ship among the exploding number of new projects and developments.

Throughout, and despite working from the East Coast, Diane has been consistent source of optimism and support for the core CC staff. I can think of no one else inside the organization who has so regularly reminded us to step back and appreciate the things we’re doing. So I figure it’s only fair to do the same now for her: thanks for everything, Diane.

Happy Birthday FreeCulture.org!

Neeru Paharia, April 23rd, 2005

Today, Creative Commons wishes FreeCulture.org a happy 1st birthday! We are truly grateful that there is an organized, passionate group of students advocating for free culture around the world.

It is true that we indeed do have a very special present for you. However, we need to wait for the license. Stay tuned…

ENTERTAINMENT Company Makes Money by Giving its Creations Away

Press Robot, April 21st, 2005

… Using a Creative Commons license, the team not only gives copies of
their work away, they encourage people to give copies to their friends
from Emediawire (press release) - Ferndale,WA,USA

ASK Jeeves to buy Bloglines

Press Robot, April 21st, 2005

… remove his site from its aggregation service, saying that the service
was reproducing his Web log for commercial purposes, against its Creative
from CNET News.com - USA

A Seamstress And a License

Press Robot, April 21st, 2005

… Speaking at the Creative Commons (CC) workshop on Tuesday, Benjamin
explained how his organisation is working with African countries to try
from AllAfrica.com - Africa

OPEN source helps Flickr share photos

Press Robot, April 21st, 2005

… Flickr’s founder Stewart Butterfield said in an interview with Creative
Commons that the company believes in and wants to support free culture.
from NewsForge (press release) - USA

OSDL opens IP advice centre for Linux developers

Press Robot, April 21st, 2005

… years. Other directors include Diane Peters, Lawrence Lessig (creator
from Register - London,England,UK