Will the Industry Approach to “Exclusivity” be Tempered by the “New Reality”?

Mia Garlick, June 30th, 2006

In the UK, the All Party Parliamentary Internet Group (APPIG) has recently released its report on Digital Rights Management. It contained strong and welcome recommendations in relation to DRM, some of which are succintly listed on Boing Boing.

In addition to DRM, the inquiry also considered CC licensing; specifically, one of the issues for comment was:

“Whether new types of content sharing license (such as Creative Commons or Copyleft) need legislation changes to be effective.”

The report explained that it had asked this question because it was “aware that these had taken some effort to craft so as to fit within the
UK’s legal framework and wished to know if any changes would be of assistance.”

About the various submissions received on the issue of CC, the report concludes that “[e]veryone who commented told us that the licenses were solidly based on existing legislation, and that no changes were necessary.” Which is a relief and a testament to the hard work of the legal projects who adapt the licenses for varying jurisdictions around the world, and in particular in the UK England & Wales and Scotland.

Interestingly, the report continued that:

“Several of the rights-holders were rather negative about these licenses, suggesting that the creators and performers did not always understand what they were “giving away forever” and how it could affect an artist’s ability to enter into an exclusive license at a later stage in their career.”

These arguments are ones CC often encounters in discussions with different creator groups. However, it appears that these argument held little sway with the APPIG. It’s response:

“Although artists should naturally consider these matters, we suspect that these licenses are clearer than many media industry contracts. Also, should it become commonplace for bands to use Creative Commons licenses at an early stage of their career, then as they become successful and sign with a record company, the industry approach to ‘exclusivity’ will doubtless be tempered by the new reality.”

The University Channel

Mia Garlick, June 30th, 2006

The University Channel - a collaboration between over 30 universities, thinktanks and other organizations that host events relevant to a range of public affairs issues - has released its webcasts, podcasts, vodcasts and blogs under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Sharelike 2.5 license. UC invites contributors to submit recordings of lectures, seminars, panels and interviews to the site so that these can be disseminated as widely as possible to the public.

It hopes to provide a distribution channel for these recordings that were already being made for archival purposes but not being publicly
disseminated for lack of a distribution mechanism. Utilizing CC licenses, of course, the University Channel will now better achieve its
purpose by enabling wider dissemination of its materials.

Translating Creative Commons software

Nathan Yergler, June 29th, 2006

During the iSummit last weekend in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, I had the
opportunity to sit down with Dwayne Bailey from the WordForge project. We discussed the tools used to
translate Creative Commons software and he assisted me in installing the
server-based tool Pootle
on our servers. Pootle is a web-based tool that allows users to collaborate on translating software through the web.

At this time I’m pleased to announce that our Pootle server,
translate.creativecommons.org, is live and open for business.
I’ve moved the ccPublisher translations I have available onto the site,
and ccHost translations will be available there as well. Some
documentation on how we’re using Pootle is available in our wiki.

If you have questions about using Pootle, about translation in general
or would like to import a translation-in-progress into Pootle, email the
cctools-i18n list.

New York Times Coverage of the iComons Summit

Mia Garlick, June 26th, 2006

We wrapped up the iCommons Summit yesterday. It was a fantastic and inspiring event bringing together a diversity of skills, viewpoints, experiences and cultures but all connected to and passionate about issues relevant to “the commons.” You can find more information about what was discussed from the summit website. In addition, the New York Times today has a very good overview article about the Summit.

Hello from iSummit! / Message from Glenn Brown

Eric Steuer, June 23rd, 2006

Hello from the iCommons Summit! Rio is beautiful and so are the hundreds of people joining us here for this historic event.

Among the many members of our community who have traveled to be a part of the summit is former Creative Commons executive director Glenn Otis Brown, who writes in to say:

I’m honored to be able to participate in the iCommons Summit in Rio de
Janeiro this weekend. I’m also thrilled to announce that Google’s Open Source Programs, which last year donated $30,000 dollars to Creative Commons, will be sponsoring four digital video cameras for the three-day event. The idea will be to have conference participants themselves film the proceedings — which include a performance by the legendary musician and Minister
of Culture Gilberto Gil and a speech by Jimmy Wales (wikipedia), among many other Net luminaries. Eventually someone — Creative Commons, the iSummit participants, the Web? (tbd) — will cut and knit the footage together into something along the lines of the Beastie Boys’ fan-filmed Madison Square Garden concert video, “Awesome.”

We hope other iCommons attendees will bring cameras and participate in this collaborative capturing of what is sure to be an unforgettable experience, and we are proud to take inspiration from the Beastie Boys (who, as you may recall, were among the first major-label artists to go CC with a track on WIRED’s Rip Sample Mash Share CD).

A special thanks to Chris DiBona and Eric Case from Google’s own Open Source Programs for sponsoring the cameras.

See you there, old friends!

Glenn
Products Counsel, Google Inc.
Creative Commons alum

Thanks, Glenn!

iSummit coverage

Mike Linksvayer, June 23rd, 2006

Most of Creative Commons staff is in Rio de Janiero this weekend for the iCommons iSummit. See the iSummit coverage site for panel writeups, podcasts, and images from the conference.

It is a pleasure to have a few days of face to face collaboration with our worldwide affiliates and extended community.

Update: Participate online in Second Life.

New Featured Commoner - Wikitravel

Mia Garlick, June 21st, 2006

Our latest Featured Commoner tells the story of Wikitravel - why it was started, how it has been built up & organized and its experience of CC licensing. As we mentioned earlier in the year, in April 2006 Wikitravel was one of two wikis that were acquired by Internet Brands, which makes this a very interesting chapter in the development of new business models around open content licensing.

ccPublisher 2.2 Released

Nathan Yergler, June 21st, 2006

In preparation for the iCommons iSummit taking place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil later this week, we’re pleased to announce that ccPublisher 2.2 is now available. The focus of this release was internationalization, and it includes translations for Chinese (Taiwan), Croation, Dutch, Polish, and Spanish. Thanks to the volunteers who graciously handled the translation efforts. In addition to translation support, ccPublisher 2.2 corrects many bugs which our users reported using the automated crash reporter.

Download links for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X are available here. Those interested in helping to translate ccPublisher into their own language can find details on the process in the wiki.

Update (23 June 2006): After discovering a bug we missed in 2.2, we’ve released the first bug-fix release — 2.2.1; details at the release page.

License your office (documents)

Mike Linksvayer, June 21st, 2006

Microsoft has released an tool for copyright licensing that enables the easy addition of Creative Commons licensing information for works in popular Microsoft Office applications. The software is available free of charge at Microsoft Office Online and will enable the 400 million users of Microsoft Office Word, Microsoft Office Excel, and Microsoft Office PowerPoint to easily select Creative Commons licenses from directly within the application they are working in.

The first document to be CC-licensed using this tool is the text of Brazilian Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil’s iSummit keynote speech in English and Portugese.

See the press release here and at Microsoft and early press at CNET and TechChrunch.

Fedora/CC Open Video Contest

Mike Linksvayer, June 20th, 2006

Now through July 20 entires are being accepted for the Open Video Contest promoting open content, open formats and open source.

Entries should be under 30 seconds, under 10 megabytes, in OGG Theora format and released under the Attribution-ShareAlike license.

Check out the press release and see the contest page for rules and other information.

Appropriately enough leading into the iSummit three of the judges are CC jurisdiction leads from Brazil, Nigeria, and Poland.

Thanks to the Fedora Project for bringing this contest together.