MusicIP and MusicBrainz track CC

Mike Linksvayer, April 12th, 2006

Audio fingerprinting (and more) company MusicIP has added the ability to attach a Creative Commons license to audio tracks registered via their ListenerLink service (press release; PDF).

Community music metadatabase MusicBrainz is working with MusicIP’s fingerprinting technology and has also added the ability to track CC licenses, see details on the MusicBrainz blog.

This will be a good year for “open music infrastructure” and CC will be a big part of that…

Crammed Discs Remix Contest at ccMixter!

Eric Steuer, April 12th, 2006

We’re pleased to announce a new Creative Commons remix contest in conjunction with Crammed Discs over at our community remix site, ccMixter. Crammed artists Cibelle, DJ Dolores, and Apollo Nove — some of Brazil’s most innovative contemporary musicians — are offering new sounds online under a Creative Commons BY-NC license, so people throughout the world can legally use them in remixes, mash-ups, and new compositions. Nine winning remixes will appear on a Crammed/ccMixter EP project to be sold online through digital music stores.

Netsquared interview

Mike Linksvayer, April 11th, 2006

Marshall Kirkpatrick interviewed me at SXSW and used the interview as the basis for a nice article about Creative Commons at Netsquared.

Creative Commons presents: CC Salon 2, San Francisco

Jon Phillips, April 10th, 2006

Please join us for the second CC Salon, taking place in San Francisco on Wednesday, April 12 from 6-9 PM at Shine (1337 Mission Street between 8th and 9th Streets). CC Salon is a casual get-together focused on conversation and community-building with 2-3 brief presentations from individuals and groups developing projects with relationship to Creative Commons. Please invite your friends, colleagues, and anyone you know who might be interested in drinks and discussion. We look forward to seeing you there!

Following the first successful salon, this event focuses on “Net-based Music.” James Polanco is presenting about “Podcasting and the Fake Science Digital Music Store” and
Lucas Gonze is talking about “How the Net is Changing Music.” Lucas Gonze is the creator of Webjay and is a frequent Creative Commons supporter. Also, we have a special surprise guest composer Bob Ostertag.

We’ve set up http://creativecommons.org/salon where you can find the latest information about CC Salon. It is also place where the community may contribute ideas, make suggestions, and submit proposals for future events.

You can track this event on upcoming.org along with every future monthly 2nd Wednesday CC Salon.

Submit your short DIY video to the MAKE: Movies film festival

Eric Steuer, April 10th, 2006

MAKE (which is, incidentally, one of the coolest magazines around) is hosting the MAKE: Movies film festival as part of the Maker Faire, taking place on April 22 and 23 at the San Mateo Fairgrounds. You’ve got a few more days (until Wednesday, April 12) to submit your CC-licensed project demo videos, DIY tech documentaries, and how-to clips. Need music that you can use noncommercially in your entry? Check out one of the sites indexed on our audio page.

SXSWi Open Science Podcast

Francesca Rodriquez, April 5th, 2006

At this year’s SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, John Wilbanks, Executive Director of Science Commons, moderated a panel on Open Science. The panel is now available as a podcast, thanks to the good folks at SXSW.

Elephants Dream Premier

Mike Linksvayer, April 4th, 2006

Bjorn Wijers of CC Netherlands sends this about the successful premier of Elephants Dream (previous post — Your textures in a movie):

The Blender movie ‘Elephants Dream’ (previously known under the working
title Orange) was released last friday with a crowded but nice premiere
at the Ketelhuis in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Elephants Dream is the
world’s first film which was completely created using Open Source
Software and released under the Creative Commons Attribution license. The film was
realised by the Blender Foundation, known by the excellent 3D open
source program Blender, and The Netherlands Media Art Institute,
Montevideo/Time Based Arts.

Summary from Motevideo:

Elephants Dream is a story with quick-witted dialogue, tightly designed
architecture and unusual sound effects. The main characters, Emo (a cool
young trumpeter) and Proog (a confused – or maybe not? – loner) are each
stuck in a world of their own. At a certain moment they cross paths with
one another. The oddball Proog cautiously tries to introduce his young
friend Emo to his world. When Emo realizes that Proog primarily wants to
push his ideas on him, this leads to a conflict between them. But can
Emo survive in Proog’s world? And can they overcome their conflicts, or
will they each go their own way in life?
Tygo Gernandt and Cas Jansen create two unique personalities that
command the imagination, and carry the viewer along into a bizarre world
that consists of a bleak wasteland with a tangle of cables and other
alien landscapes, a living typewriter, an enormous elevator shaft, and
especially a lot of very strange birds.

The DVD can be ordered and more information is available at orange.blender.org, with downloads to follow.

Post about the premier on the CC Netherlands blog (Dutch).

CC Mainland China Launch Photos

Mike Linksvayer, April 3rd, 2006

Creative Commons licenses ported to Mainland China were launched last week. Photos from the launch event are on Flickr with the ccchina tag. A post in Chinese is here.

Photo by Shi Zhao licensed under CC BY.

Black Sweater White Cat … Live!

Mike Linksvayer, April 3rd, 2006

Weekly two hour radio program dedicated to CC-licensed music Black Sweater White Cat initiated WBCR’s new live stream last week. Now you can catch the program every Saturday at 9PM EDT (Sunday 1AM GMT) and not have to wait for the podcast.

BSWC host Biotic writes in:

Next week we will be
talking to Lisa DeBenedictis during the first part of the program,
shortly after 9 EDT. Plan on talking about the impact of CC on her
career and the difference that ccMixter has made in her distribution
across the Internet.

Previous post on BSWC: Start your own netlabel.

ccHost 2.0.1 and subversion

Mike Linksvayer, April 3rd, 2006

Every major software release has bugs and ccHost 2.0, released last week, is no exception. Today we released ccHost 2.0.1, fixing a problem with contests and making it easier to install in a non-webroot directory. (ccHost is the GPL-licensed web app that runs ccMixter, read all about it here.)

In other development news Nathan has migrated CC software projects, ccHost included, to SourceForge’s new Subversion revision control service. Our repository is documented here. Thanks SourceForge!