Weblog
2007 September
Revver pays $1 million to video creators and promoters
Earlier this month Revver announced that it had paid $1 million to video creators and promoters over the past year. Revver has been a pioneer in combining CC licensing (videos on Revver are licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives) and compensation to creators via an ad-based model. Creative Commons used Revver as part of its fall fundraising campaign last year (watch Wanna Work Together).
Congratulations to the video creators and promoters on Revver, and to Revver!
Blip.tv and Lulu.tv are two other video sites combining CC licensing (Blip.tv supports any CC license; Lulu.tv, like Revver, only uses BY-NC-ND) and user payouts.
No Comments »Red Hat and “Bird Song: A Cartoon Requiem for DRM”
A bit late (exactly a month in fact), but in case you missed it the first time as well, Red Hat posted an amazing short about DRM titled “Bird Song: A Cartoon Requiem for DRM”. Its a beautifully made animation and Red Hat has gone the distance in licensing the different elements under a CC BY-NC-SA licence.
By utilizing CC-licences, Red Hat extend “an open invitation to use, share and modify as you wish, as long as you share your production, don’t use it for commercial purposes and give us (and those before you) a nod of recognition for getting it started”. So, as always, get your redistribute/remix/share on, and maybe your bird can sing.
No Comments »Moshang Releases CC-Licenced Remix Album
Moshang, a self-proclaimed sound jeweler, has just released a new remix album, Asian Variations, featuring 14 tracks of downtempo goodness. From moshang.net:
MoShang is a sound jeweler living in Taiwan. He collects rough audio diamonds from the streets of Taiwan (be they overheard conversations, street-ads blared from the ubiquitous blue-trucks, street processions or funeral chants) and fuses them with traditional Chinese instruments and laid-back beats to create a unique blend of downtempo electronica he likes to call Chinese Chill.
Asian Variations builds out of this aesthetic, “produced by MoShang in his Chinese Chill style of downtempo electronica, melding deeply laid-back beats with Chinese traditional instruments”. It is a wonder to listen to, and, as the album is released under a CC Music Sharing License, simple to share with your friends and family. Head over to the Asian Variations website to download the album in its entirety, for free.
No Comments »Illuminated Corridor turns Prelinger Library inside Out on October 3
Next Wednesday, Oct. 3rd, Illuminated Corridor is assembling a collision of public art, live music and moving images inspired by the Prelinger Library and Archives‘ collections (which we have discussed extensively before). Everything will take place in the street and parking lot outside the Library, and on the walls of the building, at 8th and Folsom in downtown San Francisco.
The evening will feature many performative projectionists and musicians, including (but not limited to) Craig Baldwin, Cinepimps (Alfonso Alvarez and Keith Arnold), Steve Dye, António Jorge Gonçalves, Killer Banshee, Charles Kremenak, and Gino Robair, who’ll conduct his new score to RP’s movie Panorama Ephemera. Neighborhood Public Radio will be broadcasting the audio live, so bring your FM radios!
This sounds to good to pass up, so if you are in the area, make sure to check it out! More details here.
No Comments »Remix Public Enemy at Jamglue
Jamglue is back with another amazing remix contest, this time featuring revolutionary hip-hop act Public Enemy and their song “Amerikan Gangster”. From Jamglue:
[Public Enemy's] revolutionary grouping of groundbreaking soundscapes with decidedly political lyrics made Public Enemy, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the most controversial, influential, and authoritative hardcore rap formation of the late eighties, early nineties. For many, Chuck D. and his crew to this day remain the most definitive rap group of all time, as they have not only made a massive, cultural impact on black society, but had an almost equally significant, conscience-rousing effect on all people of different colors and backgrounds across the planet.
Public Enemy has long been ahead of the curve in their approach to music in the digital age. They were one of the first hip-hop groups to go live on the web, Frontman Chuck D has debated Metallica’s Lars Ulrich on The Charlie Rose show over file-sharing, and he has appeared on The WIRED CD with Fine Arts Militia. In getting involved with Jamglue (who release the song as separate instrument tracks, all of which are released under a CC BY-NC-SA license), Public Enemy allows their fans the ability to remix their music as they see fit – a wonderful, yet logical, step in their forward-thinking digital endeavors.
Lawsuit Against Virgin Mobile and Creative Commons – FAQ
Many people have asked us for information about the lawsuit prepared to be filed in Texas against Virgin Mobile and Creative Commons. The plaintiffs of the lawsuit are the parents of a student whose image in a CC-licensed photograph was used by Virgin Mobile in an advertising campaign and the photographer who took the original picture of the student and posted it on Flickr. We have prepared the FAQ below, which should answer many of your questions. We also recommend that you read Creative Commons CEO Lawrence Lessig’s blog post about the situation.
Has Creative Commons been sued?
Yes, Creative Commons has been named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed in a Texas state district court.
So what has Creative Commons been sued for?
The complaint alleges that a photographer, Justin Wong, took a picture of a student, Alison Chang, and posted it on to Flickr. The photographer posted the photo under a Creative Commons Attribution license. He selected that license from within Flickr, via one of the site’s “Set a license” pages, which gives all users the option to license their photos under any of CC’s six copyright licenses. Virgin Mobile in Australia then used the photographer’s picture in an advertisement (that is, commercially). Although the photographer licensed the photo to the public for commercial use under one of CC’s commercial licenses, Virgin’s commercial use of the picture apparently surprised him. So now he is suing CC, claiming that we failed “to adequately educate and warn him … of the meaning of commercial use and the ramifications and effects of entering into a license allowing such use.”
Of course, users do not have to license their photos when they use Flickr; CC licensing is a special option within Flickr for only those users who are specifically looking to grant certain copyright rights to the general public. The set of CC license options available within Flickr includes three “noncommercial” licenses, which are clearly marked as such (full page screenshot). The “Set a license” pages within Flickr also link to the Creative Commons site which explains, in detail, how the different licenses work.
Is Creative Commons liable?
No.
Do you have any authority for that answer beyond your own (some might say self-serving) views?
Well, listen to the lawyer who brought this case in his interview with CNN. At approximately the 2:16 mark of the interview, he’s asked how there could be a lawsuit here given that the photographer’s license authorized commercial use. “The commercial use has really been blown out of proportion. It’s really irrelevant to our case,” he says. “What’s important here is that Alison has a separate and independent right of privacy.”
That’s a pretty sensible answer by this lawyer. The lawsuit is also against Virgin Mobile (specifically, Virgin Mobile USA, LLC and Virgin Mobile PTY Ltd.). The complaint alleges that Virgin Mobile used a photograph of a student commercially without getting permission from the student or her parents. That claim does not involve copyright law, it involves the rights of publicity. As we say in our Creative Commons licensing FAQ, Creative Commons licenses say nothing about rights of publicity.
In his CNN interview, the photographer’s lawyer did not talk about the claim against Creative Commons.
So then are you happy?
Totally unhappy. The photographer in this case alleges that he misunderstood our license. Anytime that happens, we’re not happy. Our aim is to make this copyright stuff simpler.
So what are you going to do?
We are always looking for ways to improve Creative Commons licenses, and we will continue to make changes to the licenses when we think we’ve found an improvement that can be made.
Does this lawsuit mean that the Virgins of the world can use my CC-licensed work any way they want to?
We don’t think so. First, if like the majority of CC users you chose the “noncommercial restriction” when licensing your work, no Virgin should want to have anything to do with your work without asking you for permission first. Second, now that this lawsuit has received so much attention, if you’ve released a photo of a person under a CC license (or under no license at all), you could reasonably expect that no Virgin would consider using that photo commercially without making sure the person pictured in the photo is OK with that.
But there you go again with the word “commercially.” I thought you (or at least the lawyer suing you) said “commercial use … is really irrelevant to our case.”
That’s true in the sense that this lawsuit is not about whether the commercial use of this photograph was a violation of copyright law. But the right of privacy or publicity alleged to have been violated by Virgin Mobile depends upon the manner in which the company used the photograph. By using it as they did, commercially, they triggered the question as to whether they have violated Ms. Chang’s rights of privacy or publicity.
So did the photographer violate Ms. Chang’s rights?
We certainly don’t think so. We don’t believe any court should find that Justin Wong had violated Ms. Chang’s rights simply by posting this photo of her in Flickr, however it was licensed. Cool (as in using Flickr, and even better, using Flickr with CC licenses) can’t be a crime.
2 Comments »New podcast series on scholarly publishing and copyright
From the Science Commons blog …
“MIT Libraries recently launched a new podcast series dedicated to issues involving scholarly publishing and copyright.
The latest addition to the series is a piece by Anna Gold, head librarian of the Engineering and Science Libraries at the university. In the podcast, entitled “Making a Difference: Pushing Back on DRM at MIT”, Gold speaks of the university’s recent subscription cancellation of a scholarly journal after learning it was employing digital rights management (DRM) technology its digital collection of research reports. The journal was that of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). [...] “
More can be found after the jump. And all of the podcasts in this series are licensed under a CC-BY-SA license.
No Comments »Fun with Numbers
Creative Commons is searching for a full-time accountant to join our team in San Francisco. Please send along anyone who may fit the job description and would be interested in working at our office. We welcome applicants from the Bay area and beyond to apply by emailing materials to me or via fax (415.278.9419).
No Comments »CC at OpenCourseWare, Open Education Conferences
Recently, Creative Commons launched ccLearn, an educational arm of CC whose mission aims “to minimize barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials — legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers.” Yesterday, ccLearn director Ahrash Bissell and Creative Commons CTO Nathan Yergler spoke at the OpenCourseWare Consortium Conference at Utah State. Their presentation laid out the ways Creative Commons provides support and advice in clarifying licensing options for educators. By spelling out the choices available and addressing downstream concerns and consequences of implementing a particular license, ccLearn continues to encourage educators within the OpenCourseWare (OCW) movement to adopt licenses that are most interoperable. “In a way,” said Bissell, “Creative Commons licenses work to provide the infrastructural glue for OCW content and other open educational resources.”
The OCW and OER movements are growing. ccLearn is building an open education search engine that helps to identify those resources that educators can use to enrich their courses with free, open content to share alike with their students and the world.
No Comments »Digitale Allmend helps organize 3rd Wikipedia Day
CC Public Project Lead in Switzerland, Digitale Allmend, will join Wikipedia CH in organizing the third Wikipedia Day on September 29 in Bern at the the Pädagogischen Hochschule, PHBern.
The event will highlight scientific articles by professors, librarians, archivists, journalists, and students, with the aim of exchanging experience and ideas for Wikipedia and related projects.
The program offers an engaging line-up featuring Dr. Donat Agosti (Natural History Museum, Bern), Dr. Peter Haber (Historical Seminar at the University of Basel), Jan Hodel, Michail Jungierek (Board Member of Wikimedia Germany), Delphine Ménard (Wikimedia Foundation, Frankfurt), and Dr. Emanuel Meyer (Federal Institute for Intellectual Property, Bern).
Previous Wikipedia Days in Switzerland have been held in Zürich and Lugano. For more information on the CC Project in Switzerland, please visit http://www.creativecommons.ch/
No Comments »
