OPENSTUDIO: Open art project, open art community, both?

Mike Linksvayer, March 22nd, 2007

OPENSTUDIO, “an experiment in creativity, collaboration and capitalism” at MIT Medialab’s Physical Language Studio appears as a collaboration community for drawings (all are CC licensed) and an art project itself — some of the project’s features don’t feel quite right for either a physical or virtual environment — in the best sense, compelling examination of art in both environments.

Here’s a screenshot of the little man that lives inside the little man that lives inside of me T-shirt by Luis Becerril to give you a taste:

“Provenance” tracks virtual ownership, “history” shows source work, and who can argue with “artsonomy”?

Explore OPENSTUDIO.

Also check out their Content Licensing Survey. Is it a survey or an art project?

NetSquared Conference 2007: Innovation Awards

Mike Linksvayer, March 22nd, 2007

Last year NetSquared put on a great conference in San Jose, California on the use of technology in nonprofit orgainizations. (And did a great job of documenting the conference, e.g.,audio from my session on Free Speech and Free Culture, chat transcript, and separate audio and video interviews and presentation audio from a subsequent NetTuesday presentation.)

For 2007 Netsquared is organizing the conference around 20 startup social enterprises (not not be strictly nonprofit) using technology for social change. Chosen organizations will have expenses paid for two staff members to attend the conference and funding from the NetSquared Technology Innovation Fund.

You are encouraged to nominate your social enterprise. I encourage you especially if your project as a free culture angle — as every project should :).

Answer to the obvious question: Creative Commons itself is too established for nomination, though we will participate through advocacy and mentoring.

Eduserv Foundation

Melissa Reeder, March 22nd, 2007

We are excited to announce that CC has received significant support from the Eduserv Foundation. The Eduserv Foundation is “a registered charity that works to realise the benefits of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) for learners, researchers and the institutions that serve them.” We are honored to be included among their notable list of grantees.

As part of their donation announcement they state that “CC has liberated us from thinking first and foremost about protecting and restricting content and has given us the ability to focus on sharing, which is fundamental to both learning and research. ” To read more about their decision to support CC check out the official announcement.

Brazil’s ambassador of music

Mike Linksvayer, March 22nd, 2007

Today’s San Jose Mercury News has a wonderful article about Brazilian Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil taking time off for a solo tour. As readers of this blog know, Gil has been a tremendous friend of and influence on Creative Commons. The last three paragraphs of the article concern this, ending with this quote:

“I don’t see Creative Commons as something I do because of the specific implications it would have on the Brazilian scene,” says Gil, who has licensed several of his songs for Creative Commons use. “It’s universal, but especially for developing countries, for Africa, Central and South America, I think this possibility of being able to share, to continue to be creative in this cooperative way, is very important.”

Gil also recently spoke at SXSW and was covered in the NYT.

Kompoz

Mike Linksvayer, March 21st, 2007

The CC-enabled music collaboration space is heating up. The newest contestant is Kompoz, which features a project/workspace metaphor.

Compare and contrast with Splicemusic, Jamglue, and ccMixter.

Show your support for Open Access

Kaitlin Thaney, March 21st, 2007

From the Science Commons blog:

Last month’s National Day of Action for Open Access raised awareness on college campuses nationwide about public access for taxpayer-funded research. Coinciding with this outpouring of support was the presentation of over 24,000 signatures from around the world in support of open access to European research, presented to the European Commission.

The momentum achieved was tremendous, but is only the beginning.

Building off of the tens of thousands of signatories of the European petition, a number of leading American organizations are backing the Petition for Public Access to Publicly Funded Research in the United States.

In signing this petition, whether as an individual or as an organization, you pledge your support for free and open access to research paid for by your tax dollars. We hope that this will demonstrate to leading policy makers and officials just how important this issue is. Doing so just may help change existing policies.

We here at Science Commons encourage you to join us and over 1,870 other signatories in showing your support.

To sign the petition, click here. For more information on current poicies and legislation regarding public access to taxpayer-funded research, including the Federal Research Public Access Act, visit the ATA’s Web site.

Derivative music, then and now

Mike Linksvayer, March 20th, 2007

Blogger Jim Lippard has put together an interesting mini-essay on derivative musical works and copyright spanning copying among classic rock groups in the 1970s, a 1983 science fiction story about perpetual copyright extension, and recent sampling madness.

Read it for a reminder of the need for more reasonable copyright (hence CC) or to pick up some interesting trivia if you don’t need that reminder.

How Adobe’s “Apollo” Team is using CC

Melissa Reeder, March 20th, 2007

Adobe has recently released a new project called Apollo. According to their announcement Apollo is “the code name for a cross-operating system runtime that allows developers to leverage their existing web development skills (Flash, Flex, HTML, JavaScript, Ajax) to build and deploy rich Internet applications (RISs) to the desktop.

To accompany the release Apollo team members Mike Chambers, Rob Dixon, and Jeff Scwartz wrote the “Apollo for Adobe Flex Developers Pocket Guide” which was published by O’Reilly. This pocket guide is available under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA version 2.5 license and is available for download here.

The Apollo team concurrently launched a video site which hosts videos about Flex and Apollo development. The content of this site is also CC licensed. By CC licensing the pocket guide and video site Adobe’s Apollo team is encouraging the sharing of Apollo knowledge and experiences that everyone can use and build upon.

Google Summer of Code 2007!

Mike Linksvayer, March 19th, 2007

Creative Commons is again participating in Google’s excellent Summer of Code program as a mentoring organization: students can earn $4500 for working on an open source application for the summer. Check out the CC Summer of Code page for ideas. Student applications are due March 24.

Don’t hesitate to drop by #cc on the freenode IRC network or post to cc-devel if you want feedback on proposal ideas.

Also note that Science Commons is providing mentors this year, see open access and semantic web for science project ideas.

CC Publishers Association 02/07 meeting notes

Eric Steuer, March 19th, 2007

The CCPA is a small group that meets semi-regularly in San Francisco to discuss questions about CC licensing and to establish best practices for publishers and others using Creative Commons’ legal tools. TechSoup’s Amit Asaravala was kind enough to put together a set of notes that outline the most recent CCPA meeting’s questions and answers. Since many of these questions are ones that we here at CC are asked frequently, we’re posting the notes to our wiki, so that others may benefit from the discussion, as well as add their own thoughts and questions.