Barcelona Visió: new Catalonian CC video sharing site

Eric Steuer, March 19th, 2007

Barcelona Visió is a new video sharing site sponsored by Barcelona’s Town Hall, where anyone can upload their footage of Catalonia’s lovely capital city. The site currently hosts many short videos that capture Barcelona’s beauty, as well as a few longer clips that cover current issues and events. Most of the material is available for download under CC licenses; check out all that this great new resource has to offer.

(Thanks, Ignasi!)

Free Culture Timeline Chalkboard

Mike Linksvayer, March 16th, 2007

Photo by believekevin, CC BY-SA.

A query to the cc-community mailing list asking for resources on the history of the copyleft movement led to many good suggestions and turned up the cool chalkboard timeline pictured above. While impressive visually, the chalkboard only covers 1998-2007 and leaves much important stuff out (such as the launch of CC in December, 2002!). Take this as a challenge to find a longer chalkboard. :-)

DHTML puzzle license chooser live on labs

Mike Linksvayer, March 16th, 2007

The snappy DHTML puzzle license chooser contributed by Sylvain Zimmer is now live at ccLabs. The previous iteration was implemented in Flash, which Sylvain demonstrated was unecessary.

Try it out and please use the feedback form at the bottom of the page.

Thank Sylvain by visiting Jamendo, of which he is CTO.

DJ Vadim Remix Contest

Victor Stone, March 15th, 2007

When Ben from the very cool indie label BBE Music got in touch with us and asked if we would be interested in a DJ Vadim remix contest at ccMixter we thought about it … for about a half a millisecond! You see, in the remixing/turntable world DJ Vadim is nothing short of a superstar and the fact that he put the audio sources for two tracks into the Commons is cause for celebration. As Ben says it is “essential in this game not to sit back and wait for people to come to your music. As independents we need to work hard and get our music out there and heard.”

Ben is encouraging not only producers but also rappers to get involved because the winning remix will be released on an upcoming BBE EP featuring DJ Vadim.

soooo… we are proud, excited and generally freakin psyched to announce the DJ Vadim “Kill Kill Kill” “Talk to Me” remix contest.

Congressman Mike Doyle defends mash-ups and mixtapes

Eric Steuer, March 14th, 2007

Congressman Mike Doyle gave a great speech about mash-up artist Girl Talk and mixtape king DJ Drama as part of last week’s Future of Radio congressional hearing. The 463 has the transcript and some teriffic analysis; SplashCast has the must-see video.

“I hope that everyone involved will take a step back and ask themselves if mash-ups and mixtapes are really different or if it’s the same as Paul McCartney admitting that he nicked a Chuck Berry bass-riff and used it on the Beatles hit ‘I Saw Her Standing There.’

“Maybe it is. And, maybe Drama violated some clear bright lines. Or, maybe mixtapes are a powerful tool. And, maybe mash-ups are transformative new art that expands the consumers experience and doesn’t compete with what an artist has made available on iTunes or at the CD store. And, I don’t think Sir Paul asked for permission to borrow that bass line, but every time I listen to that song, I’m a little better off for him having done so.”

One Big Thank You

Melissa Reeder, March 14th, 2007

To all the people that came out to the GOOD - CC party this past Monday - THANK YOU!

The party was amazing. Truly. And rumor has it that it was also phenomenally successful in terms of dollars raised for CC. I will let you know what kind of numbers we’re talking about as soon as they come in from the awesome people at GOOD.

All in all an epic night full of wonderful people, conversations, and dance moves. Thank you. We are honored to be surrounded by such a supportive community.

So to GOOD Magazine, Moli, Six Apart, VJ Phi Phenomenon for his super cool live interactive video (all CC licensed content), DJ Filip Turbotito, The MisShapes, and of course you - thank you.

Free collaborative fiction = Ficlets!

Mike Linksvayer, March 14th, 2007

Ficlets is a neat new site from AOL for collaborative fiction writing:

• Write 1024 characters or less.
• Others can write a sequel or prequel to your ficlet.
• Everything is licensed under CC Attribution-ShareAlike.

I’m particularly excited to see this because something like it has been in the back of my head (and doubtless millions of other heads) since the beginning of the web, but everytime I daydreamed about it the collaboration got too complex to be fun (to implement as a web app or to participate in). The incredibly simple parameters above look perfect!

Via Boing Boing.

Free electronic music compilation available from Simuze

Eric Steuer, March 13th, 2007

Open music community Simuze has just released a free downloadable compilation of electronic music tracks published under various Creative Commons licenses. It’s called Share This Vibe and it’s available here.

Gilberto Gil at SXSW and in the New York Times

Mike Linksvayer, March 11th, 2007

Today’s New York Times features an excellent story on musician and Brazil’s Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil titled Gilberto Gil Hears the Future, Some Rights Reserved, featuring quotes from Lawrence Lessig:

“Look at remixing on music sites, which has become a core of creativity on the Internet and produced a huge archive of legally usable music,” said Lawrence Lessig, the author of “Free Culture” and founder of Creative Commons. “That has allowed a whole bunch of people to display themselves as artists and be picked up by record labels and Web sites, and all of that began because Gil got us to think about what kind of freedom was necessary for music.”

Gil will be interviewed Wednesday afternoon at SXSW on a track for developing artists. Check out the CC and SXSW roundup for other panels and parties.

7 things you should know about CC

Kaitlin Thaney, March 10th, 2007

Educause Learning Initiative (ELI) offers a crash course on CC this month in its “7 Things You Should Know About …” series.

The series aims to provide basic information on emerging learning technologies or practices in a digestible, easy-to-read format. Past topics include Open Journaling, Digital Storytelling, YouTube and Virtual Worlds.

Click here to read this month’s installment on ELI.