Weblog
2007 March
Ground Report Empowers Citizen Journalism with CC Attribution License
Ground Report is a new citizen journalism site that “Empowers Global Users to Self-Publish, Rate Content and Earn Money.” In a move that helps insure user generated content can flourish on the web, they bolster their reputation and community participation by licensing all user-generated content under a CC Attribution license.
I’ve been working with them for only a short time and said this about their project in their press release: “GroundReport empowers authors at the grassroots level. It provides a vital link in the ‘ecosystem of sharing’ that Creative Commons enables through its licenses, which allow sharing, reuse, and remix – legally.”
And, as I underlined in the above statement, as more sites come online like Ground Report, Metaweb’s Freebase, and Technorati’s Where’s the Fire, it is of the utmost importance to license content clearly and properly, so that interlinking and cross-promotion are built in and automagically happening across the large ecosystem we call the web.
No Comments »Metaweb’s Freebase using CC Attribution 3.0 License
If you didn’t read your morning New York Times and see a tall fellow wearing a CC logo shirt, check out this article about Danny Hillis and Robert Cook’s new venture, Metaweb’s Freebase project, which is using the newly released CC Attribution (BY) 3.0 license across-the-board (data and User Generated Content). It is great to see this license adoption as the web is aflame today with talk about a missing piece of web 2.0′s healthy ecosystem, a free database. Metaweb is linking to massive content on the web, drawing relationships between this information, and including us all in the loop to help round out the connections and make comments.
On Freebase’s website they state this about usage of CC BY 3.0:
Really free. We want to make it possible for you to add high quality structured information to your websites, mashups and applications without worrying about restrictive corporate licenses. All data is licensed Creative Commons Attribution. We only ask that you link back to us.
If you are interested in using a similar liberal Creative Commons License, make sure to stop by and see us at SXSW in Austin tomorrow through next Saturday. And, don’t forget to come to our fundraiser this Monday night in Austin in coordination with the magazine GOOD.
No Comments »Science Commons News: An Open Data project from Google?
From the Science Commons blog:
No Comments »In a recent BBC article, Google’s Chris DiBona talked about a new program under development to help ameliorate some of the transfer problems in moving enormous data sets – up to 120,000 gigabytes worth.
The project has not been released to the public, but would involve taking massive data sets, copying the sets, and keeping the data in open form – whether under a Creative Commons license or some other format. [...]
Science Commons News: Elsevier, HHMI and Open Access
From the Science Commons blog:
No Comments »Elsevier – a dominant subscription-based publisher – has made a deal with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute regarding Open Access.
Announced today, the agreement will make author manuscripts of articles published in Elsevier and Cell Press journals available to the public (in PubMed Central) six months after publication. The conditions will be applied to articles published after September 1, 2007 on HHMI funded research.
CC and SXSW round-up
CC’s involvement in this year’s SXSW conference in Austin, Texas should come as no surprise. There’s Jon Phillips‘ talk at the Austin History Center, a fundraiser with GOOD Magazine and a party with Tigerbeat6 Records and XLR8R Magazine.
But that’s not all. CC’ers Francesca Rodriquez (COO, Creative Commons), John Wilbanks (Executive Director, Science Commons), and Eric Steuer (Creative Director, Creative Commons) will also each be moderating panels as part of SXSW Interactive. Details below:
Saturday, March 10
“Web 2.0 and Semantic Web: The Impact on Scientific Publishing” – 5-6 p.m. … moderated by John Wilbanks (see also SC’s blog entry)Monday, March 12
“Open Content, Remix Culture and the Sharing Economy: Rights, Ownership, and Getting Paid” – 5-6 p.m. … moderated by Eric SteuerTuesday, March 13
“Open Knowledge vs. Controlled Knowledge” – 10-11 a.m. … moderated by Francesca Rodriquez
Highly recommend you check these out. Otherwise, you may wish you had.
No Comments »CC is hiring for a new educational division
A new division of Creative Commons, provisionally called CC Learn, will focus on on education, broadly defined — from kindergarten to graduate school, to lifelong learning. The mission of this new division will be to promote vigorous networks of Open Educational Resources: materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use, modify and re-use for teaching, learning and research. CC Learn is looking for an Executive Director.
No Comments »ccMixter’s Vieux Farka Touré remix contest ends tomorrow
The Vieux Farka Touré remix contest has been a phenomenal success so far — and there’s still one more day to get your remixes of “Ana” uploaded to ccMixter before the contest ends. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to have your music included on Modiba Productions’ upcoming “Vieux Remixed” CD compilation!
It’s been really fun to hear the variety of entries. Everything from dub to Afrobeat to a fusion of Malian and Eastern European music. Keep ‘em coming!
No Comments »ccHost 4.0 Official Release
We are proud to announce the official release of Creative Commons’ open source remix community project ccHost 4.0 which is now available for immediate download and install (it’s actually version 4.0.1 so if you downloaded 4.0 or 4.0 RC1 then you should upgrade immediately to get the last minute bug fixes). More information about this important release is here.
Early adopters include the very important work being done by our friends at freeculture for their first content collection project for One Laptop Per Child. This installation is also technically interesting because the project’s requirements were decidedly untypical (for ccHost), namely anonymous uploading and blog-style reviewing/commenting as well as pulling music files from other websites. With less than a week to go before they launched and working together with an impressive team of volunteers we were able to customize the installation with a minimal amount of additional scripting and no changes to the base ccHost installation. A technical challenge easily met by ccHost for a great cause. It doesn’t get much better than this.
No Comments »SXSW and CC
SXSW is not just any conference. It’s a time for innovation, conversation, and collaboration. It’s also a week chock full of shows, events, get-togethers, and parties. So while you map out your SXSW week you should definitely add these two events to your route. Fun times.
GOOD Magazine SXSW Party (CC FUNDRAISER)
Double your CC support and gain entrance to an awesome SXSW party. When you subscribe to GOOD your $20 is matched by the wonderful folks over at Six Apart and then goes to CC. After you subscribe, email your first and last name to rsvp@goodmagazine.com so that you can get into the party. Open bar, dancing, music by the The Misshapes and DJ Filip Turbotito (of guns n bombs and ima robot), interactive visuals by VJ Phi Phenomenon, good times, and supporting CC. What more could you ask for? Joi Ito? He will be there too. Badges not required. This party is brought to you by GOOD and Moli.
Tigerbeat6 Records SXSW Showcase
Tigerbeat 6 Records, XLR8R Magazine, and CC have come together to bring you an awesomely good time at the Beauty Bar on Sat. March 17th. This is Tigerbeat6′s SXSW label showcase, so stop by and check out performances by Kid606, Drop the Lime, Clipd Beaks, Star Eyes, White Williams, and OonceOonce. No doubt that it will be a great way to either celebrate or get away from St. Patrick’s Day on Sixth St.
FreeCulture.org Launches the Free Music Project
The very good people of FreeCulture.org have launched a new website called the Free Music Project, where people can upload music available for free and legal sharing and remix. The site is working with the One Laptop per Child project; selected songs will be included on OLPC laptops to be distributed to children in the developing world.
No Comments »“This is a groundbreaking opportunity to locate the best free music out there and share it with millions of people of all ages around the world,” said Elizabeth Stark, board member of Freeculture.org and founder of the Free Culture group at Harvard. “Freely licensing recordings allows artists to gain extremely valuable global exposure through projects such as OLPC.”
