FOSS + Creative Commons LiveContent for libraries

Timothy Vollmer, June 20th, 2007

Creative Commons is developing LiveContent, a project to connect and expand Creative Commons and open source communities. The first output of LiveContent will be ccLiveCD for libraries, which will package free and open source software (FOSS) with CC-licensed content. ccLiveCD aims to demonstrate an example of an easy-to-use, viable alternative to proprietary software and further explore possibilities of the FOSS and Creative Commons movements within libraries.

ccLiveCD will come loaded with lots of great content, including a live-boot Linux OS, a combination of free and open source productivity and creativity applications (such as OpenOffice, Inkscape, Gimp and VLC), open document templates, and a variety of Creative Commons-licensed multimedia and educational content.

Worldlabel.com is providing the support for the development of this project and the distribution of the CD. Watch for ccLiveCD updates, and help further the LiveContent vision by contributing ideas, connections to other projects, and best-of-CC content on the wiki.

Where are the Joneses?

Cameron Parkins, June 20th, 2007

Last Friday (June 15th), Where are the Joneses?, a “daily fictional interactive comedy shot entirely for the web”, went live. The show is written collaboratively by the Where are the Joneses? community, released on to YouTube under a CC Attribution-Sharealike licence, and funded as a marketing experiment for Ford Motors (as a big purple van is featured in every episode).

Certainly a hybrid of ideologies, Where are the Joneses? is as funny as it is forward thinking. This model for media production is outlined superbly by Rob Myers on his blog where he discusses the show in relation to its use of participatory creation, CC licensing, and as a marketing tool. Truly a must read to understand the unique importance of such an experiment.

Lessig@iSummit on the next 10 years

Mike Linksvayer, June 19th, 2007

Watch CC founder/CEO Lawrence Lessig’s keynote at YouTube or eyeVio with required reading on the next 10 years at his blog.

Swivel+Dapper+CC

Mike Linksvayer, June 19th, 2007

Swivel+Dapper+CC = get free graphs delivered in widgets and feeds.

Great to see two services integrating CC working together. See our most recent posts on Dapper and Swivel.

CC Licensed Film Achieves Massive Popularity on YouTube

Cameron Parkins, June 19th, 2007

The Spanish short film, Lo que tú Quieras Oír–released under a CC Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license–has achieved a huge amount of popularity on YouTube, totaling close to 10,000,000 views!

While the film itself is quite brilliant, the CC license enables its viewers to not only freely distribute the film, but also remix it as long as they give credit, do so with non-commercial intent, and share their new works under the same license. We can only hope that part of the short’s online success has been enhanced by this decision to utilize CC licensing.

Don’t forget to check out the film’s website (Spanish; English translation via Google) as well!

Nature Publishing Group launches free pre-print service for the biological sciences

Kaitlin Thaney, June 18th, 2007

From the Science Commons blog …

“Today Nature Publishing Group launches Nature Precedings – a free document sharing service for the sciences. The service further enables scientists to share their preliminary findings and research in a free environment, while allowing authors to retain copyright in their work. All accepted contributions are released under a Creative Commons Attribution license, allowing for the material to be reused and redistributed as long as it is attributed to the author under terms specified.

This is the biological equivalent of the physics arXiv, but with a critical improvement. Placing pre-prints online solves the problem of an individual’s ability to access an article. But in the absence of an explicit copyright license, it’s unclear what that individual can actually do with the downloaded file. Nature’s choice to use CC-BY is a validation of the need to grant rights in advance to users, and of the CC-BY license in a truly Open Access service.

The launch of this Web service is a promising step towards further facilitating the dissemination and open exchange of information in the biological sciences. Precedings features submissions from biomedicine, chemistry and the earth sciences. The Web service fulfills the role of a preprint server but accepts a wider array of document types, including unpublished manuscripts, presentations, white papers and supplementary findings. Curators from Nature Publishing Group review all submissions. Acceptance is determined by the document’s relevancy to the field and legitimacy.

From Nature’s press release,

‘Helping scientists to communicate their ideas is central to Nature’s mission, and we are constantle seeking new ways to achieve this,” said Annette Thomas, Managing Director of Nature Publishing Group. “Precedings is an important new step for us and, we hope, the research community. We are particularly proud to have conceived and developed the service with the help of a group of such highly esteemed organizations; the British Library, the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), Science Commons, and the Wellcome Trust.’ [...] “

More after the jump …

Bandwidth Music and Technology Conference

Cameron Parkins, June 16th, 2007

On August 17th and 18th, The Bandwidth Music & Technology Conference will take place in San Francisco, offering participants a chance to discuss “issues of interest to the music and technology communities, with a particular focus on the evolving musical experience”. Both Eric Steuer, CC’s Creative Director, and Mike Linksvayer, CC’s Vice President, will be speaking on the panel “Mano-A-Mano: DRM” (Saturday, Aug 18th, 11:30 AM).

From the Billboard Publicity Wire:

The Bandwidth Conference, with a focus on the evolution and nexus of music and technology, has announced speakers. The conference takes place August 17 and 18, 2007, in San Francisco, and explores the evolving musical experience, with panels on marketing, fan behavior, trends and future forecasts, and an examination of the ways people discover, purchase, interact with and are exposed to music.

More ((c)urve)tm Music in the Commons

Victor Stone, June 16th, 2007

The (©urve)™* remix contest is well under way over at ccMixter with a steady of flow of entries. We are all very grateful to (©urve)™ artists from some of the best a cappellas ever put into the Commons in any language.

This morning’s hot entry is Madrugada(rmx) by savoyard.

This contest ends next week so get your entries in…

*remember: the ‘tm’ is for Talent Managment

Jon Phillips at Pixelodeon

Cameron Parkins, June 14th, 2007

This past weekend, our very own Jon Phillips had the pleasure of speaking at The First Annual Pixelodeon Festival, an independent video festival that specifically celebrates global online video. From NewTeeVee:

While much of the discussion focused on how to make a business out of producing video content for online distribution, Creative Commons Jon Phillips’ presentation on new ways to think about copyright reminded me that it was ultimately a celebration of new tools and ideas for people making motion pictures online.

Jon was also interviewed by Ryan is Hungry, a wonderful videoblog that focuses on the environment and sustainability (check out the video here). In the interview, Jon goes into detail concerning CC’s mission as a whole and, more specifically, how CC and CC licenses pertain to vloggers. The folks at RIH draw a comparison between CC’s mission in relation to media development and the motivation behind sustainable living, a wonderful analogy that I haven’t previously thought of before.

You can check out a myriad of pictures from the festival here (including this wonderfully big CC logo). Similarly, you can see/download Jon’s presentation here, via the spectacular slideshare.net (which we have previously profiled).

UNU Media Studio Program adopts CC licences for websites

Cameron Parkins, June 14th, 2007

The United Nations University (UNU) Media Studio Program announced today that they have adopted a CC Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa) license for both their Media Studio and Online Learning websites. This phenomenal news is only strengthened by the desire that eventually, “the UNU will evolve into a 100% Creative Commons institution”. Although doing so would require a reworking of UNU’s intellectual property policy, a large task indeed, the intent to adopt CC licensing across the board at such an institution speaks millions for both the UNU and the CC movement as a whole.

Below is a quote regarding UNU’s announcement from Creative Commons founder and CEO Lawrence Lessig:

This is an extraordinarily important development. We at CC were very proud when MIT adopted CC licenses for all their courses (and by the end of this year, every MIT course will be online under a CC-BY-NC license). But I am especially proud than the UNU has taken this step. The UNU is, in my view, the most important international educational institution, symbolizing in practice and ideals, a world community. To see CC as part of that community is very rewarding to us, and our movement.

UPDATE: Added text for specific license being used.