Tech Challenge Met: CC Metadata Validator

Mike Linksvayer, October 23rd, 2003

On October 6 we posted a list of technology challenges that we hoped would inspire developers.

It did inspire one: Nathan Yergler has already created and made a few rounds of improvements to a web app that validates and extracts license metadata, just as called for.

As an example of what Nathan’s application can do, see what it says about the metadata in the web page about our new Copy Me/Remix Me compact disc. Hint — the metadata serves to verify license claims embedded in MP3s of the songs on the disc, per our MP3 license embedding strategy.

Open Source Democracy

Matt Haughey, October 23rd, 2003

This week’s featured content is Douglas Rushkoff’s new essay entitled Open Source Democracy. It’s a 70 page essay (available as a free downloadable PDF) that explores the future of politics in an interactive world. It was created for the UK thinktank Demos, and is available under a Creative Commons License.

For those unfamiliar with Rushkoff’s work, he’s a media analyst, author of numerous books on the subject, and creator of the groundbreaking Frontline special “Merchants of Cool.”

Copy Me/Remix Me CD out

Matt Haughey, October 22nd, 2003

Earlier tonight at the Lessig vs. Rosen debate, we gave away copies of our second* CD, Copy Me/Remix Me. It features a variety of music from an even wider variety of artists. Among the featured musicians, you’ll find record-at-home independents, magnatune and opsound artists, world music groups, and small town rock bands.

As we mentioned on this blog before, we had a little mini-contest to get remixes for the disc and we’ve posted all of the entries received.
A remix from Flowerlounge and fourstones.net ended up on the final CD, but picking the top two was a tough task. Victor at fourstones.net turned in eight very different mixes that ran the gamut. Albert Lash not only remixed and rearranged the original Superego song, he also tossed in numerous samples from Oyez, the audio archive of Supreme Court arguments. Evan Lawrence’s mix was a nice reinterpretation of the song and DBF’s inventive and humorous mix featured a synthesized voice of a woman leaving an answering machine for an IBM typewriter, which was also a staff favorite.

Feel free to download, share, and remix the songs and if you catch us at a conference or event later this year, we’ll probably have copies of the CD on hand to give away.

*Our first compilation CD was done in February of 2003, for the Noisepop festival in San Francisco.

The War over Music: A Debate

Matt Haughey, October 21st, 2003

If you’re in Los Angeles, you might want to check out Chairman of the Creative Commons, Lawrence Lessig, along with former recording industry head Hilary Rosen tonight and tomorrow at USC’s Bovard Auditorium. Tickets are $10, and Creative Commons will be there giving out information and licensed music CDs (more about the CDs shortly).

Gnomoradio

Matt Haughey, October 21st, 2003

Gnomoradio is a new project to create a free software package that will allow people to share Creative Commons licensed audio. While there are no downloadable clients currently, the project is proceeding rapidly and they have put a call out for musicians wanting to release their licensed music to the network.

Streaming Media’s CC how-to

Matt Haughey, October 20th, 2003

Streaming Media’s recent article “Creative Commons Licensing for Digital Media” is a detailed review and demonstration of our metadata embedding guidelines. Larry Bouthillier covers why the licenses exist, the license terms themselves, and how to apply them to web pages and music formats.

Sampling Licenses

Glenn Otis Brown, October 20th, 2003

Inspired by world-famous musician and composer Gilberto Gil and developed with the help of the veteran found-art group Negativland, Creative Commons will launch our new Sampling Licenses on December 16, 2003. Read more.

Attribution, Hollywood-style

Glenn Otis Brown, October 18th, 2003

There’s a great article by Tad Friend in this week’s New Yorker, entitled “Credit Grab.” The piece explains the (fairly arbitrary) arbitration process used to settle authorship disputes over big Hollywood movies and to award credit to screenwriters. The process is a mess, says Friend, in part because

most Hollywood pictures, particularly those whose characters are given out in rubberized form in conjunction with the purchase of Happy Meals, have no particular author. They emerge out of market research and dovetail with the storytelling expectations of the wider commercial culture . . . .

Just one of many nuggets in this piece, which sadly, is only available in print. But film fans and copyright buffs will find the New Yorker’s Oct. 20 issue well worth the four bucks: it’s one story or comic after another about the fascinating, surreal world of commercialized culture. (A representative cartoon caption: “That thing you just said — I’d like to option it for a movie.”)

Public Library of Science

Matt Haughey, October 16th, 2003

We recently sat down with Michael Eisen from the Public Library of Science to talk about why they started their organization and why they adopted our licenses for their publications.

Jose Luis’ photoblog/weblog

Matt Haughey, October 15th, 2003

This week’s featured content of the week is the combination photoblog/weblog of Jose Luis. In addition to his sharp design and observations of life in the Bay Area, we couldn’t help but notice the breath-taking photos that accompany each entry. It’s hard to pick a favorite, as they are so many amazing shots, and they’re all available under a Creative Commons license.