What independent music slump?

Matt Haughey, April 14th, 2003

The Christian Science Monitor recently published an article focusing on independent labels and musicians. While recording industry album sales were down 11% overall in 2002, some independent outfits saw sales increases of 50 to 100 percent, all while eschewing mainstream radio play.

Creative Commons RSS in Manila

Matt Haughey, April 14th, 2003

While there have been a couple generic (1, 2) RSS implementations of Creative Commons licensing in the past, Dave Winer today added support in the Manila software package.

Downward Facing Blog

Glenn Otis Brown, April 7th, 2003

Bikram Choudhury, “creator” of a popular type of yoga, is now
claiming a copyright in the style and demanding royalties.

No word yet whether the estates of the authors of the Upanishads — or for that matter, the entire subcontinent — will counter-sue.

See a lively and amusing discussion on Metafilter.

New Featured Commoner: Opsound

Matt Haughey, April 3rd, 2003

Sal Randolph of Opsound recently sat down for an interview with us. She talks about her new project, Opsound, and how Creative Commons licenses will be worked into it.

Lots of music

Matt Haughey, April 3rd, 2003

We have made several recent musical additions to the Creative Commons Featured Works registry, and noticed more musicians online using the licenses. Here’s a random sampling of licensed music that has caught our eyes (and ears): Christine McCarthy, Horton’s Choice, Joshua Ellis, The Phoenix Trap, Clyde Federal, brokensoundcard, The Walkingbirds’ recent songs, and some war protest songs.

Creative Commons article in Syllabus Magazine

Matt Haughey, April 2nd, 2003

Our very own Executive Director, Glenn Otis Brown, penned an article introducing the Creative Commons to the readers of Syllabus Magazine, which covers technology issues in higher education.

CSS Examples and Commentary

Glenn Otis Brown, April 1st, 2003

Tantek Celik has recently released some useful CSS examples (with accompanying commentary) under a Creative Commons attribution license.

Check out Tantek’s reasoning for the move.

Harvard Blogs and Creative Commons

Matt Haughey, March 28th, 2003

Dave Winer, author of popular blogging software systems and various technical specifications, is currently a Berkman fellow at the Harvard Law School. He has spearheaded a project to bring weblogs to everyone on campus, and has chosen to include Creative Commons licenses in the default templates.

New Global Vision

Matt Haughey, March 19th, 2003

New Global Vision is an interesting video project out of Italy. They are aiming to archive videos from around the world to ease the burden of bandwidth on any single download source. They’ve assembled a database of 130 videos so far — all under the Attribution, Noncommerical, Share Alike Creative Commons licenses.

New Global Vision is also powered by free software technology.

Financial Times

Press Robot, March 17th, 2003

“Why copyright need not be an issue” by Richard Poynder