Clicking “Refresh”: A New Look at Fair Use in the Digital Age

Jane Park, September 24th, 2009

For those of you in the NY area in October, the New York City Bar has a thought provoking panel discussion coming up on fair use in the era of blogging, Twitter, and Facebook. The panel members hail from the U.S. District Court, the Associated Press, and Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, to name a few. And in the spirit of this topic, I’m going to quote from the site now,

“This panel discussion will address the ways in which copyright law’s fair use doctrine has evolved (or may be tested) in an era in which the rise of news aggregation, social networking, and a variety of other websites increasingly allow internet users to combine and transform content from endless sources of media. How transformative are on-line montages and mash-ups? Is the aggregation of headlines or content from news providers infringement or fair use? Does posting copyrighted content on a user’s Facebook or Myspace page undermine the market for that content? When does a blogger’s summary of an article appropriate enough content to constitute copyright infringement? Panelists will offer a broad range of perspectives on these an other issues from the bench, bar, media industry, and legal academy.”

The discussion will be held on Wednesday, October 7 at 6pm, so be sure to register (for free) and drop by.

Open Education: First meeting of CC leads in Latin America

Jane Park, September 23rd, 2009

Last year Latam Commons 2008: Public Domain, Creative Commons, and Open Education was the first meeting of CC leads in Latin America, and also the first meeting to focus specifically on open education and OER of its kind. Though I blogged briefly about its success in December, the fruits of the meeting have shown itself over time, as Latin America has been working towards greater openness in education and otherwise, with our very own Carolina Botero joining as a ccLearn liaison for that region of the Spanish-speaking world.

Now, the particular results of that first meeting are recorded for the first time, in both English and Spanish in the same report, Open Education: First meeting of CC leads in Latin America. The report was a joint production of CC Latin America and ccLearn, and is licensed CC BY so it can be further translated into other languages sans the hassle of a middleman. We urge you to check out the summary of the first meeting. As we continue to acquire better information about the open education issues in the Spanish speaking world, we hope to better facilitate communications within and beyond the region; for example, productions like this and translations of relevant CC blog posts should ideally reach interested people regardless of where they live or what language they speak (and read).

Speaking of blog posts, two more Back-to-School blog posts are now available in Spanish, Back to School: DiscoverEd and the Back to School Conclusion: The Open Trajectory of Learning. The translated versions are posted just below the English, and as more translations come in, we will add them to the original posts. All relevant blog posts will be tagged Latin America, so that you can see Latam open education news at anytime in one place.

And in Spanish, thanks to Carolina Botero and CC Latin America:

Educación Abierta: Primera reunión de líderes de CC en América Latina.

El año pasado tuvo lugar la primera reunión de líderes de CC en América Latina: Latam Commons 2008: Dominio Público, Creative Commons, y Educación Abierta. Esta fue también la primera reunión que se enfocó específicamente en educación abierta y REA (Recursos Educativos Abiertos, OER por sus siglas en inglés). Aunque ya se había blogueado brevemente sobre su éxito en diciembre, los resultados de la reunión se han ido mostrando con el tiempo, América Latina ha venido trabajando hacía una mayor apertura tanto en educación como en otros temas, al punto que Carolina Botero se unió oficialmente como enlace para la región hispanoparlante.

Ahora, los resultados particulares de esta primera reunión aparecen por primera vez, tanto en español como en inglés en un mismo informe titulado Educación Abierta: Primera reunión de líderes CC en América Latina. El informe fue una producción de CC América Latina (ccLatam) y ccLearn, se encuentra licenciado CC BY por lo que puede ser traducido a cualquier otro idioma sin intermediarios. Los invitamos a revisar el resumen de esta primera reunión. De otro lado, una vez tengamos una mejor idea sobre los temas de educación abierta que le interesan a los hispanoparlantes podremos concentrarnos en comunicaciones más efectivas, por ejemplo, en lograr que producciones como ésta y traducciones de entradas del blog de CC relevantes para esta audiencia puedan llegar a sus miembros.

Respecto a las entradas en el blog aprovechamos para contarles que hay dos nuevas entradas de la serie Regreso al Colegio están disponibles ahora en español: De Regreso al Colegio: DiscoverEd y De Regreso al Colegio, conclusiones: El camino abierto para el aprendizaje. Las versiones traducidas se agregan al final de la entrada en inglés y, a medida que otras traducciones lleguen las iremos agregando allí. Todas las entradas de este tipo en el blog serán etiquetadas Latin America, para que puedan registrar las noticias de América Latian a cualquier hora en cualquier lugar.

Spot.Us Expands to L.A.

Cameron Parkins, September 22nd, 2009

Spot.Us, a nonprofit project from the Center for Media Change that aims to pioneer “community funded reporting” (previous coverage here), is expanding to Los Angeles! From Spot.Us:

Spot.Us is expanding to Los Angeles and we are doing so with USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism. Needless to say, we are very excited about the opportunities and possibilities. The main Spot.Us homepage will aggregate pitches from both the SF Bay Area and Los Angeles regions. You can go to Subdomains to find pitches specific to those regions: la.spot.us and sfbay.spot.us.

The move is a collaboration between Spot.Us and USC’s Annenberg School of Journalism and could pave the way for additional cities to be added to the Spot.US umbrella in the near future. Read more about the transition, as well as general information regarding the future of Spot.Us, at its blog.

The US Government CTO on Creative Commons

Fred Benenson, September 22nd, 2009

We caught a great interview with the US Government’s CTO, Aneesh Chopra talking about his thoughts on copyright on CNET.

When questioned about the future of copyright reform (wait for the video to load and scroll to the 7:30 mark) Chopra mentions how he “embraced the Creative Commons licensing regime” when he worked with the Commonwealth of Virginia to publish their Flexbook platform. Chopra then states that he thinks that it was this experience that really informs his perspective on how intellectual property should be remixed, shared, and reused.

Needless to say, we totally agree.

The Art of Community available for download

Greg Grossmeier, September 21st, 2009

Jono Bacon’s book The Art of Community is now available for download.

We mentioned the beginning of this project back in January of this year. Just 8 months later the digital version of the book is available for everyone to download and share under a CC BY-NC-SA license. You can download it from the book’s webpage here.

The Art of Community isn’t just written for current or would-be community managers. It outlines and discusses all of the issues that are pertinent to simply working with a dispersed community of contributors. These issues are:

• Sustainable processes for management – how to create day to day processes that are simple, effective and always representative of your community and its members.
• Tools and infrastructure – give your community simple and friction-free tools that they need to do their work, complete with effective communication channels.
• Building buzz – think outside the box and excite and enthuse potential community members to join your crusade, build capacity and keep the train running.
• Measuring aspects of community success – understand, assess and measure your community, discover what can be measured and how to react to the results.
• Conflict management – manage strong personalities that clash, and untangle contentious situations in the open and transparent manner that your community expects.
• Handling live events – organize and schedule productive, fun and engaging live events that get things done and re-affirm social bonds between your community members.
• Scaling the community – as your community grows, things change and adjust to the size, scale and throughput of your membership: handle these changes with as little disruption as possible.

If you are at all interested in what it takes to run a successful community, this book written by the Ubuntu Community Manager will help shed some light on the complex, yet fun, aspects of community management.

Announcing October’s CC Salon NYC

Fred Benenson, September 21st, 2009

CC Salon NYC is back with a brand new home! The Open Planning Project has generously offered their incredible penthouse for the October salon.

So come out to have some beers with the CC community watch some cool presentations, and meet some new faces in the free culture space.

October’s Salon will feature short presentations from Adam Clark Estes, director of citizen journalism at the Huffington Post Investigative Fund talking about how the HuffPo is using CC to fuel the future of journalism, Shelley Bernstein, Chief Technology Officer of the Brooklyn Museum discussing their amazing community and commons efforts, and one more special guest TBA.

Here are the details:

Monday, October 5th, from 7-10pm
The Open Planning Project
148 Lafayette St
Between Grand & Howard
New York, NY

We’ll have free (as in beer) beer. If you’ve didn’t make it to any past CC Salons, don’t miss this one, and if you did, you’ll know to come early as space is limited.

RSVP to the event via Facebook or by e-mailing me: fred [at] creativecommons.org.

Software Freedom Day is September 19th

Fred Benenson, September 17th, 2009

It should be no surprise that here at CC, we’re huge fans of Free Software. Every bit we release, from our JS Widget to the code running the CC Network itself to our Facebook Application is free software. That’s why we think its important to celebrate Software Freedom Day on Saturday, September 19th. There are numerous celebrations happening around the world, but I”ll be attending the one in NYC:

6pm to 10pm.
148 Lafayette St, 12th Floor.
New York, NY

If you’d like to attend the NYC event, please RSVP required to joshlevy.ny AT gmail. Have a great Software Freedom Day!

Aviary Release Myna Audio Editor

Cameron Parkins, September 16th, 2009

Today Aviary released Myna, a powerful online audio editor complete with a professional sample/loop library, numerous effects, automatons, advanced clip editing (time-stretching, reverse, etc.) and import/export capabilities. Check out the full list of features at the Myna landing page.

In releasing Myna, Aviary have added another great tool to their suite of creative applications, furthering their mission to “make the world’s creation accessible.” All of Aviary’s tools allow users the ability to share sets with the community under both our Attribution and Attribution-NonCommercial licenses, making their platform not only technically robust but legally sound as well.

TED Fellowships Deadline

Jane Park, September 16th, 2009

I blogged about the past year’s fellows in February, and now the deadline for 2010 is approaching next week. For those who don’t know what TED is, I’ll quote myself,

“TED stands for “Technology, Entertainment, Design” and their talks are given annually at the TED conference in Long Beach, CA. 50 speakers give “talks” or 18 minute speeches about a variety of issues, including “science, business, the arts and the global issues facing our world.” (Past speakers include Al Gore, our own Lawrence Lessig, and Jill Bolt Taylor—a brain researcher who describes the stroke she suffers in exhilarating fashion, to name a few.)

Now, with the new TED fellows program, extraordinary people you may not have heard of yet (without the $6,000 to pay for standard admission to the conference) can give talks, too.”

To apply for a fellowship, go to their website and follow the instructions there. The deadline for all applicants is noon (EST), September 25. It’s eighteen minutes of exposure to talk about anything you want; you could very well be that spokesperson for your cause. All TED talks are licensed CC BY NC-ND.

Indaba Music Continues To Grow

Cameron Parkins, September 14th, 2009

Indaba Music has had a busy summer.

July saw the launch of Session Console 2.0, an upgrade of Indaba’s digital music workstation that allows musicians to collaboratively record, edit, and mix tracks online. An improved engine built on Sun Microsystems’ JavaFX platform makes the tool more robust and streamlined. The relaunch was paired with a new library of CC-licensed audio loops and sounds that Indaba solicited from its community.

Not only has Indaba worked to improve the ease and power of its tools, but the company has also been hard at work producing compelling programs for its community to engage in. The previously mentioned remix contest with twin sister pop-rock act Carmen and Camille saw audio stems from the duo’s song “Shine 4U” available under a Creative Commons Attribution license. Similar remix contests from Rivers Cuomo of Weezer and The Crystal Method gave community members the ability to win some amazing musical gear, while a collaboration with Intrahealth OPEN found artists submitting music in an effort to help fund health care services for the developing world.

This is all while maintaining and supporting an active community of artists that are creating and collaborating on new music everyday. Check out our March 2008 interview conducted with Indaba co-founders Matthew Siegel and Daniel Zaccagnino for more information.