CC Salon LA, April 16 7:30PM

Cameron Parkins, April 2nd, 2008

Heads up to all LA based CC-heads - two weeks from today, April 16 at 7:30 PM, we are back at FOUND LA (Google Map) for another CC Salon. We’ve revamped our approach, focusing more on content creators and the issues they face and to say we are excited about the lineup would be an understatement.

Rex Bruce, director of the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, will be screening a video he directed that uses public domain imagery from the US Military (also playing at the Centre Pompidou). Holly Willis, Director of Academic Programs at the Institute for Multimedia Literacy, will be presenting on art in Second Life, focusing on creators who are cognizant of the formal and ideological implications of virtual worlds.

Jack Lerner, Acting Director at the USC Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic, will give a talk on research he has been conducting in relation to music sampling that looks at defects in the market and proposes changes. Finally, we will be joined by multimedia designers Chris Weisbart and Michael Wilson who will explain how they are using open source technology in museums and will give a live demonstration of a holographic projection system they’ve recently built into an interactive exhibit.

Phew! All the presenters of course will touch upon the interaction their various topics play with CC licensing. So come out and join us for what is bound to be an eye opening night, and yes, there will be free (as in beer) drinks.

Over at the Science Commons blog…

Kaitlin Thaney, April 2nd, 2008

Over at the Science Commons blog, an introduction and a call for suggestions / comments …

“Over the past few months, you may have noticed that some of the posts here have been attributed to a mysterious “dwentworth.” That’s me — Donna Wentworth — and I’m here to start bringing more of your voices to the Science Commons blog. [...]

Here’s where you come in. If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re passionate about the future of science. You may even be a part of the vast, incredibly diverse community of people that actually make science happen: scientists, publishers, research company representatives, research foundation officers, computer scientists, entrepreneurs, librarians and more. Some of you may be bloggers yourselves, who track developments in your area of science and ended up at Science Commons once or twice.

My hope is that you’ll join me in turning up the volume on the conversation surrounding open science. As part of this effort, I’m going to start profiling individuals and organizations working to open new frontiers for innovation and discovery in science. I am also building a community blog roll — or a public aggregator, if that works better — for open science. The goal isn’t to endorse particular viewpoints or blogs, but instead to showcase the work that’s already being done to midwife a new way of sharing and building scientific knowledge, as well as to start identifying ways we can all work together. [...]“

Read more after the jump …

CC Wiki puts on a new face

Timothy Vollmer, April 2nd, 2008

Visit the Creative Commons wiki at http://wiki.creativecommons.org to explore our updated wiki portal page. There’s easy ways to get involved, and lots to do. Jump right in and license your creative work or check out a developer challenge. Spread the word about CC with the great multimedia resources on our Documentation page. Congregate online by adding us as a friend on places like Facebook, Flickr, and Scribd. Meet up offline at a CC Salon or other event. Also check out the Creative Commons International wiki.

To get started, sign up for a wiki account, join us in the IRC chatroom, or subscribe to the CC-Community email list.

http://wiki.creativecommons.org

Mozilla is 10 years old

Mike Linksvayer, April 1st, 2008

We’re a day late toasting Mozilla’s 10th anniversary. Their efforts to ensure and enhance openness, innovation, and opportunity on the web are deeply congruent with CC’s mission.

Thanks to Mozilla and all contributors to Mozilla for their support of CC in various forms. And yeah, thanks for the awesome browser that I’m typing this into right now.

Mozilla CEO John Lilly may have been the first blogger to congratulate CC on our new leadership, right after we announced it, not a day late, and for pronouncing our changes “Great for the Web!” :)

Our news also appeared immediately on TechCrunch, where early feedback in comments is extremely positive.

Creative Commons Announces New Leadership, New Funding

Eric Steuer, April 1st, 2008

Today, Creative Commons is excited to make two important announcements.

First, we’re thrilled about a major new grant of $4 million from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, consisting of $2.5 million to provide general support to Creative Commons over five years, as well as $1.5 million to support ccLearn.

We’re also pleased to announce some changes to CC’s leadership that reflect. Lawrence Lessig is stepping down as CEO of Creative Commons, to focus on his newly-launched project, Change Congress. He will be replaced by entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and free culture advocate Joi Ito. Lessig will remain on the Creative Commons board.

From Larry:

“Both pieces of news we are announcing today reflect Creative Commons’ maturation from a startup into crucial infrastructure for creativity, education, and research in the digital age.”

Founding board member and Duke law professor James Boyle will become chair of the board, replacing Ito, who will remain on the board.

Read more about this news on the press release we issued today.

Google Acquires ccMixter.org

Mike Linksvayer, April 1st, 2008

Announced on ccMixterblog:

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., (March 31, 2008) – Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) announced today that it has completed its acquisition of ccMixter.org , a company that offers online music management and technology which acquires personal information for advertisers, web publishers and ad agencies.

Read the whole releaseApril Fools’ Day joke.

In case you were wondering about the actual next step for ccMixter, we’re working on it!

In the meantime, check out the Berklee/OLPC Sample Pool available for remixes by ccMixter users, based on 8.5 GB of CC-licensed samples for the OLPC released last week.

Summer of Code Deadline Extended

Nathan Yergler, March 31st, 2008

If you delayed applying to Summer of Code this year, you’re in luck — Google has revised the timeline. Student applications are now due by Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 0:00 UTC. If you have an idea for a Creative Commons related project, feel free to ask for feedback on IRC or the cc-devel email list.

“Sampling & Fair Use”: Copyright Issues For Indie Producers - April 7 @ 7PM

Cameron Parkins, March 31st, 2008

Heads up to all Bay Area CC-ers - next Monday, April 7th from 7PM to 8:30PM, Independent Arts & Media will be hosting a panel titled “Sampling & Fair Use”: Copyright Issues For Indie Producers. Our own Jennifer Yip will be on hand to discuss CC licenses and how to access open works online. Joining Jen will be entertainment lawyer George Rush and attorney Trevor Stordahl, with moderation from social architect Michael Vav. From IA&M:

“Sampling & Fair Use”: Copyright issues for indie producers

Presented by Independent Arts & Media, Lilycat.com and AccessSF.org

EVENT STARTS PROMPTLY @ 7pm! PLEASE ARRIVE EARLY TO CLAIM YOUR SEAT!

SEATING IS LIMITED:
Call Indy Arts to RSVP: 415/677-9877 — or register using the widget below.

DESCRIPTION:

You want to sample something in a video or song, borrow an image for an art collage, or use a vintage film clip in your act — and you wonder if the estate of Groucho Marx can sue you.

Come find our what’s “fair game” and what’s off-limits. When can you use work produced by other people and other organizations? How do you stay out of trouble? What are the limits and possibilities?

FEATURING:

– George Rush (George M. Rush Law Offices; adviser, Film Arts Foundation): Entertainment lawyer, film and video specialist

– Trevor Stordahl (Attorney at the Pranger Law Group)

– Jennifer Yip (Creative Commons): Using flexible licenses and accessing open work in the Internet era.

– Moderated by professional coach/social architect Michael Vav

What good is a CC licensed specification?

Mike Linksvayer, March 29th, 2008

Proto-lawyer, GNOME hacker and CC friend Luis Villa’s brief “CC-licensed specification” rant is correct:

[I]mplementing a spec may require (among other things) licensing of “pending utility and design patent claims, copyrights, trade dress and trademark rights.” Putting a specification under a CC license gives you a copyright license to the text of the specification; it does not give license to the necessary trademarks, or to the patents, and depending on the license chosen, may not even give you the right to make a derivative work [...]

Fortunately all such specifications I’m aware of are published under free CC licenses (or placed in the public domain) so that derivative works and commercial use are legal.

However, liberal copyright terms on the text of a specification are not sufficient (and strictly speaking, perhaps not even necessary) for a protocol (or format or similar) to permit independent implementation, interoperability, and extension, including by free and open source software.

Software patents may be the main legal barrier to such use. This is why patent grants often get the most thorough public vetting of any non-technical aspect of a new specification and why (for example) the debate over the W3C’s patent policy several years ago was so important.

There are also non-legal items that will often be more important for a protocol being “open” in practice than the protocol specification’s copyright license. For example, the very existence and publication of an unambiguous specification, and the availability of a reference implementation and test suite, preferably under a free and open source software license.

So what good is putting a specification under a liberal copyright license? Is it just about signaling good intentions? As valuable as such signaling may be, it can be abused. I would argue that it is primarily useful for facilitating ongoing collaboration on the specification itself, extensions of the specification, and instructional materials and other non-software works around the specification — in other words, precisely the works and activities impacted by the copyright status of the text.

This is what I intended to highlight in a recent post on IE8 and removing copyright barriers to collaboration with technology communities (emphasis added):

It’s cool that Microsoft not only released the specifications under liberal terms, but followed the lead of the relevant communities, ensuring that there are no copyright barriers to collaboration with those communities.

As the post explains, Microsoft released their specifications under the same liberal terms (one under CC BY-SA, another dedicated to the public domain) as related specifications have been released under by others. This simply (but importantly) means that in terms of copyright anyway, the relevant communities are free to fold the Microsoft specifications into their wikis and other materials for ongoing collaboration (and so are you).

My post did not explain (as it should have) that as above, there’s much more to making a protocol usable than just placing its specification under liberal copyright terms. Microsoft obviously realizes this, as at the same time they also offered a (patent related) Open Specifications Promise for the specifications in question — though whether the promise is good enough may be subject to debate — see further quotation of Luis below.

I briefly raised another reason to place a specification under a well-known liberal copyright license in a post about the Sitemaps Protocol: Creating a space where Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo! can collaborate:

This is just a guess, but I imagine that agreeing to release the [Sitemaps protocol] under a CC license saved Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft many hours of legal haggling over copyright in the protocol. It is not a guess that this decision allows anyone, e.g., non-incumbent search engines, to publish and extend the protocol, without asking for permission from the incumbents.

In other words, using a public license (CC BY-SA in this case) for the specification solves one — even if just one — of what must be a laundry list of issues that must face such a collaboration, and that’s valuable. However, I should have been more clear that this enables anyone to publish and extend the protocol specification, at least insofar as copyright is concerned.

The most recent development concerning a significant specification under a CC license is also the most interesting so far, in that the parties involved seem to have made a effort to address all of the known barriers to uses of a protocol (whether they’ve succeeded is presumably an open question). Tim Vollmer beat me to blogging about OpenSocial, so I’ll expand a bit here.

The OpenSocial Foundation Intent Agreement covers copyright in the specification, a patent non-assertion covenant, a patent right in joint development, and a license to the OpenSocial trademark. There’s also a reference implementation under the Apache 2.0 license. Of course this appears to be just a proposal, and it is not clear to me whether non-members of the proposed foundation would have any patent or trademark rights with regard to the specification or implementations thereof. But at least they’re looking at all of the elements.

Luis again:

So, creative commons folks: could you please, please scream for me? Or better yet, work with SFLC to create a good license for specifications (since they aren’t happy with the OSP), and then ask people who’ve ‘cc licensed’ specifications to use that instead?

I suspect free CC licenses are reasonable licenses for specifications — for specification text, as far as that goes. But I agree we should talk about barriers other than copyright in the specification text whenever we talk or are approached about CC licenses and specifications.

We have been approached over the years about developing a license for protocols, specifications, standards, and the like, and would doubtless be happy to work with the Software Freedom Law Center and other parties to develop such a thing, whether it would take the form of a license or a “protocol” that included using liberal copyright terms and other aspects. In such an effort it would be important to consider interoperability with CC licenses, so that specification texts could easily be used in contexts like wikis and instructional materials.

Lingro Adds CC-Licensed Multi-Lingual Dictionaries

Cameron Parkins, March 28th, 2008

Back in December, we blogged about Lingro, a project that aims “to create an on-line environment that allows anyone learning a language to quickly look up and learn the vocabulary most important to them”. Lingro pools the open-content community for their definitions (including CC BY-SA licensed user submissions), ingraining it in a cycle of sharing and reuse with future promise of dynamic growth.

Since then, Lingro has added CC BY-SA licensed, multi-lingual, dictionaries that prompt users with a list of words missing from a particular dictionary and let them enter translations. These dictionaries are also available in widget form, allowing webmasters to add Lingro functionality to their websites (users can add definitions without going to Lingro directly). In addition to this, Lingro has added translations of their site into French, Spanish, German, Italian and Polish, as well as a Swedish dictionary (which translates back and forth between all the other languages on Lingro). With these developments, Lingro continues to make amazing strides in fostering information sharing that has immense potential in relation to language education and cross-cultural communication.