French Creative Commons

Matt Haughey, December 5th, 2003

We’ve recently announced the launch of the iCommons project in France. Like the other concurrent iCommons projects, there’s a mailing list, a proposed translation into French law, and a retranslation to explain the changes. If you understand French law and/or live in France and want to help shape the extension of Creative Commons, feel free to sign up for the mailing list and contribute.

MobileWhack

Matt Haughey, December 3rd, 2003

This week’s featured content is MobileWhack. It’s a new site dedicated to tweaks, hacks, and hints on how to extend the phone, PDA, music player, and/or any other gadget you might carry around in a pocket. The content is released under a Creative Commons license and if you’re a gadget freak, I can assure you there is at least one new piece of software or tip you can use if you check MobileWhack out.

Tech Challenges Update: Mozilla, Python, C#, SMIL

Mike Linksvayer, December 2nd, 2003

October 23 we posted about Nathan Yergler’s ccValidator web app, developed in response to our list of tech challenges.

Challenged developers have been hard at work since:

• Nathan Yergler has created mozCC, an extension for Mozilla-based browsers that reads and displays CC metadata as you browse.
• In addition to creating mozCC and fixing ccValidator bugs, the amazing Nathan Yergler is working on ccRdf, a Python library for CC metadata.
• Steve Griffin has created a C# library for CC metadata.
• Lucas Gonze has created a spec for embedding CC metadata in SMIL.

Congratulations and thanks to Nathan, Steve, and Lucas! There are more challenges to take on, including many we don’t yet know about. Post about your work and ideas here or on the cc-metadata mailing list

CC-GPL, Brazil, and iCommons Japan

Matt Haughey, December 2nd, 2003

Today’s a big day for annoucements at Creative Commons. Earlier today in Tokyo, Japan, the launch date of iCommons Japan was finalized and we have turned on automatic Japanese translation for our current license system. Starting next month, we will be offering optional licenses that apply to laws within the Japanese jurisdiction

Even bigger news is that the Brazilian government has commited to releasing code created with public funding as free software using the new CC-GPL, or Creative Commons Gnu General Public License. The CC-GPL will improve upon the existing GPL by adding in our interface of Commons Deeds and embedded metadata. The CC-GPL page is now offered from our license page, in Brazilian Portugese only for now, but soon will also be available in English.

Eldred arguments on Oyez

Matt Haughey, November 25th, 2003

Oyez, the supreme court audio archive previously featured on this site, has recently released all the audio from the Eldred vs. Ashcroft case. Recorded last Fall, the audio of this case is available under a Creative Commons license.

Also featured on that page are SMIL versions of the audio, which display images of the speakers and show the running transcript as it plays, and a recent videotaped lecture from Lawrence Lessig on the subject of copyrights.

Photo Pix Today

Matt Haughey, November 21st, 2003

This week’s featured content is the photoblog Photo Pix Today, done by Christoph Föckeler from Germany. The site features a great variety photos of life in Munich, and all licensed under Creative Commons.

Wired News on Loca Records

Matt Haughey, November 20th, 2003

Today’s Wired News features an article profiling our featured content from a couple weeks ago, Loca Records.

Moving Image Contest deadline approaching!

Neeru Paharia, November 20th, 2003

GET CREATIVE!

Enter the Creative Commons Moving Image Contest.

Make a 2-minute moving image that describes Creative Commons’ mission.

Win a computer, a digital video camera, or an iPod.

An amazing panel of judges will select winners.

Please read the official rules.

Deadline for entries is December 31st, 2003

Creative Commons in Italy

Matt Haughey, November 19th, 2003

On the heels of our recent start of work on licenses in China, Taiwan, and Ireland, today we added Italy to the mix. The discussion has just begun, thanks to volunteers at the Department of Law of the University of Turin and the CNR Institute of Electronics and Information and Telecommunications Engineering.

Creative Commons launches Ireland discussion

Matt Haughey, November 17th, 2003

Thanks to the help of Dr. Darius Whelan and Louise Crowley, at University College Cork, we’re working on porting Creative Commons licenses to Irish law. There is an iCommons Ireland page with links to the discussion and a full press release describing the undertaking.