Creative Commons has a simple strategy for linking licensing information in mp3s and other media files often found on P2P networks back to the web. Until now implementing that strategy was rather a pain for publishers. The only tools were command line, and those depended upon a gaggle of libraries not already installed on a typical machine.

Thanks to work by Nathan Yergler, we have a new application that attacks both problems. ccTag 0.5.2 offers a cross plaform GUI that works on Linux, OS X, and Windows. The command line version has no dependencies apart from Python 2.x.

Ye obligatory screenshot.

Long term one vision is to have a desktop tool that one could drag any media one wanted to license over. The tool would ask the user about licensing, embed any metadata appropriate, and have the ability to publish metadata and the licensed media to the web. ccTag is one small step along that road.