The UK government recently made a splash with its move towards opening government data. Now CC Australia’s Jessica Coates shares a promising government initiative in her home country. The Victorian Government has become the first Australian government to commit to using Creative Commons as the default licensing system for its public sector information (PSI). Many…

  In the spirit of Creative Commons Salons — global, informal events focused on bringing together the community around a central topic or focus — Science Commons will be holding a day-long event this February in Seattle. The event will aim to bring a broader understanding on the term “open” and all of its flavors…

The Creative Commons Salon NYC is back in action on March 3rd at the Open Planning Project‘s uber cool penthouse space from October. The theme for this salon is “Opening Education”, and if you don’t really know what that means, think CC licenses as applied to various learning contexts and you’re off to a good…

On Febuary 25th the Open Video Alliance will be hosting a wireside chat with CC founding board member Lawrence Lessig to discuss copyright, fair use, and online video. While the talk itself will be taking place at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, it will also be broadcast live online…

For the past 20 years, our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation have been at the forefront of the intersection between technology and law, helping to define and fight for our rights in the digital age. We’d like to congratulate them on hitting the 20 year mark. To celebrate their 20th birthday, they’re throwing on…

Many of you have heard about California’s Free Digital Textbook Initiative that launched last spring, which called for submissions of free digital textbooks in math and science for use by the state’s schools. Of the 16 textbooks submitted last year, 15 are openly licensed under one of the Creative Commons licenses—and all 10 that passed…

The past year witnessed some major achievements for Creative Commons in the Arab world. Highlights included Al Jazeera’s adoption of CC BY for the world’s first broadcast-quality online repository and CC Jordan’s substantial efforts on the first Arabic license port. 2010 promises more exciting developments for the rapidly-growing CC community in the Arab world. Today…

Late last month we looked at how our licenses were being used by both Google and Architecture for Humanity to keep content open, free, and fluid in their Haiti Relief efforts. As these efforts continue to grow more groups have turned to CC licenses to assist their goals, with three projects in particular catching our…

Free Culture X, a conference of Students for Free Culture, will be held February 13th at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Keynote addresses will be given by Harvard Berkman Center co-founder Jonathan Zittrain, the co-founder of the public interest group Public Knowledge, Gigi Sohn, and the director of American University’s Center for Social…

I’m pleased to announce that today the Creative Commons board of directors has elected Cathy Casserly as a new member. Cathy has been a foremost champion of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement for a decade and of Creative Commons since its inception. She served as Director of Open Educational Resources Initiative at the William…