Rhizome, “an online platform for the global new media art community”, announced yesterday that it will integrate Creative Commons licenses into its online art archive, the Artbase. From here onwards, artists who contribute to ArtBase will have the option to license their work under a Creative Commons License of their choosing, greatly adding to ArtBase’s flexibility. From Rhizome:

“By implementing Creative Commons, Rhizome aligns itself with sites like Blip.tv, Flickr and Digg, who nurture not only a community of free creativity, but of free culture,” says [Fred] Benenson. Lauren Cornell, Executive Director of Rhizome, adds that “It’s in the spirit of Rhizome to foster collaboration amongst artists. I’m happy that Rhizome is able to make these licenses available, and to support the practice of sharing cultural material within the arts.”

It is fantastic that a leading institution in new media art such as Rhizome has added the ability for CC-licensing in its online publishing interface. As more online repositories, be they artistic or otherwise, add CC-licensing options, the stronger the commons grows. As such, license-adoption from online communities is an essential part of CC’s overall goal, enabling content-creators and content-consumers easy tools to license and remix larger and larger bodies of work.

You can read more about Rhizome here.