Curt Smith, best known for his work as one of the two lead vocalists in English pop band Tears for Fears, released his new album, Halfway, Pleased, this past Tuesday (digitally and otherwise). Comprised of 15 hauntingly beautiful tracks (read a nice review here), Smith has chosen to release the entire album under a CC…

Google recently launched Google Doctype, a wiki-style encyclopedia for web developers of the open web, a “web built on open standards: HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and more.” Anyone with a Google account can contribute and edit. Currently, the wiki consists of HOWTO articles on web security, DOM manipulation, CSS and style, tips and tricks—in addition to…

Ben Adida and myself are attending the Semantic Technology 2008 conference today where we presented on ccREL, the Creative Commons Rights Expression Language (slides). ccREL provides a framework for describing licenses and how they relate to creative works. In addition to the conceptual framework for describing licenses, ccREL also provides concrete recommendations for marking works…

San Francisco, CA USA — May 22, 2008 Creative Commons today announced that it is exploring possible roles in connection with a digital copyright registry system. Creative Commons is the San Francisco-based not-for-profit organization which provides free copyright licenses that allow creators to mark their works in advance with a range of permissions granted to…

For the 150th episode of the fantastic Boing Boing tv, Xeni et al. have digi-traveled to Japan, visiting CC CEO Joi Ito to learn how to hunt for and prepare bamboo shoots. Accompanied by a wonderful score from Ryuichi Sakamoto, the video is CC BY-NC licensed and a soothing way to begin your day. You…

Work on tools and resources that we hope will help to enable engagement with open education continues here at ccLearn. We’re getting into the testing phase for the Universal Education Search project, and we are currently writing a first report on licensing policy diversity among open educational projects and web sites. ccLearn attended the Berkman…

Podington Bear, a musical artist known for releasing 3 songs a week during 2007 – all under a CC BY-NC license – recently began an exciting new project titled Sound of Picture. The project finds Podington Bear scoring ‘single-frame films’, adding an atmospheric/mood driven musical piece to a particular photo he has taken. These compositions…

Stanley The Whale is a CC-powered e-zine that is “dedicated to bringing forth amateur talent from all corners in as many different mediums of art as can be fit within” a particular online space. Focusing on the work of amateur photographers, writers, artists, and game-designers who are hoping to expand their fan base, all submissions…

Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society launched a new project last week: Publius. The Publius Project is a Web 2.0 version of the Federalist Papers, a collection of passionate essays written in support of the U.S. Constitution–mostly signed “Publius”.  The Publius Project “brings together a distinguished collection of Internet observers, scholars, innovators, entrepreneurs, activists,…

Rifflet, described by Gizmodo as “Twitter for Music”, is a new website that pushes musicians to post their unfinished song – a unique melody, bass line, guitar riff, drum beat, etc. – for the rest of the Rifflet community to hear, build upon, and recontextualize. From Rifflet: A rifflet is a piece of a song–a…