Cool: David Bowie has just launched a new mashup contest. There’s a new ad campaign for Audi cars that features two of Bowie’s songs mashed up. They’ve decided to throw a mashup contest to capitalize on this, awarding a new car to the best song that uses samples from his new album and any older…

From Magnatune musician Brad Sucks, comes his new music industry blog Sellout Central, which he is co-authoring. They’re exploring a variety of legal and artist issues in the industry and their first slew of posts gives any musician plenty to chew on. We’ll be watching this new blog closely.

500,000 pictures taken between 1880 and 1990 are now in a searchable Dutch National Archive Image Bank. If you speak enough Dutch to navigate the site, there’s quite a lot of history here. It looks like current Dutch copyright laws are similar to the US, lasting until a creator’s death + 70 years, so it’s…

Wired News has a great story about a Seattle film festival that uses public domain clips from the Prelinger Archives. Participants need only have a computer with video editing software and $20 for the entry fee. The entry deadline is June 15th and the festival is August 1st at the Seattle Art Museum.

“Righting Copywrongs,” by David Akin.

Today I had one of the best experiences of my time at Creative Commons, which is saying a lot. I had the pleasure of visiting the Chandler School in Pasadena, CA, USA, to talk about copyright and Creative Commons. Some 200 sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-graders and I talked about the ins and outs and dos…

J.D. Lasica has a new feature in the online magazine Mindjack entitled “The Killing Fields: Copyright Law and its Challengers.” It’s an overview of Jed Horowitz’ struggles with Disney and his film about overreaching copyright, Willful Infringement. An snippet from the article: At various points, the iconoclastic Horowitz appears on camera, appearing dumbfounded at the…

We’re hosting a very short notice music metadata summit tomorrow 3-6PM (Pacific) on the Stanford campus and online (IRC). We hope to come to decisions on several concrete issues, including metadata for tipjars, license buyouts, purchasing, and “remix ready” content as well as discuss how various music metadata-related projects can better collaborate and encourage adoption…

Rick Prelinger, of the Prelinger Archives, got his letter to the editor published in today’s New York Times. In it he points to the positive free distribution aspects of digitizing and sharing his works under the public domain: Our experience may seem counterintuitive, but it has been overwhelmingly positive: the more we give away, the…

Some Creative Commons-licensed, political-mash music from “the Internet’s first virtual band.”