Bodies packed Bar 56 in Ottawa’s Byward Market last week for the launch of the first Canadian version of a Creative Commons license. Hosted by the University of Ottawa’s Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) and the Law & Technology Program, the event unfurled the CC banner to a jubilant crowd eager to…

This week in San Francisco, there’s an interesting conference being held called Web 2.0. In a week of panel discussions, the future of the internet is being charted among technology and industry leaders. Jeff Veen recalls a discussion of copyright among music industry folks including famous mash-up artist DJ Dangermouse. After a lot of hand-wringing…

The University of Barcelona hosted a great conference last Friday in their beautiful Aula Magna to celebrate the launch of the Spanish CC licenses – also available in a Catalan version. Spanish project lead Ignasi Labastida i Juan had arranged for authorities from the regional government as well as from academia to present their take…

Due to overwhelming demand, and thanks to the work of our international project leads and tech crew, the summaries of our licenses are now available in nine different languages. Note how this is different from the iCommons process, which involves translating and adapting the licenses themselves (the lawyer-readable part of things) to various languages and…

Creative Commons South Africa has an amazing new animation that describes the practical aspects of using our copyright licenses better than any piece of media we’ve had until now, and with unusual charm. We’ll host the animation from this site soon, but until we do, it’s available for viewing at the South African site, which…

Two more sets of International Commons are available: from Spain and Canada. One cool feature these licenses have in common is that both are bilingual. The Spanish licenses are available in Castilian Spanish and Catalan, and the Canadian in English and French. Accounts of the launch events, by those Commoners who attended them, are coming…

Another great article on the WIRED CD and Concert, this one from Newsweek/MSNBC. The piece features great quotes from the bands Spoon and Matmos, who happen to be two of my favorites, two of the WIRED CD contributors, and nice fellows to boot.

While I watch the news in Portland about Mt. St. Helens and its possible upcoming eruption, I’m seeing plenty of links to the volcano webcam on blogs. One of the blogs that stood out for different reasons is the Berkeley Intellectual Property blog’s post about the Terms of Service, copyright status, and law around Federal…

“It has an influence far out of proportion to its size, and some think it could be a guidepost for a record industry in desperate need of direction.” There is a great article on Nonesuch Records in today’s New York Times magazine. Nonesuch is the label that brings us the recordings of David Byrne, Wilco,…

“BBC planning to open source its archives” by Fergus Cassidy