We are pleased to announce the beginning of the public discussion process that we expect to result in version 4.0 of the Creative Commons license suite. Timeliness and Opportunity The 4.0 discussions held at the 2011 Global Summit confirmed for CC the need to commence the 4.0 discussion process now if we wish to consider…

INTERPOLATION MAP / Lionel Bergeret, Safecast / CC BY-NC One week after the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Diachi plant in March, the Safecast project was born to respond to the information needs of Japanese citizens regarding radiation levels in their environment. Safecast, then known as RDTN.org, started a campaign on Kickstarter “to provide an…

Yesterday, Europeana — Europe’s digital library, museum and archive, and the first major adopter of the Public Domain Mark for works in the worldwide public domain — published and made available The Europeana Licensing Framework using the CC0 public domain dedication. The licensing framework encompasses and is a follow-on to the recent Data Exchange Agreement…

At your right is our t-shirt model, Timothy Vollmer, also CC’s Policy Coordinator. He is sporting the limited edition run of the teal “I Love to Share” t-shirt. Do you have one? If you do, join our Flickr pool and show us you love to share. If you don’t, you can give to Creative Commons…

In the U.S., the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has released two Requests for Information (RFI) soliciting public input on long term preservation of and public access to the results of federally funded research, including digital data and peer-reviewed scholarly publications. The deadline for responding to the RFIs is January 2,…

Governments around the world are increasingly relying on open licenses to release public sector information (PSI). A September 2011 report titled Costs and Benefits of Data Provision, prepared by John Houghton for the Australian National Data Service, examines the immediate and wider economic costs and benefits to making PSI available. The key takeaway from the…

The Learning Resources Metadata Initiative (LRMI) Technical Working Group just released the latest draft of their specification. This version is another step on the road to the final public release and submission to Schema.org, the multiple search engine group that is maintaining a standard metadata specification for online content. LRMI intends to extend Schema.org’s documentation…

Today, marks the premiere of the first Spanish movie under a CC license (CC BY-NC-SA) in a Spanish cinema. Interferències, “an audiovisual and educational project launched from the Debt Observatory (ODG) and Quepo,” premieres in Barcelona at both the Alexandra and Girona cinemas. Interferències aims to educate and mobilize citizens, creating awareness of the world’s…

Today, marks the premiere of the first Spanish movie under a CC license (CC BY-NC-SA) in a Spanish cinema. Interferències, “an audiovisual and educational project launched from the Debt Observatory (ODG) and Quepo,” premieres in Barcelona at both the Alexandra and Girona cinemas. Interferències aims to educate and mobilize citizens, creating awareness of the world’s…

The German UNESCO Commission has released the publication, “Open Content Lizenzen – Ein Leitfaden für die Praxis” (pdf) aka “Open Content Licenses – A Practical Guideline.” The publication is authored by Dr. Till Kreutzer, a member of the Commission’s legal expert committee and a founder of iRights.info, a legal information website for consumers. The publication…