“Why copyright need not be an issue” by Richard Poynder

“Time was when the art of arrangement” — the creative reinterpretation of songs — “occupied an honored place in musical composition.” “Bach, Mozart, Liszt and Ravel,” writes Liszt biographer Alan Walker in the New York Times, “were among the many composers who lavished their talents on this important activity, fitting out their own works or…

Our weblog now takes comments. So if you’ve got feedback about the several potential license innovations we debuted this week — a sampling option, an educational use option, a link-back requirement, and a safe harbor for commercial search engines — please post your thoughts and let public discussion begin.

This is the fourth in a series of posts calling for comment on potential innovations to our licenses. This post deal with a potential enhancement to the language of our current “noncommercial use” option. Indexterity (Innovation 2b) Our noncommercial language currently includes an explicit safe harbor for file-sharing (which, under U.S. law, is considered to…

This is the third in a series of blog postings dedicated to inviting comment on possible innovations to our licenses. Posts 1a and 1b dealt with potential new license options. This post and the one to follow deal with potential refinements of our existing license texts. The Missing Link? (Innovation 2a) Several people have written…

This is the second of several postings describing potential innovations to our licenses. It comes courtesy of Rob Hallman, a Stanford Law School student in the “Advanced Contracts: Creative Commons” seminar. Commons.edu? You have the power to make learning fun. At least partly. Promoting education is a personal goal and a corporate mission for many…

This post is the first in a series that will roll out, over the course of this week, potential innovations to our licenses for your review and comment. Mmm . . . Free Samples Right now, our menu of license options lets authors choose between prohibiting or encouraging a) commercial re-uses of their work, and…

We’re very excited to announce that Davis Guggenheim, a celebrated director and producer of both documentary and dramatic film and television, has joined our Board of Directors. Davis brings to our team the invaluable perspective of a creator with both extensive commercial experience and a commitment to public policy. In 1999, Davis undertook an ambitious…

This week we’ll roll out several potential innovations to our licenses, then call for your comments. First, we’ll post some proposed text for two new kinds of license options: “sampling” and “educational use.” Second, we’ll float some draft language that we’ve considered adding to our licenses as enhancements: an explicit safe harbor for search engines…

Today, Creative Commons metadata advisor Aaron Swartz joined blogger and author Cory Doctorow, programmer Brandon Wiley, Rice University‘s Chris Kelty, and Executive Director Glenn Otis Brown to talk about the Creative Commons at a panel discussion at the South By Southwest (SXSW) interactive conference. The panel covered issues surrounding the project, how people have used…