MusicBrainz, one of our collaborators, has announced they’re releasing their database of music metadata under a CC license. MusicBrainz metadata lets you take all your assorted music files and organize them with consistent title, author, and album information.

Free trading of our music has genuine, verifiable returns. Community. Exchanges of artistic thought and aesthetic commodity. . . The RIAA argument that artists won’t particpate in the marketplace of ideas without financial compensation for CDs seems pretty short-sighted from where we sit. — Chris Wetherell, Dealership We recently sat down for an interview with…

Technorati is an interesting weblog data mining tool that tracks links among and between sites. During its recent overhaul, creator Dave Sifry added a Creative Commons license to the resulting indexes and feeds. This allows others to reprint and produce modified versions of the indexes, as long as they are not used for commercial purposes…

There’s been a lot of recent talk among weblogs regarding Creative Commons licenses. After a little healthy back-and-froth, Copyfight cleared up some confusion over its use of a Creative Commons license. Doc (whom we profiled on this site) recently changed his blog to devote the contents to the public domain, sparking a discussion among a…

Interesting to see more worldwide uptake: Karl-Friedrich Lenz is publishing several legal books (in German) under a Creative Commons License, while Swedish open source community site Gnuheter does the same.

Gamelan Nyai Saraswati, a group of Gamelan musicians from central Java playing in North Carolina, offer recordings from their performances under a Creative Commons license. More about the ensemble and their music is available on their site.

In Japan, a project called the “Intellectual Property Outline” started in July 2002 and includes some provisions that seek to accomplish many of the same goals as the Creative Commons. While it is clear they were not influenced by us directly, it’s interesting to watch the convergence of alternate forms of copyright come from governments…

Shanghaiphotos.com is a site devoted to the city of Shanghai run by an avid hobbyist photographer. It also happens to be the first website based in China (that we know of) to use Creative Commons licenses for its content.

Stanford University will host a Spectrum Policy Conference March 1st and 2nd. The topic: the importance of the airwaves, and the ever-increasing number of wireless devices relying on them, to a healthy communications policy. The central question: Spectrum, property or commons? With FCC Chairman Powell and many other noteworthies in attendance, it promises to be…

We are delighted to see that the popular weblog application, Movable Type, is adding support for choosing Creative Commons licenses in its upcoming version.