We love to see Creative Commons metadata everywhere. Thanks to the work of Scott and Jason this summer, we now have a library called liblicense and some demos for how to integrate that with desktop applications in GNOME and KDE, the two most-used Free Software desktop environments.
So I went to the GNOME summit last weekend in Boston. Owen Taylor organized this meeting, mostly of developers who have been working on the core of GNOME or widely-used GNOME apps, but the group was very friendly to newcomers like me.
I gave a lightning talk on liblicense and our metadata in general. People asked great questions, ranging from, “Does any distribution ship this yet?” to “Can liblicense help users see which licenses are compatible?”. To mention a few presentations that stuck out in my mind, I saw talks on the famous Online Desktop, Lennart Poettering’s Mango Lassi, and a granular desktop privileges system called PolicyKit. Though I didn’t see a presentation, Hanna Wallach‘s work on pushing machine learning into the desktop struck me as being right on target. Debian, Novell, RedHat, OLPC, and other organizations were represented, and of course the people themselves were talkative and interesting. Later on, I was pleased to see that Owen recalled my interest in software freedom and RDFa.
While I was in town, I met with Harvard Free Culture at an OLPC listening party they were having. I also had dinner with developers of the Miro video player. I stayed with the generous Mako Hill. After years of knowing him on IRC, I finally met Matt Lee, the chief GNU webmaster. It was great seeing all these GNOME hackers and revisiting the rich Free Culture and Free Software communities in Boston.
By and large the attendees paid more attention to their laptops than to presentations. But at the wrap-up, everyone was alert when an attendee asked, “Shall we do this again next year?”. “Yes!”
Please join us tonight, Wednesday, October 10, for the San Francisco CC Salon. Stop by Shine (1337 Mission St.) from 7-9PM to help celebrate the launch of our fall fundraising campaign, hang out with fellow CC supporters, and learn about CC topics. Our presenters include:
Check out the upcoming page for more info. See you tonight!
TempoStand: CC Music Platform
TempoStand is an online musical portal that promotes independent bands, artists, and musicians in India by using CC-licenses. TempoStand records tracks for groups and then releases these recordings under a CC-India BY-SA License, allowing people to remix and redistribute the tracks as they see fit. From TempoStand:
TempoStand is a platform to promote independent musicians in India. It is starting its journey from Ahmedabad from 15th April, 2007. Every musician, every singer, every rocker, every tabla wadak is invited. We record your music for free (no hidden costs) and use a creative commons license for your music. TempoStand’s objective is to promote you and take your music across the world.
As more and more musicians and record labels begin to use CC-licences to openly promote their content, we will likely see an influx of material that would otherwise not be nearly as visible. TempoStand has already amassed an incredible amount of quality recordings, and as they continue to add more content, the long-tail of digital music becomes more and more a reality.
Stick This In Your Memory Hole: CC Licensed Essay Collection
Aduki Independent Press, a boutique publishing company based in Melbourne, Australia, announced last week that one of their upcoming releases, Stick This In Your Memory Hole by Tristan Clark, will be made available under a CC Attribution-Noncommercial licence.
A collection of 37 essays, Stick This In Your Memory Hole uses satire, insight and the occasional foul language to critique the state of politics and society in contemporary Australia.According to CC Australia, this is the first case of a book being released independently by an Australian publisher under a CC license. From CCau:
As far as we are aware, this is the first case of a book being released independently by an Australian publisher under a CC licence. Sure, we’ve published a few books ourselves (including the excellent Open Content Licensing: Cultivating the Creative Commons), and rumour has it there are some self-publishing efforts. But Aduki seems to be the first independent publisher in Australia to get behind its author’s wish to truly share their book with the nation using CC.
Breaking out from the pack and taking the plunge into open content licensing isn’t an easy decision for a small publisher to make, and Aduki deserves to be congratulated. But, as they say in their press release, with its strong message in support of free speech ‘Stick this in your memory hole’ is the perfect book to begin with.
As Emily Clark of Aduki press puts it “We really liked the idea of giving people easy access and the right to use the work without seeking our permission as the book has an important message that needs to be shared.”
Spread the word: Support Creative Commons 2007
Last week we launched the Creative Commons annual fall fundraising campaign. Goal: US$500,000.
We also launched a redesigned creativecommons.org site (more on that below) and now have matching campaign buttons:
Get one for your site or blog!
As you might guess from the buttons above, a map theme runs throughout the campaign, including on the super cool campaign t-shirts (there’s only one way to get one…), see right.
This includes the most immediately noticeable addition to the CC homepage: a dynamic donor map, showing where in the world contributions to the fall campaign are coming from (no personal information is exposed). One cool thing about the donor map is that it’s built with OpenLayers, a completely free software dynamic mapping library.
While maps make great eye candy, the most significant changes to the CC site fall into two categories: international exposure and information architecture.
We’re now aggregating CC jurisdiction project blogs on the CC homepage. Aggregated feeds will be available soon, and announced here. We’ll be doing a lot more in the coming months to shine a light on vital jurisdiction project activities.
Information architecture-wise we’ve made a bunch of small changes to make the CC site (actually sites) easier to navigate and use, with more coming. Three of note:
This now omnipresent set of navigation tabs is self-explanatory and points to the other two changes.
First, a completely revamped projects page. If you want a very concise guide to current and ongoing projects of CC (the organization), with pretty icons, go there. Of course most of the projects represent iceberg tips, both within the organization and beyond.
Second, the participate tab points to our wiki, now restyled to match the rest of the site. One of the cooler things we’re doing with the wiki is adding Semantic MediaWiki annotations. The short explanation is that this allows us to use information in the wiki as if it were in a database, without creating a custom database application. See a very early and trivial application of this on our content directories page.
A number of CC staff are directly responsible for the rollout of campaign and site refresh features, including Asheesh Laroia (OpenLayers integration), Jon Phillips (information architecture), Nathan Kinkade (sysadmin), summer intern Thierry Kennes (Semantic MediaWiki integration and Wiki theme work), Cameron Parkins, Rebecca Rojer, and Tim Vollmer (asset creation and wikifarming). Melissa Reeder, Eric Steuer, and Nathan Yergler provided fundraising, editorial, and technology oversight respectively. Alex Roberts imagined all of the visual concepts, made everything pretty, and wrote lots of the code.
The best ways to congratulate Alex & co. are to provide support for their continued work and spread the word.
Thank you!
CC @ EFF Bootcamp Next Wednesday
I’m giving a presentation about Creative Commons at Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF) Bootcamp (for Web 2.0 workers on user-generated content) next Wednesday, October 10, 2007. Here is a summary:
EFF is hosting a one-day session for Web 2.0 workers who handle issues arising from users and user-generated content. From DMCA to CDA to ECPA, the law surrounding internet content can be confusing, especially for the folks who have to decide on the fly whether to let something stay up or take it down, or whether to give their customer’s name to the FBI agent on the phone. Let us help.
I‘m speaking at 12:15 right before lunch. Come out to this event if you want to learn more about:
- Defamation, harassment, and other accusations of bad behavior.
- Fair use, free culture, and the right to remix.
- Copyright take-downs and put-backs: Understanding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
- How to respond to cops, crooks, and courts who want your customers’ communications and other private information.
- How to avoid becoming the next Napster and stay on the safe side of the Copyright Wars.
- The rights of anonymous speakers.
- Porn, predators, and the pressure to police.
- Lightning rounds on Creative Commons licenses, webcasting and what to do when you’ve been hacked.
Of course, please come out and ask me about anything under the sun including upcoming releases of LiveContent 2.0, where we are at with working on OLPC, and generally anything else CC-related.
Chess Tactics: CC-Licensed Chess Guide
To many, chess is simultaneously fascinating and perplexing. Enter Ward Fonsworth’s Predator at the Chessboard, a free online guide to chess tactics, released under a CC BY-NC-ND licence. No longer will you be baffled by a Sicilian Defense or a Queen’s Gambit (UPDATE: although these two moves are essential to understanding the game of chess, the book does not cover them as they are openings and rather focuses on tactics in particular) – who knows, maybe someday you will even climb the ranks to Grandmaster.
Published initially Now published as a book, Predator at the Chessboard has information that is compelling for both the chess amateur and the advanced hobbyist alike. Freely accessible, it is an incredible resource for anyone with any interest in the wondrous game that is chess. This approach, in Farnsworth’s words, says “is an experiment in a particular way of distributing work to the world: online for free, and then also in a book-on-demand form for those who would rather read the material that way”. Time to brush the dust off my old board and utilize the all-powerful, yet very subtle, Réti Opening on an unsuspecting foe.
We’re going crazy over here at CC. Not only did we just go live with our website redesign, launch our 3rd Annual Fundraising Campaign, and get a new general counsel/vice president, we are also happy to announce the return of the “Featured Commoner” series to our blog!
“Featured Commoners” are people, groups, or tools that use CC licensing in unique and original ways. Short interviews will be posted to our blog, offering insight into the ways CC licences have helped these people and projects realize their respective goals.
Our first “Featured Commoner” in this new wave of interviews is Nick Kellet of GiftTRAP, a wonderful board game that we have talked about before here.
What’s GiftTRAP all about?
Isn’t gift-giving a gong show in your family? We all have funny stories about the gifts we’ve received and wondered, “What were they thinking?”. That’s what GiftTRAP is all about.
It’s an emotional intelligence game themed around giving gifts. Playing means you can drop hints about what you’d like, try and guess what your friends want or even give really bad gifts just for fun! It’s all about getting the “social” back into board games.
Some games are about winning and others are about taking part. GiftTRAP is an experience that’s all about great conversation and getting friends and family talking about things that matter. In GiftTrap, getting better is as important as winning.
(more…)
COMMUNIA: public domain & alternative licensing experts convene in Europe
COMMUNIA, the European Thematic Network on the Public Domain in the Digital Age, held its kick-off meeting in Turin, Italy on September 28, 2007. The network consists of over 35 members from 21 countries who are dedicated to developing
“the single European point of reference for high-level policy discussion and strategic action on all issues related to the public domain in the digital environment, as well as related topics such as alternative forms of licensing for creative material (including, but not limited to, the Creative Commons licenses), open access to scientific publications and research results, management of works whose authors are unknown (i.e. orphan works).”
The COMMUNIA project, funded by the European Commission and coordinated by Politecnico di Torino, will enrich the next 3 years with a productive schedule of thematic workshops and conferences, with the goal of maintaining a strong link between participants dedicated to analytical and practical results, including “the production of a book; an academic journal; a “best practices” guide for European research and reference centres on the topics covered by COMMUNIA; and a final strategic report containing policy guidelines that will help all the stakeholders – public and private, from the local to the European level – tacking the issues that the existence of a digital public domain have raised and will undoubtedly continue to raise.”
The kick-off meeting owes its success to the superb organization efforts of Italian CC Project Lead and COMMUNIA Network Coordinator Prof. Juan Carlos De Martin, Project Manager Andrea Glorioso, Ms. Maria Teresa Medina Quintana, Prof. Angelo Raffaele Meo, and Prof. Marco Ricolfi. Also part of the COMMUNIA Project team is Mr. Bernardo Parrella as online PR manager.
CC Salon SF next Wednesday
Mark your calendars: The next San Francisco CC Salon is Wednesday, October 10, from 7-9PM. Help celebrate the launch of our fall fundraising campaign and hang out with fellow CC supporters.
We’re back at Shine (1337 Mission St.) with a stellar lineup of presenters, including:
Check out the upcoming page for more info. Its going to be a great night and we hope to see you there!