October 1, 2007 — San Francisco, CA, USA

Virginia Rutledge has been named Vice President and General Counsel of Creative Commons, the organization announced today. In this position, Rutledge will oversee Creative Commons’s legal affairs, lead initiatives focused on the arts, and create partnerships with arts and cultural institutions both in the U.S. and internationally.

“Creative Commons has been very lucky to have had fantastic general counsels,” said Lawrence Lessig, CEO of Creative Commons. “But Virginia brings a breadth of experience and skills that is unmatched. I could not be happier that she has chosen CC as the next stage in her extraordinary career.”

Rutledge comes to Creative Commons from the New York law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, where she was a litigation associate. At Cravath, Rutledge’s areas of practice included intellectual property, art, entertainment, antitrust, securities, and general commercial law. She has represented clients in the media and music industries, including Time Warner Inc., Warner Music Group, Warner Bros., and New Line Cinema, as well as the arts nonprofit organization the Martha Graham Center of Contemporary Dance.

Rutledge has extensive experience in the art world, having worked as an exhibition associate for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and served as a contributing editor for Art Papers magazine. She has presented on art, digital media, and intellectual property law at conferences around the world. Additionally, her writing on art has been published in Art in America and Bookforum.

Rutledge is a member of the New York State Bar, and is the current chair of the Art Law Committee of the New York City Bar Association and a member of the Committee on Intellectual Property of the College Art Association. She holds several academic degrees, including a J.D. from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law (Boalt Hall), and an M. Phil. in Art History from the City University of New York’s Graduate School and University Center.

News of Rutledge’s appointment has been well received within the legal and arts communities. “I applaud Creative Commons for its inspired choice of Virginia Rutledge as Vice President and General Counsel,” said copyright expert William Patry, Senior Copyright Counsel, Google Inc. “Virginia’s background in academia, the art world, and the white-shoe corporate law firm environment is unique. Her ability to forge consensus, her love of learning and commitment to the public interest will serve Creative Commons and the rest of us exceedingly well.”

“I commend Creative Commons for this excellent choice to help further the worthy purposes of the organization,” said patron of the arts Martin E. Segal. “Virginia’s commitment to the arts and her scholarly and practical background make her a wonderful addition.”

“Creative Commons couldn’t have made a better choice,” said Joel Wachs, President of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. “Virginia has deep knowledge of contemporary art practices and institutions, and the practical experience of working within a highly competitive corporate culture. She will do an excellent job of helping to build relationships between communities that have a common interest in promoting vibrant cultural production and exchange.”

About Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001, that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works, whether owned or in the public domain. Through its free copyright licenses, Creative Commons offers authors, artists, scientists, and educators the choice of a flexible range of protections and freedoms that build upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to enable a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach.

Creative Commons is sustained by the generous support of organizations including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Omidyar Network, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as members of the public. For more information about Creative Commons, visit https://creativecommons.org.

Contact
Eric Steuer
Creative Director, Creative Commons
eric@creativecommons.org

Press Kit
https://creativecommons.org/presskit

Earlier this month Revver announced that it had paid $1 million to video creators and promoters over the past year. Revver has been a pioneer in combining CC licensing (videos on Revver are licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives) and compensation to creators via an ad-based model. Creative Commons used Revver as part of its fall fundraising campaign last year (watch Wanna Work Together).

Congratulations to the video creators and promoters on Revver, and to Revver!

Blip.tv and Lulu.tv are two other video sites combining CC licensing (Blip.tv supports any CC license; Lulu.tv, like Revver, only uses BY-NC-ND) and user payouts.

A bit late (exactly a month in fact), but in case you missed it the first time as well, Red Hat posted an amazing short about DRM titled “Bird Song: A Cartoon Requiem for DRM”. Its a beautifully made animation and Red Hat has gone the distance in licensing the different elements under a CC BY-NC-SA licence.

By utilizing CC-licences, Red Hat extend “an open invitation to use, share and modify as you wish, as long as you share your production, don’t use it for commercial purposes and give us (and those before you) a nod of recognition for getting it started”. So, as always, get your redistribute/remix/share on, and maybe your bird can sing.

A bit late (exactly a month in fact), but in case you missed it the first time as well, Red Hat posted an amazing short about DRM titled “Bird Song: A Cartoon Requiem for DRM”. Its a beautifully made animation and Red Hat has gone the distance in licensing the different elements under a CC BY-NC-SA licence.

By utilizing CC-licences, Red Hat extend “an open invitation to use, share and modify as you wish, as long as you share your production, don’t use it for commercial purposes and give us (and those before you) a nod of recognition for getting it started”. So, as always, get your redistribute/remix/share on, and maybe your bird can sing.

Moshang, a self-proclaimed sound jeweler, has just released a new remix album, Asian Variations, featuring 14 tracks of downtempo goodness. From moshang.net:

MoShang is a sound jeweler living in Taiwan. He collects rough audio diamonds from the streets of Taiwan (be they overheard conversations, street-ads blared from the ubiquitous blue-trucks, street processions or funeral chants) and fuses them with traditional Chinese instruments and laid-back beats to create a unique blend of downtempo electronica he likes to call Chinese Chill.

Asian Variations builds out of this aesthetic, “produced by MoShang in his Chinese Chill style of downtempo electronica, melding deeply laid-back beats with Chinese traditional instruments”. It is a wonder to listen to, and, as the album is released under a CC Music Sharing License, simple to share with your friends and family. Head over to the Asian Variations website to download the album in its entirety, for free.

Next Wednesday, Oct. 3rd, Illuminated Corridor is assembling a collision of public art, live music and moving images inspired by the Prelinger Library and Archives‘ collections (which we have discussed extensively before). Everything will take place in the street and parking lot outside the Library, and on the walls of the building, at 8th and Folsom in downtown San Francisco.

The evening will feature many performative projectionists and musicians, including (but not limited to) Craig Baldwin, Cinepimps (Alfonso Alvarez and Keith Arnold), Steve Dye, António Jorge Gonçalves, Killer Banshee, Charles Kremenak, and Gino Robair, who’ll conduct his new score to RP’s movie Panorama Ephemera. Neighborhood Public Radio will be broadcasting the audio live, so bring your FM radios!

This sounds to good to pass up, so if you are in the area, make sure to check it out! More details here.

Jamglue is back with another amazing remix contest, this time featuring revolutionary hip-hop act Public Enemy and their song “Amerikan Gangster”. From Jamglue:

[Public Enemy’s] revolutionary grouping of groundbreaking soundscapes with decidedly political lyrics made Public Enemy, beyond the shadow of a doubt, the most controversial, influential, and authoritative hardcore rap formation of the late eighties, early nineties. For many, Chuck D. and his crew to this day remain the most definitive rap group of all time, as they have not only made a massive, cultural impact on black society, but had an almost equally significant, conscience-rousing effect on all people of different colors and backgrounds across the planet.

Public Enemy has long been ahead of the curve in their approach to music in the digital age. They were one of the first hip-hop groups to go live on the web, Frontman Chuck D has debated Metallica’s Lars Ulrich on The Charlie Rose show over file-sharing, and he has appeared on The WIRED CD with Fine Arts Militia. In getting involved with Jamglue (who release the song as separate instrument tracks, all of which are released under a CC BY-NC-SA license), Public Enemy allows their fans the ability to remix their music as they see fit – a wonderful, yet logical, step in their forward-thinking digital endeavors.

Many people have asked us for information about the lawsuit prepared to be filed in Texas against Virgin Mobile and Creative Commons. The plaintiffs of the lawsuit are the parents of a student whose image in a CC-licensed photograph was used by Virgin Mobile in an advertising campaign and the photographer who took the original picture of the student and posted it on Flickr. We have prepared the FAQ below, which should answer many of your questions. We also recommend that you read Creative Commons CEO Lawrence Lessig’s blog post about the situation.

Outdated FAQs have been removed

Many people have asked us for information about the lawsuit prepared to be filed in Texas against Virgin Mobile and Creative Commons. The plaintiffs of the lawsuit are the parents of a student whose image in a CC-licensed photograph was used by Virgin Mobile in an advertising campaign and the photographer who took the original picture of the student and posted it on Flickr. We have prepared the FAQ below, which should answer many of your questions. We also recommend that you read Creative Commons CEO Lawrence Lessig’s blog post about the situation.

Outdated FAQs have been removed

From the Science Commons blog …

“MIT Libraries recently launched a new podcast series dedicated to issues involving scholarly publishing and copyright.

The latest addition to the series is a piece by Anna Gold, head librarian of the Engineering and Science Libraries at the university. In the podcast, entitled “Making a Difference: Pushing Back on DRM at MIT”, Gold speaks of the university’s recent subscription cancellation of a scholarly journal after learning it was employing digital rights management (DRM) technology its digital collection of research reports. The journal was that of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE). […] “

More can be found after the jump. And all of the podcasts in this series are licensed under a CC-BY-SA license.