Wired News posted an article yesterday covering the story of LA-based comedy collective The Lonely Island. Like most comedians, they spent years trying to get discovered but they did one thing unusual: they posted all their comedy shorts and songs to their extensive website with Creative Commons licenses. Thanks to their licensed music, they soon…

Not quite, but gorillas have been observed using tools (a category that includes licenses and sticks) in the wild, as described in the widely publicized PLoS Biology paper First Observation of Tool Use in Wild Gorillas. Congratulations to the Public Library of Science (and the gorillas). This would be a good time to note that…

A lecture on Creative Commons will form part of the induction training programme for incoming graduate research students at Goldsmith’s College, University of London, this week. Andrea Rota, who is a member of the Liquid Culture project at Goldsmith’s College, will be giving the lecture on “A range of protections and freedoms for researchers, authors…

If you’re near San Francisco this weekend, come over to Webzine 2005‘s independent online publishing workshops, exhibitions, forums, and parties. Nearly all of the events have some relevance to free culture. One highlight is Saturday’s featured speaker, Jacob Appelbaum, who has CC licensed thousands of photos, including a huge collection of post-Katrina photos, via Flickr.…

The Economist magazine September 17-23 edition has a very positive article on Magnatune, Hear no evil (subscription required). Magnatune has exceeded Mr Buckman’s expectations in music licensing, another side of the business that has played a big part in helping it reach profitability. For non-commercial use, such as a school project, the site allows music…

Leon & Jorge from the CC Mexico team have been working with representatives of the Presidency of Mexico so that some of the Internet radio shows that are streamed and podcast by the Mexico en Linea station are CC-licensed. The Mexican government’s project on open source software is also promoting the CC Mexican team by…

iGeneration, a group blog by University of Western Australia academicsstudents (note that every link is footnoted) has added a post examining the Creative Commons weblog (i.e., the one you’re reading now) to their “Critical Evaluation Exercise” series: By evaluating the organisation’s blog through the lens of this mission statement, taking into account the interactive nature…

The Pawtucket Film Festival, September 10-23 (Rhode Island, United States) includes several Creative Commons-licensed films. Watch the PFF Online Filmcast provided by Open Network Television. From the press release (PDF): As a part of the PFF Online, select filmmakers will be making their work available under copyright licenses generated by the Creative Commons giving them…

The Public Library of Science is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the world’s scientific and medical literature a freely available public resource. PLoS emerged in October 2000 through the effort of three dynamic and highly respected scientists: Nobel Laureate and former head of the National Institutes of Health Harold Varmus, molecular biologist Pat Brown…

A new book by author Phillipe Aigrain – “Cause commune : l’information entre bien commun et propriété” (or, in English, “Common Cause: Information Between Commons and Property”) has been released online in French under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license. Selected extracts in English are also available online. Editions Fayard may be one of the first…