One-man band Brad Sucks recently signed with Magnatune and licensed all his tracks under Creative Commons (and began selling them on a sliding scale on Magnatune’s site). We were delighted to hear that Brad’s song “Making Me Nervous” was recently licensed for use in radio ads and TV ads that played in Canada. Thanks in…

My most vivid memory from South by Southwest: Thursday night in Austin, TX, USA, MSN threw a party across the street from the convention center. It was in a spare warehouse space, like a rave or fly-by-night underground party, but the fancy lighting, free drinks, and imported-looking crowd (L.A.) all said Big Bucks. The women…

As far as I’m concerned, the very best among the many great things about being part of Creative Commons is getting to meet CC users and supporters face-to-face. Knowing that one and a half million web pages (and growing) carry Creative Commons licenses is always an inspiring thought, but getting together with musicians and writers…

Bricks in the Wall Theater and drama fans are familiar with the Fourth Wall, the conceptual boundary between performer and audience. It’s an artistic term, but we’ve now extended the concept in a Creative Commons way. At the South by Southwest Film Festival this week, I moderated a panel, “Can Copyright Bring Filmmaker and Audience…

From the South by Southwest Music Festival, Creative Commons brings you the new Music Sharing License and Get Content search engine. This copyright license lets your fans know they can download, copy, and share your music online, but not sell, remix, or make any other commercial use out of it. (The license is based on…

Machinista, an arts festival focusing on machine-related art, will use Creative Commons licenses for the DVD containing the winning entries. The winners will be chosen out of the 280 submissions, which are themed as “the world as seen by the machines.” Since the content will be CC-licensed, we’re also hoping to have it hosted at…

A large part of the Creative Commons team is excited to be in Austin at South By Southwest. On Monday, we’ll be speaking on panels discussing Creative Commons for music and film. We’ll also be announcing a few related project at the conference. See you there!

Creative Commons co-founder and chairman Lawrence Lessig will be giving a talk entitled “Creativity and Its Enemies” next week. The event will take place on March 23rd at Buttenwieser Hall, 92nd Street at Lexington, in New York City. It’s a part of an ongoing series sponsored by Wired Magazine.

John Buckman, creator and head of the non-evil, Creative Commons friendly music label Magnatune has started his own blog. A recent gem is the exchange his wife had with a music executive at an industry conference. Great stuff.

Questions of the day: Hip-hop artists and DJs have long made a practice of inviting remixes by releasing acapella or instrumental tracks. What stops them from formalizing that invitation with, say, a CC license? Is it that the music-biz lawyers want to reserve the right to hold remixers hostage, in the event they start to…