Creative Commons Also Rolls Out Strategy for Embedding and Verifying License Information in MP3s and Other Files

Palo Alto and Chicago, USA — Creative Commons and the OYEZ Project announced today the first-stage 100-hour release of MP3s from the Project’s 2000+ hours of Supreme Court recordings using Creative Commons’ machine-readable copyright licenses. Creative Commons also announced its new metadata verification policy, designed to ease the legitimate distribution and copying of audio files online by associating copyright information with the files themselves.

The OYEZ Project, http://www.OYEZ.org, is a multimedia archive dedicated to the business of the Supreme Court of the United States and the lives of its Justices. Founded in 1994 at Northwestern University, OYEZ will now host MP3 audio recordings of oral arguments before the Court dating back to the 1950s, including landmark cases such as Gratz v. Bollinger, 2003 (affirmative action) Grutter v. Bollinger, 2003 (affirmative action) Bush v. Gore, 2000 (2000 presidential election) Regents v. Bakke, 1978 (affirmative action) Roe v. Wade, 1971 (abortion and reproductive rights) New York Times v. United States, 1971 (the “Pentagon Papers” case) Miranda v. Arizona, 1966 (“You have the right to remain silent . . .”) Gideon v. Wainwright, 1963 (a defendant’s right to counsel).

Recordings of the oral arguments from these historic controversies are now available for free download from the OYEZ website under a Creative Commons copyright license, which encourages copying and redistribution of the recordings while imposing certain conditions on their use: OYEZ must be attributed, commercial re-use is prohibited, and any modification of the files obligates licensing under the same Creative Commons terms as the original files.

“With the Creative Commons, we have for the first time found a way to license our content to assure use consistent with our objectives. As long as users meet the conditions of the license, they are free to enjoy and share a small treasure of America’s legal and political heritage,” said Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University political science professor and OYEZ project director.

“By releasing hundreds of important Supreme Court recordings under Creative Commons licenses, the OYEZ Project has demonstrated a commitment to filling the commons with high quality educational material for others to use and learn from,” said Lawrence Lessig, chairman of Creative Commons and professor of law at Stanford. “Just as important, the OYEZ Project’s use of machine-readable licenses with its MP3s is a big step toward a world in which law and technology can work together to promote sharing.”

More About Creative Commons’ Metadata Embedding Policy

Creative Commons also announced today their new metadata embedding policy that defines a standard way to embed metadata into files verified by an external webpage.

“The Creative Commons license information embedded into each of the OYEZ Supreme Court files can be verified by an external webpage maintained by the copyright holder,” said Mike Linksvayer, Creative Commons CTO.

“We hope this will become the standard approach to embedding and verifying metadata.”

More information below, and at: https://creativecommons.org/learn/licenses/embedding.

More about Creative Commons

A nonprofit corporation, Creative Commons promotes the creative re-use of intellectual works — whether owned or public domain. It is sustained by the generous support of The Center for the Public Domain and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Creative Commons is based at Stanford Law School, where it shares staff, space, and inspiration with the school’s Center for Internet and Society.

More information at https://creativecommons.org.

More about OYEZ

Today, The OYEZ Project provides access to more than 2000 hours of Supreme Court audio. All audio in the Court recorded since 1995 is included in the project. Before 1995, the audio collection is selective. OYEZ aims to create a complete and authoritative archive of Supreme Court audio covering the entire span from October 1955 through the most recent release. OYEZ receives support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, FindLaw, Northwestern University, and the law firm of Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw.

For more information http://www.OYEZ.org.

Contact

Glenn Otis Brown
Executive Director Creative Commons
1.650.723.7572 (tel)
glenn -AT- creativecommons.org

Jerry Goldman
Professor of Political Science
Director, The OYEZ Project
1.847.475.6671 (tel)
j-goldman -AT- northwestern.edu

Neeru Paharia
Assistant Director Creative Commons
1.650.724.3717 (tel)
neeru -AT- creativecommons.org

Mike Linksvayer
Chief Technical Officer Creative Commons
ml -AT- creativecommons.org

Creative Commons has signed on in support of Aaron Swartz‘s call for “forward motion” on blog protocols. We will be participating in helping define licensing extensions to the new specification.

(I’ve worked with Aaron, our metadata advisor, for over a year now, and this isn’t the first time I’ve followed his lead. You should try it if you haven’t.)

In a newly posted interview on the Apple site, “O’Reilly in a Nutshell,” Tim O’Reilly discusses how his publishing company came to be, how it follows open source trends, and how it publishes many titles under a Creative Commons Founders’ Copyright license.

We should note that the Founders’ Copyright isn’t just for big publishing houses. Anyone can apply for a license to release their works after 14 (or 28) years.

David Wiley, Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology at Utah State University and founder of the trailblazing OpenContent, is Project Lead for development of an educational use Creative Commons license, which begins today.

Welcome, Professor Wiley.

Read the first draft.

Review our earlier discussion on the subject.

Join the current discussion.

Read the press release.

The Silicon Valley Nonprofit Also Takes Up Baton of Wiley’s Trailblazing OpenContent Project

Palo Alto, California, USA — Creative Commons, a nonprofit dedicated to building a layer of reasonable copyright, announced today that OpenContent founder Dr. David Wiley, Assistant Professor of Instructional Technology at Utah State University, will join Creative Commons and officially close the OpenContent Project.

“When I saw the Creative Commons team, and all their expertise, I saw that they ‘got it,'” said Wiley. “I slowly came to the somewhat painful realization that the best thing I could do for the community was to close the OpenContent project and encourage people to adopt the Creative Commons licenses.”

The OpenContent Project launched in 1998, offering the first license designed specifically to support the free and open sharing of content. While working to evangelize the idea of “open content,” Dr. Wiley next worked with members of the open source software community and commercial publishers to develop an open content license that would be acceptable to publishers. Since its release, numerous books have been published under the terms of the resulting Open Publication License, including titles by O’Reilly, Prentice Hall, New Riders, and the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. Copies of the OpenContent License and Open Publication License will continue to be available from the OpenContent website, http://opencontent.org/, for archival purposes, but newcomers to the site will be encouraged to visit Creative Commons, https://creativecommons.org/, to utilize the licenses available on their site. Neither of the OpenContent licenses will be developed further in the future.

Creative Commons Executive Director Glenn Otis Brown commented: “It is an honor to welcome a pioneer like Professor Wiley to the Creative Commons team. His efforts have been a major source of inspiration for our own, so it is both appropriate and a little humbling for us to be working alongside him now.”

Wiley joins Creative Commons in the capacity of Project Lead for Educational Licensing. “Because I’m an instructional technologist, and my primary field of research and inquiry is using technology to better support learning, my own https://creativecommons.org Press Release work in open content has always focused on reusable educational media. I couldn’t be happier than I am to participate in this manner,” said Wiley.

Creative Commons will announce new Project Leads for a Developing Nations License shortly, said Brown.

More about Creative Commons

A non-profit corporation, Creative Commons promotes the creative re-use of intellectual works — whether owned or public domain. It is sustained by the generous support of The Center for the Public Domain and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Creative Commons is based at Stanford Law School, where it shares staff, space, and inspiration with the school’s Center for Internet and Society.

For general information, visit https://creativecommons.org.

For more information about the community development model, visit https://creativecommons.org/discuss.

Contact

Glenn Otis Brown
Executive Director (Palo Alto)
1.650.723.7572 (tel)
1.415.336.1433 (cell)
glenn -AT- creativecommons.org

Neeru Paharia
Assistant Director (Palo Alto)
1.650.724.3717 (tel)
neeru -AT- creativecommons.org

David Wiley
david.wiley -AT- usu.edu
dw2 -AT- opencontent.org

“Advanced Marketing Services, a San Diego-based distributor that expects to handle about 2 million [fortcoming Harry] Potter books between Saturday and January 2004, has hired security guards in the United States and added guard dogs for a Canadian distributor it partially owns. . . .

‘I can’t let you touch the book,’ warned Bill Carr, Amazon.com’s director of books, music, videos and DVDs. He gestured toward some of the more than 200,000 books — about 150 tons worth — that will be shipped to West Coast destinations.

Similar operations are under way at Amazon.com’s four other major regional distribution centers in Newcastle, Del.; Coffeyville, Kan.; Campbellsville, Ky.; and Lexington, Ky.

The 896-page books were locked in special rooms when they arrived at the warehouse. They were cordoned off from the rest of building by a pair of security guards, who were not allowed to talk to reporters. Reporters were searched on their way out of the building.”

–From MSNBC (thanks to Creative Commons intern Ben O’Neil).

Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich is using a Creative Commons license on his campaign blog.

Some Rights Reserved is a big-tent party. When it comes to IP, we’re the only true party of Jefferson. So who’s next to walk in TJ’s footsteps?

“[B]ecause of the discrete selling and buying of music, digital single by digital single, that iTunes and its kin will foster, we can expect a decline in music bundling, and thus in risk-taking and its shy companion, innovation.”

A thought-provoking piece by Sahar Akhtar in Salon today. Akhtar predicts that iTunes-like services will lead to a shallow, ear-candy music economy.

Questions for the author, and Creative Commons blog readers:

(1) Isn’t Akhtar really advocating music-snob paternalism? Listen to the songs as I package them for you, because I know better than you how your tastes should run. This attitude might be fine for a DJ spinning a set, but not for an entire market. To a savvy consumer, or an antitrust lawyer, “music bundling” sounds like a euphemism for tying listeners’ hands.

(2) To avert the death of the art-rock album format, couldn’t artists simply begin producing CDs without indexed tracks? If you really want someone to listen to a whole album, let the technology push them that way.

(3) How often do musicians (real ones, not A&R puppets) really consider the format of distribution when writing a hook? When you’ve stumbled upon an edgy arrangement or harmony, are you really going to scrap it because of that pesky new iTunes?

(4) I like b-sides, too. But before Net-based music, the only way to find obscure b-sides and outtakes was to buy a boxed set, or an EP single — which without exception included the hit songs that die-hard fans had already paid for on albums. (I must have bought four copies of the Pixies‘ “This Monkey’s Gone to Heaven” just to hear a few rare b-sides it was bundled with.) Why force cult fans to doubly subsidize hit singles?

(5) “‘B sides’ and the noncommercially oriented tracks that fill out a given album have always been the artistic payoff.” Sure, sometimes, but always? Ever listen to a Police album all the way through? I’m pretty sure the U.S. military used those b-sides for psychological warfare in Iraq.

Your thoughts?

Check out an interview with our latest Featured Commoner, writer and coder Mark Watson, by new Creative Commons intern Derek Slater.

The Washington Post ran a piece today on Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling’s views on fan fiction.

Quoted in the piece are our own Hal Abelson, a Creative Commons board member and chief technical advisor, and the EFF‘s Wendy Seltzer.