UPDATE: We’ve officially too big for TOPP, so we’re moving the Salon to the For Your Imagination Loft. Details below. Creative Commons turns 6 in mid-December, and we’ll be celebrating Salon style (as has been the tradition in NYC for CC’s birthdays in years past) at The Open Planning Project once again For Your Imagination…

Over a year and a half ago the ccMixter community decided to stop having formal remix contests in part because in a CC context, the traditional format seemed outdated. In a typical remix contest an artist would post the stems to one song, retaining all the rights to the samples as well as the remixes…

Eugenia Loli-Queru recently published a Guide to Creative Commons Media for Videographers, providing a great overview of what videographers should look for in CC-licensed media. Lol-Queru gives background on our license conditions (explaining what each one means for videographers in particular), discusses sources for CC-licensed music, and touches on some general practices and marking standards…

Tribe Of Noise, a community driven music site that uses a CC BY-SA license for all uploads, recently launched a new project, One Billion Fans, to help promote their growing pool of artists. Musicians, fans, and companies can all log in to support their favorite artist over the coming months with the winner being featured…

Just a quick reminder that applications for Creative Commons’ Google’s Policy Fellowship for this coming summer are due December 12th, so if you haven’t applied yet, don’t miss the deadline! The Google Policy Fellow will receive a substantial grant to work at Creative Commons on the following issues (but this is certainly not an exhaustive…

Kraftwerk by greenplastic875 | CC BY German electronic-music pioneers Kraftwerk were told yesterday by a judge in Germany that a two-second sample used by a producer in Germany did not infringe on their copyright. From the BBC (emphasis added): The ruling overturns an earlier decision against Moses Pelham’s use of a short sample from Metal…

When the French music group Petit Homme signed a special contract with Sacem, the French collecting society for music composers, some saw the contract’s exclusion of the group’s internet rights as a step towards compatibility between collecting societies and CC: authors could control of their internet rights while collecting societies would handle the remaining rights…

Mark Hosler, co-founder of experimental music and sound collage act Negativland, recently took a trip to Washington D.C., where he penned this letter to members of congress on creativity and copyright. From metroactive: Ours is a world in which copyright has fallen woefully behind the curve of what the public actually wants to do with…

If you’re in Los Angeles tonight, visit Cameron Parkins, who will be representing Creative Commons with a booth at Art Knows No Borders (see this Flavorpill write-up for details). The fundraising event for Doctors Without Borders will include art, music, videos, and more. Cameron will be on hand to answer questions about Creative Commons and…

Copyright Clearance Center has just launched Ozmo, a new web-based service focused on helping photographers, bloggers, and other content creators license their work for commercial use. Ozmo supports Creative Commons’ CC+ protocol (see the press release about CC+ for more information), meaning that it enables creators to license their work to the public under one set of…