IHEARTCOMIX, a record label and events promotion group based out of LA, have recently added CC BY-NC licenses to their remix contests for both HEARTSREVOLUTION’s “C.Y.O.A” and Ocelot’s “Lo Sforzo”. Both songs are seriously cool and the winning remixes will land up sharing respective vinyl space with their source tracks. It is great to see…

CC is turning 5 and to celebrate we’re throwing a community-wide party. If you’ll be in the San Francisco Bay Area on December 15, join us for a night of celebrating the commons at a party generously sponsored by Mozilla and Last.fm. The evening will feature announcements by Joi Ito and Lawrence Lessig, a live…

Hi, my name is Fred Benenson. I’m a Free Culture activist, photographer, and a graduate student at NYU. I’ve been involved with CC (once as an intern, now as a fellow working for them in New York City) for a number of years, but let me start with the free culture student movement that I’m…

Credit Where Credit is Due, an article in Newsweek, about use of text from Wikipedia by major publishers without compliance with Wikipedia’s license, includes quotes from CC CEO Lawrence Lessig on license interoperability: The Free Software Foundation, which maintains Wikipedia’s GNU license, is teaming up with a popular rival licensing movement called Creative Commons to…

We’re thinking about how to take our music remix site, ccMixter, to the next level. Read about it at the Lessig blog. If you’re logged into ccMixter, you can go here to take a survey on the matter. If you’re unfamiliar with ccMixter, check out the unofficial ccMixterblog, which has tons of great examples of…

WITNESS, an international human rights organization founded by pop musician Peter Gabriel, announced yesterday the launch of The Hub (Beta), a place for users to view and contribute human rights-related media – a potential “YouTube for Human Rights”. Of note to the CC-community is that The Hub’s users are “advised to publish contents under a…

River Rat Records, an independent record company based in North London, has adopted CC-licenses for all their releases based on the assumption that sharing of music should be allowed without fear of legal ramifications (as long as it stays non-commercial): Music has never been a purely personal experience (more often it’s a shared one), but…

This week’s Commoner Letter comes from Beth Kanter, an activist and strong CC supporter. Beth has shown her support in a variety of ways, all which help to spread the word about CC and how it has impacted her own work. ——————————— I am a trainer, coach, and blogger who works with nonprofits on how…

Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona will be hosting Spain’s first national netlabel meeting from November 9-10th. Netlabels, the sleek and thriving record labels of the internet, focus on online distribution and promotion for music released primarily under Creative Commons licenses. London and Berlin have already organized great festivals dedicated to CC music and netlabels,…

Madonna and Trent Reznor lose their labels. Radiohead lets fans choose their price. Led Zeppelin … finally decides to make its music available on iTunes. Last month was an exciting one for those watching the future of the music distribution industry (except for the tardy Led Zeppelin announcement, which could lead one to conclude that…