The basic idea of Creative Commons, offering free copyright tools, is copied from the free software movement. However, CC licenses are not intended to be used to release software, as our FAQ has always said. One important reason why Creative Commons licenses should not be used to release software is that they aren’t compatible with…

Firefox 4 is officially released today by our friends at Mozilla, and it is awesome. Install or upgrade now. In large part due to Mozilla’s leadership over the years, the Open Web is in good health. Open standards and open formats are becoming the norm. This means anyone, anywhere can develop innovative applications that will…

DATABASE at Postmasters, March 2009 by Michael Mandiberg / CC BY-SA You may have heard that data is huge — changing the way science is done, enabling new kinds of consumer and business applications, furthering citizen involvement and government transparency, spawning a new class of software for processing big data and new interdisciplinary class of…

Today a new German site launched, IGEL (“Initiative gegen ein Leistungsschutzrecht”; in English, “initiative against a related right”). The site, spearheaded by German lawyer Till Kreutzer, provides information on a possible proposal for a new “related right” for press publishers. Original content on the site is released under the Creative Commons Attribution license. Additionally, Creative…

On Friday, Michael Geist broke the story that the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation had apparently banned use of CC-licensed music in its podcasts. This seemed odd, given that the CBC’s Spark podcast has long used, promoted, and done interesting projects with CC-licensed music. It is always gratifying to see CC supporters (superheroes even!) quickly respond —…