Works by the U.S. government are in the public domain, but not necessarily accessible to the public. Carl Malamud’s public.resource.org has heroically worked to rectify this, and recently announced that 1.8 million pages of federal case law, including all Courts of Appeals decisions from 1950 to the present and all Supreme Court decisions since 1754…

The Hardyman, a short story (6,500 words) by Susannah Breslin, published under the CC Attribution license. Story inspired by Hardiman, the first attempt to build a powered exoskeleton in 1965, licensing inspired by Cory Doctorow’s recent HOWTO use CC licenses. Breslin writes: It’s the longest story I ever wrote. I thought about further restricting its…

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has been a tremendous supporter of Creative Commons and our new educational division, ccLearn. The foundation’s newsletter just published a great interview with Catherine Casserly, their Program Officer for Open Educational Resources. Here are a couple excerpts: Aren’t copyright laws an obstacle to all of this? Traditionally, they have…

Author Cory Doctorow, asked for the millionth time “What’s the deal with giving away your stuff for free?” by Joel Turnipseed guestblogging at kottke.org, covers the the usual economic and ethical grounds, and also comes up with something new and wonderful (emphasis added): But then there is the artistic reason: we live in a century…

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…