Museums, archives, and cultural institutions have been forced to re-examine their relationship with the digital presentation of public domain works in their collections. This has brought the issue of “copyfraud” to the forefront. Recently, the UK’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG) threatened legal action under UK law against a Wikipedia user for, among other things, copyright…

The Free Culture Research Workshop 2009 is looking for scholars working on: Studies on the use and growth of open/free licensing models Critical analyses of the role of Creative Commons or similar models in promoting a Free Culture Building innovative technical, legal, organizational, or business solutions and interfaces between the sharing economy and the commercial…

Last week a U.S. district court judge issued a preliminary injunction against the publication of 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, a book based on the idea of J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caufield character as a 76 year old man. Strong reactions to the ruling have come from many across the legal, literary and technology…

If you’re reading the Creative Commons blog, chances are you’re aware of the fact that the United States federal government is not entitled to copyright protection for their works. If you didn’t know this, check out the Wikipedia article on the subject, or some of our past blog posts on the subject. This means that…

This post is written and translated by Paul Keller of CC Netherlands, first posted in Dutch on the CC Netherlands blog earlier today. Regarding one of the quotes below, to be clear, note CC licenses do not override fair use. … Adam Curry wins again! by Paul Keller In 2006 Adam Curry initiated and won…

More than a year ago, Free Culture advocate Anas Tawileh analyzed the state of Arabic content online. His portal Arab Commons has grown modestly but steadily since its launch in 2007, offering 11 full textbooks in Arabic, plus magazines, podcasts, poetry collections, and a number of art works — all within a few months. For…

The Legal Education Commons launched yesterday with open access to over 700,000 federal court decisions. The LEC is an “open, searchable collection of resources designed specifically for use in legal education.” It is made possible by a collaboration between the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) and Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. From…

You may have heard about Gatehouse Media suing the New York Times Co. over the linking of Creative Commons licensed news stories on the Times’ Boston.com. Zachary Seward over at the Nieman Journalism Lab has been covering the various developments of the case and most interestingly, an e-mail from Howard Owens (whom we highlighted in…

To celebrate our 2008 fundraising campaign, Creative Commons has released “A Shared Culture,” a short video by renowned filmmaker Jesse Dylan. Known for helming a variety of films, music videos, and the Emmy Award-winning “Yes We Can” Barack Obama campaign video collaboration with rapper will.i.am, Dylan created “A Shared Culture” to help spread the word…

Creative Commons is working with European Academy of Law and Computing and the Institute of Law and Informatics at Saarland University to create Germany jurisdiction-specific licenses from the generic Creative Commons licenses. CCi Germany List Legal Project Lead: John Hendrik Weitzmann Public Project Lead: Markus Beckedahl License draft. English explanation of substantive legal changes. Post…