The European Commission is investigating a digital libraries initiative that “aims at making European information resources easier and more interesting to use in an online environment.” As part of a background paper, the Commission discussed the range of technical, legal, operational and financial challenges such an initiative would encounter and specifically noted that Creative Commons…

So the the American Institute of Graphics Arts (AIGA for short) and the U.S. Department of Transportation released a set of 50 universal symbols “copyright-free” online. The symbols are “designed for use at the crossroads of modern life: in airports and other transportation hubs and at large international events.” They are intended to be clearly…

Wikitravel and World66, two user generated content travel sites each using the same Creative Commons license (Attribution-ShareAlike 1.0) have been acquired by Internet Brands, the operator of carsdirect.com and many other .com properties. It’s great to see Internet Brands’ confidence in a business built on CC-licensed content, particularly under a BY-SA license, which permits forking,…

It’s been awhile since the last time we posted estimates of the number of web pages under a Creative Commons license or a breakdown of how those licenses are distributed. The last aggregate estimate (45 million) was posted to our support the commons page in December, which has since changed (thanks yet again for your…

Yochai Benkler has published his new book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 license. A brief excerpt (page 482): [W]e are seeing an ever-more self-conscious adoption of commons-based practices as a modality of infor- mation production and exchange. Free software, Creative Commons, the Public…

You only have two weeks left to upload your remix of the Hungarian band Nomada’s song Aven le Roma! – Here come the Roma!. The five-member group Nomada was founded by Roma singer-guitarist Balogh Gusztáv in 2003. Nomada’s music is derived from the Hungarian Gypsy tradition in addition to drawing from other musical styles such…

Creative Commons staff, board member and many friends will be at SXSW Interactive. Here’s a schedule of explicitly CC-linked events: Trade Show: CC will have a booth Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Remixing Business for a Convergent World: CC Creative Director Eric Steuer moderates Monday 10AM. Digital Preservation and Blogs: CC CTO Mike Linksvayer empaneled Monday…

INTERVIEW BY CC Mexico The Sistema de Internet de la Presidencia (or Presidency Internet System) (“SIP”) is the office in charge of generating and publishing all of the Mexican President Vicente Fox’s content and information over the Internet. They host and maintain various websites including the Presidency’s main website, “México en Línea” the Presidency’s Internet…

If imitation is the best form of flattery, London-based record label BeatPick is handing it to Berkeley and London-based label Magnatune in spades. Similarities include CC license used (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike), a 50/50 artist/label revenue split, a menu of commercial licensing options and availability of wav, mp3 and ogg downloads. Of course it’s about the music and…

For those of you who followed the weekly Lessig Letters last year, you may recall that Larry outlined one of our planned projects for 2006 – a public domain registry or public domain wiki. Work on the registry has commenced in earnest. Today, Access Copyright, Creative Commons Canada and Creative Commons announced the project –…