Just a quick reminder that applications for Creative Commons’ Google’s Policy Fellowship for this coming summer are due December 12th, so if you haven’t applied yet, don’t miss the deadline! The Google Policy Fellow will receive a substantial grant to work at Creative Commons on the following issues (but this is certainly not an exhaustive…

The Carina nebula by ESO | CC BY The European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere (ESO) is a group that “builds and operates a suite of the world’s most advanced ground-based astronomical telescopes.” With those telescopes they produce some absolutely amazing photographs and videos, all of which are released under a CC…

Digital Youth Research, a cross-campus academic project that aims to understand the effects of digital media on young people, published their findings this past Wednesday after 3 years of work by 28 researches and research collaborators. The report claims some interesting findings, namely that “youth use online media to extend friendships and interests” and to…

Kraftwerk by greenplastic875 | CC BY German electronic-music pioneers Kraftwerk were told yesterday by a judge in Germany that a two-second sample used by a producer in Germany did not infringe on their copyright. From the BBC (emphasis added): The ruling overturns an earlier decision against Moses Pelham’s use of a short sample from Metal…

When the French music group Petit Homme signed a special contract with Sacem, the French collecting society for music composers, some saw the contract’s exclusion of the group’s internet rights as a step towards compatibility between collecting societies and CC: authors could control of their internet rights while collecting societies would handle the remaining rights…

In yesterday’s Personal Tech Q&A section of The New York Times, there was a useful item called Making Use of Public Domain (registration required, although I was able to see the page at first without logging in) that describes a bit about how images that are found online can be used. The article points to…

We sold our last “JoCo Looks Back” USB jump drive sometime this morning — they went at an incredible rate that surprised everyone including our supplier. But do not despair, more are on their way, and everyone who donates $50 or more before December 31st will receive one. Thanks for your continued support of CC!

Digital Tipping Point, a documentary on the free software and free culture movements, recently posted over 80 digitized hours (350 hours have been shot in total) of CC BY-SA licensed footage of “leading politicians, CEOs, and software developers from all over the world.” The footage is available for free at their archive.org page: The DTP…

Last night I had the pleasure of attending Art Knows No Borders, an event that was both a fundraiser for Doctors Without Borders and a release party for Bombardirovka, a book written by Crystal Allen Cook in 2004 while she was in Armenia on a Fulbright Scholarship. The novel is a work of fiction that,…

Mark Hosler, co-founder of experimental music and sound collage act Negativland, recently took a trip to Washington D.C., where he penned this letter to members of congress on creativity and copyright. From metroactive: Ours is a world in which copyright has fallen woefully behind the curve of what the public actually wants to do with…