This week we’ll roll out several potential innovations to our licenses, then call for your comments. First, we’ll post some proposed text for two new kinds of license options: “sampling” and “educational use.” Second, we’ll float some draft language that we’ve considered adding to our licenses as enhancements: an explicit safe harbor for search engines…

Today, Creative Commons metadata advisor Aaron Swartz joined blogger and author Cory Doctorow, programmer Brandon Wiley, Rice University‘s Chris Kelty, and Executive Director Glenn Otis Brown to talk about the Creative Commons at a panel discussion at the South By Southwest (SXSW) interactive conference. The panel covered issues surrounding the project, how people have used…

We are excited to announce today the launch of the International Commons project. The goal of the International Commons is to “port” our licenses to operate in the legal systems (and languages) of countries across the world. Christiane Asschenfeldt, a copyright expert and the newest member of the Creative Commons team, will coordinate the effort…

Charles Muller has licensed the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism under a Creative Commons license. The dictionary is a compilation of Buddhist terms and texts — as well as names of temples, schools, and people — found in East Asian Buddhist canonical sources. The dictionary project, which began in 1986, is thought to be the most…

Two new additions to our site help explain the how and why of using our licenses. These comics walk the Creative Commons walk: our very own Neeru Paharia built them from Ryan Junell’s original artwork, which debuted in our Flash movie under a Creative Commons license, and from photographs taken and licensed by our webmaster…

Last month, a few folks in the world of weblogs asked some good, hard questions about Creative Commons licensing of their works. (We covered that discussion here). At the time, Denise Howell put a request out to other lawyers to weigh in on the issue, and recently, attorney Tim Hadley did so. Tim’s exhaustive analysis…

Creative Commons will sponsor acclaimed singer-songwriter Cat Power (a.k.a. Chan Marshall) at the San Francisco NoisePop music festival this Wednesday, Feb. 26. Advanced tickets are sold out, but some tickets may still be available at the door (Bimbo’s 365) the night of the show. Creative Commons staffers will be in the lobby handing out copies…

Brandon Wiley, an early developer of Freenet, unveiled his newest work at CodeCon. Using various cutting-edge peer-to-peer technologies, he’s developed a shared radio streaming system, dubbed Alluvium, that allows listeners to share their connections with others as they tune in. In a Register write-up today, Wiley mentions that the project may include spidering the web…

In the world of weblogs, we’ve noticed a couple notable recent adopters of Creative Commons licenses. Jon Johansen, the teenage hacker that famously cracked DVD encryption so he could watch a movie he purchased on his computer, started a blog called “So Sue Me.” He was recently acquitted of charges he did anything wrong. A…

Mike Meyers, star of the popular Austin Powers series, has just scored an unusual movie deal with Dreamworks that will allow him to make films from sampling earlier movies. DreamWorks will acquire the necessary rights so the actor can be digitally inserted in the old flicks. Today, people practicing in music and movie “mash-ups” are…