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  • From: Glenn Otis Brown <glenn AT creativecommons.org>
  • To: cc-info AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [cc-info] Creative Commons News, April 13 - May 4, 2004
  • Date: Mon, 3 May 2004 21:03:03 -0700

Creative Commons News

May 4, 2004


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(cc) SOME RIGHTS RESERVED

This newsletter is free to copy and build upon under the terms of this Creative Commons license:

<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/>.


A monthly newsletter from Creative Commons, <http://creativecommons.org>.

To unsubscribe, please visit
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CONTENTS:

(1) What's New
(2) Choice Blog Entries and News from April 2004
(3) Press Hits, April 13 - May 3, 2004

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(1) WHAT'S NEW

--Free Culture now!

You'll of course heard by now that our chairman, Lawrence Lessig, has licensed his latest book, Free Culture,
under a Creative Commons license that allows noncommercial copying and derivative works. Read it if you
haven't already (http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/), introduce your friends to it, and check out the
many interesting ways readers have already built upon or extended the book (http://www.free-culture.cc/remixes/)
-- free of legal worry, thanks to the license terms.

--Remix Contest: Jim's Big Ego

Take a crack at remixing, or making a video for Jim's Big Ego's[1]
song Mix Tape[2]. You've got three weeks and we'll feature the best
entries on the front page of our site for a week. Entries will be
taken till May 28th, 2004. The song is under an
Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike[3] license and you can download
the source tracks from here[4].

[1] http://www.bigego.com/jbe04/
[2] ftp://ftp.bigego.com/02MixTape.mp3
[3] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/
[4] http://www.ibiblio.org/cccr/JBEmixtapeTRACKS/

--iCommons Comes to California

Christiane Asschenfeldt, director of Creative Commons' international efforts and the person responsible
for the tremendous progress of our globalizing our tools over the last year (http://creativecommons.org/projects/international/),
is in the Bay Area this week for a series of meetings. If you're in the area and would like to meet Christiane for iCommons
business, please email me, <glenn AT creativecommons.org>.

--Guest Bloggers and New Names

You may have noticed some new names on our blog of late. Roland Honekamp [1], an Internet entrepreneur in Europe,
recently joined Creative Commons as Christiane's right-hand-man at iCommons in Berlin. Heather Ford [2], a Reuters Digital Vision
Fellow here at Stanford, is helping lead iCommons Africa's development, with a focus on South Africa, her home. Victor Stone [3],
who submitted tracks to our Remix contest last year, has joined as an occasional guest blogger on topics he's expert in. And last but
not least, Creative Commons poster child Cory Doctorow [4] -- blogger, EFF activist, and award-winning science fiction author -- is now
Creative Commons' advisor on iCommons UK. (Cory liked us so much he joined the company.)


[1] http://ubuntu.typepad.com/about.html
[2] http://creativecommons.org/learn/aboutus/people#27
[3] http://fourstones.net/
[4] http://craphound.com



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(2) CHOICE BLOG ENTRIES AND NEWS FROM APRIL 2004

Pew Musician Survey
2004-05-03

The Pew Internet Project released a report today[1] which surveyed
musicians and internet users. While the downloading habits portion of
the results were covered in the NY Times today[2], the most compelling
statistic from the artist report was this:

83% [of musicians] have provided free samples of their work online
and significant numbers say free downloading has helped them sell
CDs and increase the crowds at concerts

That's great to hear, and it's our hope these same musicians come to
understand how Creative Commons can help them share their samples and
also let fans rip, mix, and burn, while still increasing CD and ticket
sales.

[1] http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=123
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/03/business/media/03MOSTWANTED.html? ex=1399003200&en=80ddd7416072af74&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND

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Expo for the Artist
2004-05-02

Creative Commons spent the day at Expo for the Artist[1], the 5th
annual gathering of artists, nonprofits, and community organizations
at Cellspace, in San Francisco, USA. Celebrating its fifth year, the
catch-all event included free workshops on grantwriting, burlesque,
painting, self-publishing, navigating the music industry,
metalworking, and more. Watch the Expo website[2] for a series of DIY
articles on these and other subjects.

[1] http://www.artsandmedia.net/expo/
[2] http://www.artsandmedia.net/expo/

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MIT and Jack Valenti have a chat
2004-04-29

MIT's The Tech[1] newspaper recently sat down with Motion Picture
Association of America head Jack Valenti for an interview about
digital rights[2]. The writer, a MIT engineering student, probes
(perhaps a bit too tenaciously) the bad side of the DMCA, namely DVD
encryption and playback on Linux, which is currently illegal. In the
end it's a nice short piece on two opposing viewpoints coming together
and trying to see each other's point of view, something that's often
lacking in digital rights debates.

[1] http://www-tech.mit.edu/
[2] http://www-tech.mit.edu/V124/N20/ValentiIntervie.20f.html

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Audioscrobbler
2004-04-28

Audioscrobbler[1] is an amazing community music tracking application
that is really starting to gain some steam. The premise is pretty
simple, you run a small app on your deskop which sends information
about what songs you are playing on your computer's MP3/CD player. Now
that they have thousands of regular users, they aggregate the
information and produce weekly charts[2] and allow even record-at-home
musicians to see who is listening[3] to their music.

To promote more interesting uses of the data, they also offer it for
download[4] (anonymous data -- user details are stripped) to
developers, under a Creative Commons license. This makes perfect
sense, as they don't want users and developers to have to wait for
Audioscrobbler to program new features or views of the data. With the
license they can open it up to anyone that is interested in doing cool
stuff with it, but they also want to protect the data from being
exploited for commercial reasons and resold.

This originally started as a student project for a computer science
course and a little over a year later it's turning into a bustling
community that may someday rival things like pop music charts and
sales data.

[1] http://www.audioscrobbler.com/
[2] http://www.audioscrobbler.com/charts/
[3] http://www.audioscrobbler.com/music/Brad%20Sucks
[4] http://www.audioscrobbler.com/data/

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Open Clip Art Project
2004-04-27

The Open Clip Art Project[1] is a new effort to catalog and encourage
the creation of new clip art using the Creative Commons public domain
dedication[2]. Providing clipart for open source productivity
applications is one of OCAP's goals. Contribute[3] your clipart
creations now, perhaps your work will one day be available to
OpenOffice[4]'s millions[5] of desktop users.

[1] http://clipart.freedesktop.org
[2] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/
[3] http://clipart.freedesktop.org
[4] http://openoffice.org
[5] http://www.openoffice.org/editorial/year_three.html

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Settimana delle liberta
2004-04-27

Last week, the Creative Commons licences were presented by Massimo
Travostino at the Settimana delle liberta[1] in Florence, Italy. The
week-long conference also featured presentations by Richard Stallman
of the FSF[2] and Sergio Amadeu of the Brazilian Instituto Nacional de
Tecnologia da Informação[3]. The Italian mailing list -
where the local draft licences are currently being discussed under the
guidance of Professor Ricolfi- is one of the most active within
iCommons.

[1] http://liberamente.hipatia.info/
[2] http://www.fsfeurope.org/
[3] http://www.iti.br/

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Il Forno
2004-04-26

Il Forno[1] is a baking weblog based in Germany that is licensed under
Creative Commons. There are many recipes posted, especially in the
bread making category[2] and when you consider the way recipes are
passed from one generation to the next, it would seem that Creative
Commons licenses would be a natural for cooking communities online.
Just as my own grandmother "remixed" her mother's special recipes and
passed them on to my mother, aunts, and uncles, where they each
modified and perfected them before passing along to me, it'd be cool
to see a virtual cookbook form on the web based around CC-licensed
works.

The Il Forno blog is licensed under a No Derivatives license, but we're
pretty sure you still make substitutions when baking the bread recipes
found there. :)

[1] http://ilforno.typepad.com/il_forno/
[2] http://ilforno.typepad.com/il_forno/bread/index.html

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iCommons Progress
2004-04-26

In the first quarter of the current year, iCommons has made
significant progress in porting the CC licences - based on
US-copyright law - to other jurisdictions, thereby internationalizing
the movement. By early April, three European countries (Germany,
Croatia and the Netherlands) as well as Australia and Jordan had come
up with the first drafts of their respective licences. Austria and
South Africa are scheduled to be next. In total, some sixteen
jurisdictions have now launched their final or preliminary drafts.

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AGNULA Music Libre
2004-04-25

AGNULA Music Libre[1], a new database of libre music (which includes
music licensed under the CC Attribution[2] and Attribution-ShareAlike
[3] licenses), launched[4] last month.

The site has adopted CC's license embedding[5] strategy, publishing
RDF backing license claims made in MP3[6] and Ogg Vorbis[7] files.

[1] http://muzik.agnula.org
[2] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/
[3] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/
[4] http://www.agnula.org/Members/sama/angula_libre_music
[5] http://creativecommons.org/technology/embedding
[6] http://creativecommons.org/technology/mp3
[7] http://creativecommons.org/technology/ogg

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Magnatune on iRATE radio
2004-04-23

iRATE radio[1] has placed 3,000 CC-licensed tracks from the non-evil
Magnatune[2] label into "rotation." iRATE is a collaborative filtering
system for music. The first song new users have the opportunity to
rate is Monsters[3] from Magnatune artist Beth Quist[4].

[IMAGE: http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/blimg/irate-quist-shot.png]

A future iRATE skin will include CC license indicators in the main
display. Here's a sneak preview sent to us by iRATE's creator, Anthony
Jones:

[IMAGE: http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/blimg/irate-cc-peek.png]

[1] http://irate.sourceforge.net
[2] http://magnatune.com
[3] http://magnatune.com/artists/music/Rock/Beth%20Quist/Silver/03- Monsters-Beth%20Quist-lofi.m3u
[4] http://magnatune.com/artists/beth_quist

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Translation license discussion starts soon
2004-04-23

Public discussion on the Creative Commons translation license starts
this Monday (April 26). The translation license would be used by
authors who want to make their works available for others to translate
into local languages. The initial idea for the license came from a
lecturer at a conference in South Africa in January this year. He said
that he found it virtually impossible to get permission from authors
to allow him to translate articles into local languages for use by his
students.

Go here[1] to join.

[1] http://creativecommons.org/discuss#translation

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Giving It Away (for Fun and Profit)
2004-04-22

Andy Raskin wrote a long, detailed piece about Creative Commons for
the May 2004 issue of Business 2.0 magazine entitled "Giving It Away
(for Fun and Profit)[1]." The thrust of the artice is a look at what
the future landscape might look like for artists that license their
work under Creative Commons. The article also talks about ways current
artists are making money and what types of future economies might be
built around the licensed work.

[1] http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/0,17863,608619,00.html

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Copyleft, Journadas Criticas
2004-04-22

Last week iCommons volunteer Gerd Hansen presented the licences to the
Copyleft conference Journadas criticas sobre propriedad intelectual[1]
. The Copyleft network is a Spanish organisation of technology
enthusiasts and political activists. iCommons also talked to our
project lead in Spain, Ignasi Labastida i Juan of the University of
Barcelona, who is working hard at completing the final version of the
Spanish CC licence early this summer. Vandana Shiva, an Indian
political activist, and an attendee of the conference, was
enthusiastic about bringing CC to India and would like to get in touch
with the CC team in Palo Alto to learn more about our mission.

[1] http://copyleft.sindominio.net/index.php? module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=2

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ECHO Conference Berlin
2004-04-21

Roland Honekamp delivered a talk on Creative Commons's international efforts
yesterday at the conference of European Cultural Heritage Online. The
conference took place in the Max Planck Institute for the History of
Science in Berlin, Germany. ECHO is an EU-funded collaborative
research endeavour that provides support for scientific and cultural
institutions in Europe that enrich cultural heritage through new
technologies. Some of these partners (such as a state library in Lower
Saxony specializing in Leibniz manuscripts dating from the 17th
century or an online museum on the Fontana di Trevi) have articulated
a strong interest in using the CC licences for making their
collections digitally available. Thanks again to the Max Planck
Institute for inviting us.

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The times, they are a-changin'
2004-04-21

A recent study[1] of people that download music from the internet
found that 21% of the participants had also downloaded a feature film
before. 9% had even downloaded a film in the past month. These are
some fairly high numbers and point out that while everyone has been
predicting what happened to music would eventually happen to film, it
may actually come true. Hopefully the Hollywood studios pick up on the
success of things like Magnatune[2] and the iTunes Music Store[3] and
provide an easy-to-use and relatively inexpensive way to download
movies legally, before everyone figures out a way to pirate the stuff
behind their backs. [via Outside the System[4]]

[1] http://www.ipsos-na.com/news/pressrelease.cfm?id=2137
[2] http://magnatune.com/
[3] http://www.apple.com/itunes/
[4] http://www.radzone.org/bclark/archives/000127.html

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Oyez putting current cases online
2004-04-21

The US Supreme Court is currently hearing Gitmo cases[1], which
involve a review of post-9/11 captures and detainment of suspected
al-Qaida and Taliban members. Oyez[2], the Supreme Court archive has
begun posting audio from the hearings[3], including streaming and
downloadable mp3s licensed under Creative Commons.

[1] http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&edition=us&q=gitmo&btnG=Search+News
[2] http://www.oyez.org/
[3] http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/nitf/534/

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Theory and Practice of Online Learning
2004-04-20

A new book entitled Theory and Practice of Online Learning[1],
published by Athabasca University[2], is now available for download
under an Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial[3] license. The book is
also being sold[4].

Sir John Daniel[5], Assistant Director-General for Education of UNESCO
[6], had this to say about it:

"I am delighted that educators all over the world will be able to
enjoy this book at no cost because, in the true academic spirit of an
open university, Athabasca has published it as an open source book
under a Creative Commons License. UNESCO strongly encourages this form
of publication as a way of bridging the digital divide and thereby
helping to bring online learning to all the world's people."

[1] http://cde.athabascau.ca/online_book/
[2] http://www.athabascau.ca/
[3] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0/
[4] https://secure.athabascau.ca/inter/cmshop.htm
[5] http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php- URL_ID=5829&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
[6] http://www.unesco.org

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CC Remix Music -- Opsound Radio
2004-04-20

Opsound has a great Flash-based Internet radio application[1],
highlighting an hours worth of Opsound music. Lots of mellow
electronica, and low-fi tracks -- a very soothing collection of tunes,
all offered under Attribution-ShareAlike[2] licenses.

[1] http://opsound.org/opsound/opradio/opradio.html
[2] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/1.0/

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iCommons.edu
2004-04-19

Glenn Otis Brown had the chance to speak about Creative Commons yesterday at the
Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information
Access Conference[1] (TICFIA) at San Diego State University. With the
support of the US Dept. of Education[2], the group is up to some
innovative and interesting things[3] on education across borders via
the Net. Some great iCommons[4] leads will surely come out of the
meeting. Thanks again to the hosts: SDSU[5], the University of
Chicago[6], and the Dept. of Education[7].

[1] http://larcnet.sdsu.edu/ticfia.php
[2] http://www.ed.gov/index.jhtml
[3] http://www.ed.gov/programs/iegpsticfia/index.html
[4] http://creativecommons.org/projects/international/
[5] http://sdsu.edu/
[6] http://www.uchicago.edu/
[7] http://www.ed.gov/index.jhtml

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Let your fans know they won't get sued
2004-04-19

If you're a musician, and you want to let your fans know they won't
get sued[1] if they download your songs, you should check out the
Music Sharing License. It lets your fans know they can download and
share, but not sell or make any commercial use out of your music. The
Uptones[2], a Bay Area based ska band, are a great example of a band
who makes a few songs available under the Music Sharing License, so
their fans can download, but not worry about lawsuits.

[1] http://wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,62769,00.html
[2] http://www.uptones.com/html/sounds.html

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Media Archeology
2004-04-19

Yesterday, Neeru Paharia spoke at the Media Archeology Film Festival[1] in
Houston, Texas. The festival was put on by the Aurora Picture Show
Microcinema[2] and showcased the collections of several 16mm film
collectors, including Rick Prelinger[3] who makes many of his public
domain films available online.

[1] http://www.aurorapictureshow.org/calendar/medarch.html
[2] http://www.aurorapictureshow.org/
[3] http://www.archive.org/movies/prelinger.php

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9 beet stretch
2004-04-15

Here's an interesting use of music in the public domain. 9 beet
stretch[1] is the act of using digital tools to slow down Beethoven's
9th symphony to the point where the piece takes 24 hours to complete.
Next week, a 9 beet stretch will be taking place in San Francisco[2],
at 964 Natoma, from Friday April 23rd to Saturday April 24.

[1] http://www.notam02.no/9/
[2] http://www.quietamerican.org/9beet.html


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Mainstream mashups!
2004-04-14

Cool: David Bowie has just launched a new mashup contest[1]. There's a
new ad campaign for Audi cars that features two of Bowie's songs
mashed up. They've decided to throw a mashup contest to capitalize on
this, awarding a new car to the best song that uses samples from his
new album and any older Bowie song. Voting on entries starts this
weekend and the contest ends next month so get your turntables
cranking.

[1] http://www.davidbowie.com/neverFollow/

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New blog: Sellout Central
2004-04-14

From Magnatune[1] musician Brad Sucks[2], comes his new music industry
blog Sellout Central[3], which he is co-authoring. They're exploring a
variety of legal and artist issues in the industry and their first
slew of posts gives any musician plenty to chew on. We'll be watching
this new blog closely.

[1] http://magnatune.com/
[2] http://www.bradsucks.net/
[3] http://www.selloutcentral.com/

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Dutch National Archives
2004-04-14

500,000 pictures taken between 1880 and 1990 are now in a searchable
Dutch National Archive Image Bank[1]. If you speak enough Dutch to
navigate the site, there's quite a lot of history here. It looks like
current Dutch copyright laws[2] are similar to the US, lasting until a
creator's death + 70 years, so it's tough to tell how much of the
archive is free for reuse. Still, it's cool to see another country
take their archives online for everyone to see. [thanks prolific[3]]

[1] http://beeldbank.nationaalarchief.nl/
[2] http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:fxB74aEj6-MJ:www.ivir.nl/ legislation/nl/ copyrightact.html+dutch+copyright+laws+images&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
[3] http://prolific.org/

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Stockstock film festival
2004-04-13

Wired News has a great story[1] about a Seattle film festival[2] that
uses public domain clips from the Prelinger Archives[3]. Participants
need only have a computer with video editing software and $20 for the
entry fee. The entry deadline is June 15th and the festival is August
1st at the Seattle Art Museum.

[1] http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,63028,00.html
[2] http://www.stockstock.org/
[3] http://www.archive.org/movies/prelinger.php

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Books on MP3: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
2004-04-13

We watch the Internet Archive's Open Source Audio[1] area for material
that could be used for legal remixes including spoken word audio. In
wonderful news, this morning's postings include Andrew Levine's audio
reading[2] of the first chapter to Cory Doctorow's[3] Down and Out in
the Magic Kingdom[4]. The book had been available online under a
somewhat restrictive CC in text format for a while but Cory recently
loosened the reins[5] and the artistic community seems to be
responding[6].

[1] http://www.archive.org/audio/
[2] http://www.archive.org/audio/audio-details-db.php? collection=opensource_audio&collectionid=DOMKCH1_128kbmp3
[3] http://www.craphound.com/
[4] http://craphound.com/down/
[5] http://craphound.com/ebooksneitherenorbooks.txt
[6] http://www.craphound.com/down/archives/2004_04.php#000123


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(3) Press Hits, April 13 - May 4 2004

International Journalists Network
2004-04-30
Glenn Otis Brown

"Listen Up to host, distribute youth media projects[1]."

[1] http://www.ijnet.org/FE_Article/newsarticle.asp? UILang=1&CId=225982&CIdLang=1

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Canberra Times (Australia)
2004-04-19
Matt Haughey

"New Copyright Plan Launced Here" by Simon Grose

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Daily Miner & News (Kenora, Ontario)
2004-04-16
Matt Haughey

"DVD Pirates Devastating Industry" by Bruce Kirkland

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Washington Post
2004-04-14
Matt Haughey

"Copyright in the Digital Age [1]" by Lawrence Lessig

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58249-2004Apr7.html

-----------------

(cc) SOME RIGHTS RESERVED

This newsletter is free to copy and build upon under the terms of this Creative Commons license:

<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/>.





  • [cc-info] Creative Commons News, April 13 - May 4, 2004, Glenn Otis Brown, 05/04/2004

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