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  • From: "Melissa Reeder" <melissa AT creativecommons.org>
  • To: cc-info AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [cc-info] ccNewsletter #8 - Culture Commons
  • Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:45:52 -0700

Dear All,

Almost six (I know -- six!) years ago, Creative Commons was launched with a "simple" goal - to help build a pool of content of every material-type that anyone could access.
In order to do this, we empowered you -- the citizen publishers of the Web -- by providing the legal and technical tools needed to help you take advantage of all that the internet has to offer. And because of you and your contributions over the years, the commons is thriving. Millions of digital objects are under CC licenses -- 75 million photographs on Flickr alone. Hundreds of scholarly and scientific journals, open educational resources, architectural drawings, scientific illustrations, songs, blogs, novels and movies.

As a CC supporter, you know this story - you know the commons is growing. So over the last two issues of this newsletter I've tried to bring you stories and information that you may not know. Glimpses inside the world of CC (the organization) of what we are doing to help YOU continue to build the commons -- and this newsletter is no different, as it highlights the work of Eric Steuer -- our Creative Director who is working ceaselessly to help make CC as user-friendly and ubiquitous as possible.

As always, if you have any suggestions for how I can make this newsletter any better, please let me know. Also, if you would like to download the well-designed PDF version (design thanks to CC Philippines project leads) then please visit the archive at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CCNewsletter.

All best,

Melissa    


=== The Inside Scoope: Culture Commons ===

As the creative director of Creative Commons, I help guide CC's strategy for increasing the amount, breadth, and quality of creative work available to the public for free and legal use, sharing, and remixing. There are several key components of this work; each plays a role in helping Creative Commons succeed in getting more (and better) cultural material added into the commons.

I work with websites, technology companies, and media sharing platforms to implement CC-licensing tools inside their systems. Flickr is a great example of how sites that offer the easy ability to attach Creative Commons licenses to content are immensely useful in growing the commons. By current count, there are more than 77 million Flickr photos under CC licenses. This an incredible number, and this success is largely due to the fact that Flickr offers a simple and intuitive interface for adding CC licenses to photos, as well as very clear messaging about how Creative Commons works.

A handful of recent interesting implementations of CC-licensing tools in this same fashion include Lingro (a collaboratively-built multilingual dictionary under CC BY-SA), Obama in 30 Seconds (a project encouraging the public to create Barack Obama campaign ads under CC BY-NC-SA), Zhura (a screenwriting website that offers CC licensing options to users to enable easy collaboration), GreenYour.com (a user-developed database of simple ways to make your everyday choices more environmentally friendly), and Rifflet (a site where musicians can post unfinished songs for the others to hear, build upon, and rework).

I also work with musicians, filmmakers, and artists to figure out the best ways to incorporate CC licenses into their releases and projects. A few recent examples of high profile creators that have used CC licenses include Loops (choreography by master dancer/choreographer Merce Cunningham that is released under CC BY-NC-SA), Tracey: Re-Fragmented (the online counterpart of the film The Tracey Fragments, where all of the film's footage and music (performed by the excellent band Broken Social Scene) are available under CC BY-NC-SA for people to use for their own endeavors), and NOVA's Car of the Future project (where PBS and NOVA released 240 clips of raw footage from the making of their Car of the Future documentary under CC BY-NC).

As part of our outreach work, Creative Commons has become more active in creating, curating, and producing CC-licensed media projects. Most notably, we are about to launch an art and music exhibit (it's both a live, physical installation that will travel, as well as an online exhibition) called Into Infinity (check it out at http://intoinfinity.org). All of the works in Into Infinity are licensed under CC BY-NC. We have reached out to hundreds of artists and musicians for submissions; in the process of directly bringing new and interesting creative work into the commons, we are exposing influential creators to the Creative Commons approach to copyright. In turn, we hope that they will expose their communities, friends, and fans to more open and permissive ways of creating and distributing work.

I also spend time presenting Creative Commons' goals and mission in public fora, including panels, conferences, and media. With this work, I intend to educate influential "point people" about Creative Commons, so that they are equipped to share what they have learned about CC with others. As one the leading organizations that deals with intellectual property issues, Creative Commons is routinely invited to provide expertise in the media and at high profile events and conferences. Some of the most fruitful relationships we have made – and some of the most important projects we have developed – have come as a result of being at events where companies and creators go to interface with people and learn about new approaches to making, distributing, and monetizing creative work.

=== Recent success stories from CC users ===

Nine Inch Nails

Contrary to what many people believe, giving the world instant, free, and legal access to cultural material is not the death knell for industries like the music business. In fact, the freedoms that CC licenses facilitate actually provide myriad new opportunities for commercializing creativity.

Creative Commons works closely with musicians and music businesses to develop innovative new models for distributing creativity. While there are a variety of examples of how our work in this regard has paid off, an obvious recent success story involves Nine Inch Nails, one of the world's most loved bands. Nine Inch Nails licensed its two most recent albums under CC BY-NC-SA licenses, as a way of engaging with fans more freely and more directly. The albums were downloaded millions upon millions of times over the ensuing months, and tracks from the albums were subsequently shared on blogs, remixed and mashed-up, and used as source material for new creative works many times over. Meanwhile, the band made millions of dollars from selling CDs and merchandise associated with the releases, proving that the reputational and publicity benefits of making music available to the world for free and legal sharing, remixing, and reuse can be incredibly good business.

This development is critical, as it signifies to music fans - and perhaps, most importantly, to other creators - that CC licenses are not just soft expressions but hard legal tools used by serious artists as important components of emerging business models. Since the Nine Inch Nails releases, CC licenses have been built into the business models that power recent projects by well-known musicians like Radiohead, Deerhoof, and Curt Smith of Tears for Fears.

OLPC sound samples

The One Laptop Per Child project has organized a giant sound library with more than 7000 sound samples that have been donated by institutions like the Berklee College of Music and companies like digital audio software makers M-Audio and Digidesign. The samples are released under a CC BY license so that kids can use them to learn about music and musicmaking. They're also, of course, available to adults around the world, who are encouraged to use them freely and legally for teaching, demos, and creating music.

The samples, which have only been online for a few months, have already been downloaded and used thousands of times. While this is great in and of itself, of even more value to the world is the fact that this project provides a simple model for creating freely usable libraries of high quality cultural material. Inspired by the OLPC project, there are new efforts under way to create similar libraries of CC BY-licensed photography and clip art geared towards kids (but that can be also used by the general public).

Media That Matters film festival

The Media that Matters film festival showcases short movies, documentaries, music videos, animations, and experimental work addressing social themes ranging from gay rights to global warming. All of the films are created by young filmmakers (many of whom are under 21) who are looking for their work and ideas to be exposed as broadly as possible.

Arts Engine, the non-profit that organizes and hosts the festival, releases the films after the festival under a CC BY-NC-ND license and also sells region-free unencrypted CC-licensed DVDs of all the films that can be shown in any non-commercial setting. The organization uses CC licensing to promote the festival, films, and filmmakers to people outside of New York, who would be  unlikely to be able to attend the festival in person. A short from the Media That Matters film festival, entitled "A Girl Like Me," recently made its way on to The Oprah Winfrey Show, and has since racked up almost a million views on YouTube.


===And now for other Creative Commons News===

CC Core

Esther Wojcicki Joins Creative Commons Board!
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8470

Creative Commons Launches Collaborative Global Case Studies Project
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8396

Incorporating content license information just made easier
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8507


CCi

Case Studies - The Book!
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8599

Experts in Norway adapt CC licenses to national law
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8335

Australian Version 3.0 drafts in public discussion
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8373

Singapore proudly celebrates the launch of the localized Creative Commons Licenses
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8521


Science Commons

Announcing the Health Commons
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8358


 ccLearn

Digital Research Tools (DiRT) Wiki Launched
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8339

Agrega, the New Educational Digital Object Platform
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8377

50 Millionth View of TEDTalks
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8410

ccLearn (bi)monthly update - July 18, 2008
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8495


ccPoints of Interest

Google Code adds content licensing; Google Knol launches with CC BY default
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8506

George Eastman House, Bibliothèque de Toulouse Join Flickr Commons
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8497

LibriVox: 1500 public domain audio books
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8327

The Onion's AV Club talks CC Publishing with Cory Doctorow
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8360

From Open Software to Open Music
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8354

Doctorow: First CC-Licensed Work on NYT Best Sellers List/New Graphic Novel
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8351

The Smithsonian Joins Flickr: The Commons
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8381

The Spirit of Sharing in Jordan
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8368

VIA's OpenBook Project Takes Off, Wins International Award
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8401

Gilberto Gil on Democracy Now
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8405

Featured Commoner: CASH Music
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/8602

=============
We rely on our supporters to continue our work enabling stories like those listed above. Check it out --

Donate:
   http://support.creativecommons.org/donate

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   http://support.creativecommons.org/store

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This newsletter is licensed under
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ -- please share
and remix!

============================================
Creative Commons was built with and is sustained by the generous support of organizations including the Center for the
Public Domain, the Omidyar Network, The Rockefeller Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and The
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, as well as members of the public.

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  • [cc-info] ccNewsletter #8 - Culture Commons, Melissa Reeder, 08/19/2008

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