Creative Commons en Espa�a

[Ignasi Labastida i Juan <ilabastida AT ub.edu>]

Hola,

Os reenvio la nota de prensa:

Leaders of the Free World’ finally able to sing “Happy Birthday to You” 
to the Free Culture Movement after rights to the song cleared

Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that provides flexible 
copyright licenses for authors and artists released today its 
long-awaited present to the Free Culture Movement, represented primarily 
by FreeCulture.org, which celebrated its first birthday on April 23, 
2005. The present is a recording of “Happy Birthday to You” by some of 
the “leaders of the free world”—meaning some of the leaders in the free 
culture, free software and open source software movements. The present 
is now offered to the world from Creative Commons’ site in exchange for 
donations to pay the licensing fees of 8.5 cents per download, with the 
rest of the donations going to support the Free Culture Movement.
The Free Culture Movement was formed at Swarthmore College, Swarthmore,
PA, by more than 100 students. These students were organized by a group 
who sued Diebold and won, after Diebold sent a cease and desist letter 
to the Swarthmore university administrator alleging violations of the 
Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Faced with such grave accusations, the 
university administrator shut down the students’ website—that is, until 
they won the right to have it reinstated. A year later, there are nine 
chapters across the country, and more brewing around the world.
In keeping with tradition, Creative Commons wanted to sing “Happy 
Birthday” to the Free Culture Movement and help the Free Culture 
Movement on its way with donations by those supportive of its cause. 
Because “Happy Birthday” is still under copyright, however, to do so, 
Creative Commons needed to get a license.
The American Composers, Authors and Publishers directed Creative 
Commons—because it wished to only make a single download—to Warner 
Chappell Music.
Warner, after discussing license terms and quoting an applicable license 
fee, refused to grant a license and directed Creative Commons to Harry Fox.
Finally, through Harry Fox, Creative Commons was able to obtain a 
license and sing “Happy Birthday” in public to the Free Culture 
Movement, somewhat belatedly given the delay in securing the necessary 
rights.
The song is now available for download and donations are welcome to help
cover the licensing fees and to assist the Free Culture Movement at
http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/happybirthday/. Performing the song 
are the designated ‘leaders of the free world’ —The Staff of EFF, Mitch 
Kapor, Dan Gillmor, Brian Behlendorf, Ian Clarke, Jimmy Wales, Brewster 
Kahle, and Gigi Sohn.


Saludos,

Ignasi