complete press contact list for creative commons

["Glenn Otis Brown" <glenn AT creativecommons.org>]

Supreme Court Audio Classics Enter P2P Zone Thanks to Creative Commons
Licenses

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PRESS RELEASE -- below as text, attached as PDF

more info: http://creativecommons.org

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Supreme Court Audio Classics Enter P2P Zone Thanks to Creative Commons
Licenses

Creative Commons Also Rolls Out Strategy for Embedding and Verifying
License Information in MP3s and Other Files
 


Palo Alto and Chicago, USA — June 25, 2003 — Creative Commons and the
OYEZ Project announced today the first-stage 100-hour release of MP3s
from the Project's 2000+ hours of Supreme Court recordings using Creative
Commons’ machine-readable copyright licenses. 

Creative Commons also announced its new metadata verification policy,
designed to ease the legitimate distribution and copying of audio files
online by associating copyright information with the files themselves. 

The OYEZ Project, <http://www.OYEZ.org>, is a multimedia archive
dedicated to the business of the Supreme Court of the United States and
the lives of its Justices. Founded in 1994 at Northwestern University,
OYEZ will now host MP3 audio recordings of oral arguments before the
Court dating back to the 1950s, including landmark cases such as

Gratz v. Bollinger, 2003 (affirmative action)
Grutter v. Bollinger, 2003 (affirmative action)
Bush v. Gore, 2000 (2000 presidential election)
Regents v. Bakke, 1978 (affirmative action)
Roe v. Wade, 1971 (abortion and reproductive rights)
New York Times v. United States, 1971 (the “Pentagon Papers” case)
Miranda v. Arizona, 1966 (“You have the right to remain silent . . .”)
Gideon v. Wainwright, 1963 (a defendant’s right to counsel).

Recordings of the oral arguments from these historic controversies are
now available for free download from the OYEZ website under a Creative
Commons copyright license, which encourages copying and redistribution of
the recordings while imposing certain conditions on their use:

OYEZ must be attributed, commercial re-use is prohibited, and any
modification of the files obligates licensing under the same Creative
Commons terms as the original files.

“With the Creative Commons, we have for the first time found a way to
license our content to assure use consistent with our objectives. As long
as users meet the conditions of the license, they are free to enjoy and
share a small treasure of America's legal and political heritage,” said
Jerry Goldman, Northwestern University political science professor and
OYEZ project director.

"By releasing hundreds of important Supreme Court recordings under
Creative Commons licenses, the OYEZ Project has demonstrated a commitment
to filling the commons with high quality educational material for others
to use and learn from," said Lawrence Lessig, chairman of Creative
Commons and professor of law at Stanford. 

“Just as important, the OYEZ Project’s use of machine-readable licenses
with its MP3s is a big step toward a world in which law and technology
can work together to promote sharing,” said Lessig.


More About Creative Commons’ Metadata Embedding and Verification Policy

Creative Commons also announced today their new metadata embedding policy
that defines a standard way to embed metadata into files verified by an
external webpage. 

“The Creative Commons license information embedded into each of the OYEZ
Supreme Court files can be verified by an external webpage maintained by
the copyright holder,” said Mike Linksvayer, Creative Commons CTO. “We
hope this will become the standard approach to embedding and verifying
metadata.” 

More information below (appendix), and at:

<http://creativecommons.org/learn/licenses/embedding>.



More about Creative Commons

A nonprofit corporation, Creative Commons promotes the creative re-use of
intellectual works — whether owned or public domain. It is sustained by
the generous support of The Center for the Public Domain and the John D.
and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Creative Commons is based at
Stanford Law School, where it shares staff, space, and inspiration with
the school's Center for Internet and Society. 


More about OYEZ

Today, The OYEZ Project provides access to more than 2000 hours of
Supreme Court audio. All audio in the Court recorded since 1995 is
included in the project. Before 1995, the audio collection is selective.
OYEZ aims to create a complete and authoritative archive of Supreme Court
audio covering the entire span from October 1955 through the most recent
release. OYEZ receives support from the National Endowment for the
Humanities, the National Science Foundation, FindLaw, Northwestern
University, and the law firm of Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw.

For more information <http://www.OYEZ.org>.



Contact


Glenn Otis Brown
Executive Director
Creative Commons 
1.650.723.7572 (tel)
1.415.336.1433 (cell)
glenn AT creativecommons.org

Jerry Goldman
Professor of Political Science 
Director, The OYEZ Project
j-goldman AT northwestern.edu
1.847.475.6671 (tel)
1.847.644.0218 (cell)

Neeru Paharia
Assistant Director
Creative Commons
1.650.724.3717 (tel)
1.510.823.1073 (cell)
neeru AT creativecommons.org

Mike Linksvayer 
Chief Technical Officer
Creative Commons
ml AT creativecommons.org


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Appendix: More Detail About Metadata Embedding & Verification

(also available at: 
<http://creativecommons.org/learn/licenses/embedding>)


Creative Commons licenses are attached to Web pages. But we also want our
licenses to be useful for materials distributed in file formats around
the Net. 

The first format we’ve learned to tag is MP3, the popular audio
compression format.  Other common formats — image, video, text, other
audio formats — will follow soon.


part 1: Metadata Embedding in MP3s 
part 2: The Advantage of the Verification Link 
part 3: Verification Link: Also a Traffic Engine 


(1) Metadata Embedding in MP3s 

Let’s say Anita wants to license her song, “Volcano Love,” with a
Creative Commons license, and release it as an MP3. Here’s what she’d do: 

First, Anita would put a “Some Rights Reserved” button on the site where
her song could be downloaded — along with a link to a license, some RDF
metadata, and an assertion about the copyright status of the work.
Nothing new here: this is what Creative Commons licensors do now. 

With file embedding, though, this page will now serve the added function
of verification. Here's how: Anita would insert the URL to that webpage
in the copyright field of the MP3 file, along with a short, plain
description of the work's license status. We call this the license
verification link because it points back to a page that Anita herself
controls. 

Next, imagine Anita puts the MP3 on a file-sharing network. A user comes
across her MP3 and can follow the verification link to Anita's page. 

In the future, we hope that file-sharing networks, media players, and
other applications will build tools that read the verification link
automatically and inform users of the copyright assertions like Anita's. 



(2) The Advantage of the Verification ink 

Embedding this kind of “verification link” in MP3s, as opposed to merely
the license metadata, is a measure of protection for artists against the
incorrect or fraudulent labeling and sharing of their work. 

Take this example: 

Honeysuckle is a popular commercial singer. She likes her songs “all
rights reserved.” 

John decides to license a Honeysuckle song under a Creative Commons
license, to fool people into thinking she's gone “some rights reserved.”
He makes a fake Honeysuckle site on to his website, adds a Creative
Commons license and RDF to it, and embeds a phony verification link to
his page in the Honeysuckle MP3. Then he puts the song on a file-sharing
network. 

Honeysuckle visits the file-sharing network and sees copies of her song
circulating. She finds this suspicious, given that she didn't put the
song on the network and always claims “all rights reserved.” 

She follows the verification link, finds John, and forces him to take the
fake page down. 

With the phony verification page gone, users of the file-sharing network
will see that the verification link is broken, or they will follow it to
a page explaining that John fraudulently tried to license the song. 



(3) Verification Link: Also a Traffic Engine 

An added benefit of the verification link is that licensors, or the
companies who do their hosting, can use them to draw traffic to their
websites. 

Example: 

Ravi is an amateur photographer. He hosts his photos at SNAP, a website
devoted to photography. Each time Ravi uploads his photos to the SNAP
website, the SNAP software offers Ravi an opportunity to use Creative
Commons licenses, and the tools to embed his webpage on SNAP with the
appropriate RDF. Next, SNAP's software automatically inserts the
verification link into his photo files' copyright fields. 

Ravi circulates the photos among his schoolmates, whose photo-viewing
software reads the copyright fields and takes them to the SNAP website,
where they can see Ravi's whole catalog of photography and links to other
SNAP services.
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Glenn Otis Brown
Executive Director
Creative Commons
glenn AT creativecommons.org
+1.650.723.7572 (telephone)
+1.415.336.1433 (mobile)

Attachment: Supreme.Court-CC.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document