complete press contact list for creative commons

["Tim Hwang" <thwang AT creativecommons.org>]

PDF attached; text below.

Tim Hwang
Business Development -- Creative Commons
415-912-0550
thwang AT creativecommons.org

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CREATIVE COMMONS LAUNCHES METRICS RESEARCH PROJECT
San Francisco, CA – July 9, 2008


Today Creative Commons (CC) announced the official launch of the
Metrics project, a broad-based open web-based initiative to encourage
and collect research efforts on the adoption of CC licenses worldwide.
With the launch of the Creative Commons Case Studies project last
month, CC expanded the qualitative information available about license
usage. The release of the Metrics project today extends the
quantitative data available for further exploration and understanding
of how Creative Commons licenses are spreading globally. The project
wiki also extends an open invitation for users to join the research
community to participate in analyzing data about Creative Commons
licenses.


Nathan Yergler, CC's CTO commented, "We're extremely excited about the
possibilities of opening up research on this topic to the public.
Semantic Mediawiki, an extension that adds database-like capabilities
to wikis, is a huge help in building a community around these issues."
Anyone is able to review the research aggregated at the Metrics
portal, contribute information on existing works, or add their own
original research. While it is impossible to do an authoritative
search and calculation of the number of licensed works on the entire
Internet, this project's intent is to lower the barrier for
participation in discovering more accurate statistics on CC licensing
collaboratively.


Creative Commons license use is growing. As of June 2008, Creative
Commons estimates that a minimum of 130 million creative works are
licensed by creators opting to provide clear expression of how their
works may be used. The Metrics project aims to facilitate
understanding of how this mass adoption is shaping business and
culture at-large. As Mike Linksvayer, Vice-President of CC, stated,
"If we're doing our job well, Creative Commons is enabling more
creativity, innovation, and participation in culture. Metrics are
vital to understanding how CC is transforming the creative ecosystem."


Linksvayer added, "The Metrics project complements existing
collaboration between CC and research groups internationally." This
includes the work by Giorgos Cheliotis and Warren Chik at the
Participatory Media Lab, a research center based in Singapore, that is
working with CC to tackle some of the analytical questions surrounding
its progress worldwide. Cheliotis recently launched the
Commons-Research website and mailing list which supports
interdisciplinary collaboration among researchers studying
commons-based peer production.

The release of the Metrics project is set to coincide with the First
Interdisciplinary Research Workshop on Free Culture being held in
Sapporo, Japan from July 30th to August 1st. This workshop,
spearheaded by Cheliotis with Tyng-Ruey Chuang and Jonathan Zittrain,
will bring together researchers and scholars from around the world to
discuss commons-based peer production research and present their
latest works in progress publicly. More information on how to
participate in the Metrics project and relevant upcoming events are
available on the Creative Commons Metrics project website.



LINKS

CC Metrics Project
http://creativecommons.org/projects/metrics

Commons-Research Website and Conference
http://commonsresearch.wikidot.com/program

Commons-Research Mailing List
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-research

CC Case Studies Project
http://creativecommons.org/projects/casestudies

ABOUT CREATIVE COMMONS

Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001,
that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works,
whether owned or in the public domain. Through its free copyright
licenses, Creative Commons offers authors, artists, scientists, and
educators the choice of a flexible range of protections and freedoms
that build upon the "all rights reserved" concept of traditional
copyright to enable a voluntary "some rights reserved" approach.
Creative Commons was built with and is sustained by the generous
support of organizations including the Center for the Public Domain,
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. For more information about Creative
Commons, visit http://creativecommons.org.

CONTACT

Jon Phillips
Community and Business Development Manager
Creative Commons
jon AT creativecommons.org
+1.510.499.0894


PRESS KIT
http://creativecommons.org/presskit

Attachment: Metrics Press Release.pdf
Description: Adobe PDF document