complete press contact list for creative commons

["Eric Steuer" <eric AT creativecommons.org>]

PDF attached; text below
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Jesse Dylan's "A Shared Culture" Video Released to Celebrate Creative
Commons 2008 Fundraising Campaign

October 15, 2008 – San Francisco, CA, USA

Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization focused on building a body
of openly shareable and reusable creative work, today announced the
launch of its 2008 fundraising campaign. Information about how to
support Creative Commons is available at
http://support.creativecommons.org/.

To celebrate the campaign, Creative Commons today released "A Shared
Culture," a short video by renowned filmmaker Jesse Dylan. Known for
helming a variety of films, music videos, and the Emmy Award-winning
"Yes We Can" Barack Obama campaign video collaboration with rapper
will.i.am, Dylan created "A Shared Culture" to help spread the word
about the Creative Commons mission. The video is available online to
watch and download at http://creativecommons.org/asharedculture.

In the video, some of the leading thinkers behind Creative Commons
describe how the organization is helping "save the world from failed
sharing" through free tools that enable creators to easily make their
work available to the public for legal sharing and remix. Dylan puts
the Creative Commons system into action by punctuating the interview
footage with dozens of photos that have been offered to the public for
use under CC licenses. Similarly, he used two CC-licensed instrumental
pieces by Nine Inch Nails as the video's soundtrack music. These
tracks, "17 Ghosts II" and "21 Ghosts III," come from the Nine Inch
Nails album Ghosts I-IV, which was released earlier this year under a
Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license.

"I wanted to give people a clear understanding of how Creative Commons
works and why it's an important system," says Dylan. "I think the best
way to do that is by actually putting to use some of the great stuff
that's been made available to the world under CC licenses. The images
and music in the video were made by people all around the world who
chose to publish their work in a way that says 'Hey, see this thing I
made? You can take it and use it to make something else. I'm giving
you the legal right to use it, because I don't think that copyright
should be something that stands in the way of creativity.' Without the
amazing work of Nine Inch Nails and all of the photographers whose
images I used, this kind of video simply wouldn't have been possible
to make."

"A Shared Culture" is released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA
license, meaning that anyone in the world can legally share, use, and
remix it, as long as they abide by the license's conditions. (The
terms of the BY-NC-SA license are available at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/). On its website
and via LegalTorrents (http://legaltorrents.com), Creative Commons has
offered the video in several formats (ranging from Quicktime to Ogg
Theora) and has provided photographer attribution through ImageStamper
(http://imagestamper.com).

As part of the fundraising campaign, Creative Commons is calling on
members of the public to use "A Shared Culture" as the basis for other
videos that describe how CC licenses have enabled legal access,
collaboration, and participation around the world.

"We hope that Jesse Dylan's amazing video is just the first in a vast
collection of videos and projects that address the idea of 'A Shared
Culture,'" says Joi Ito, Creative Commons' CEO. "Take what Jesse has
done and use it to make your own video. There are millions of
CC-licensed songs, images, and video clips out there that you can use.
Shoot some of your own interview footage that features your friends
and people in your local communities talking about these issues. Take
everything that you have at hand and use it to create, customize,
remix, and share. Show the world that copyright should be a tool for
fostering innovation, and not a barrier to creative progress."

"We're thrilled that Jesse made this amazing video to show the
strength and importance of Creative Commons," says Melissa Reeder,
Creative Commons' development manager. "We hope it inspires the public
to create their own work, to use CC-licenses, and support Creative
Commons financially during our fundraising drive and beyond."

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

Eric Steuer
Creative Director, Creative Commons
eric AT creativecommons.org

Melissa Reeder
Development Manager, Creative Commons
melissa AT creativecommons.org

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