Jimmy Wales and Laurie Racine Join the CC Board

mia, March 31st, 2006

We’re pleased to announce that we have added to new members to our Board. Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia fame and Laurie Racine, one time President of the Center for the Public Domain and Chair and co-founder of Public Knowledge. More details here.

CREATIVE COMMONS ADDS TWO NEW BOARD MEMBERS

mia, March 30th, 2006

San Francisco, USA — March 30, 2006

Creative Commons is pleased to announce the addition of two new members to its Board of Directors — Jimmy Wales and Laurie Racine.

Jimmy Wales is the founder and President of the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit corporation which operates Wikipedia, the volunteer-created, multi-lingual, Web-based, free-content encyclopedia, in addition to the co-founder and chairman of Wikia, Inc., the for-profit corporation which operates Wikia.com, a broader set of collaborative communities.

Laurie Racine works with for-profits and not for profit enterprises that are concerned with the future of creativity in the digital age. She was President of the Center for the Public Domain and is Chair and co-founder of Public Knowledge.

Lawrence Lessig, Creative Commons’ CEO & Chairman of the Board said “Jimmy brings to Creative Commons his indepth knowledge about the issues arising from collaborative, freely licensed projects and Laurie brings her extensive managerial experience in the creative and technology communities. Both are valuable complements that enhance the existing expertise of the Creative Commons’ Board members.”

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. Creative Commons licences provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators that build upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach. It is sustained by the generous support of various foundations including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Omidyar Network Fund, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation as well as members of the public. For general information, visit the group’s website.

Contact

Mia Garlick
General Counsel
Creative Commons
Email

Press Kit

ccHost 2.0

mike, March 29th, 2006

We’ve just released ccHost 2.0, the GPL-licensed software platform that powers ccMixter. Thanks to Victor Stone for months of mad coding (when he’s not remixing) and Jon Phillips for packaging the release.

I’ve already blogged about two new features included in this release, remix statistics and the sample pool API, but there’s much more. Check out the press release for details.

Creative Commons Releases Open Source Software ccHost 2.0

Eric Steuer, March 29th, 2006

San Francisco, USA, March 28, 2006

ccHost, an Open Source project that provides web-based infrastructure to support collaboration, sharing, and storage of multi-media using Creative Commons licenses and metadata, released version 2.0 today. This major feature release combines approximately six months of development, usage, and testing into packages that anyone may download, install, and use to build on-line media sharing communities.

These features most notably show up and are tested in Creative Commons’ project, ccMixter, a popular on-line music social network service that supports legal media sharing and remixing. ccHost is the Open Source Software engine powering ccMixter. Anyone may download, install, and use ccHost to freely build media sharing communities.

Perhaps the largest features in this release are to aid feedback between community members. First, the addition of native reviews no longer relies upon phpBB. This drastically makes installation of ccHost easier for average users while integrating the previously separate review system into ccHost. Also, now all users have to do to rate submissions is to hover over the star ratings for a media file, and select how many stars. Then, rather than requiring a refresh of the browser, the ratings automatically update.

Other user enhancements include optional text formatting for descriptions, bread crumb path display for easier site navigation, not safe for work (NSFW) flagging, and a “How I Did It” browser. Also, for audio-based installations there is support for M3U-based radio. While previous versions of ccHost had RSS support, ccHost 2.0 now supports the ATOM feed standard and caching for all feed types. Beyond these, the most major under-the-hood enhancement to the codebase is in general performance enhancements which provide noticeable improvement in all areas of the site, most notably on user profile pages.

On the administrative side, ccHost now ships with the sample pool API turned on (see here). Basically, this allows for multiple different ccHost installations to query each other for samples. Beyond the basic usage of multiple ccHost installations communicating through this RESTful API, anyone may also use the simple sample pool API to write code that interacts with a ccHost installation’s sample pool.

Other administrative additions include import and export of settings, internationalization accessible through a string editor, replacement of magpie with custom code, a new ratings panel, stricter fairness policies, and various administrative options for administrators to customize ccHost. The monthly archives, statistics, and charts pages barely made it into this release, and require more testing and usage, yet are already solidly functioning on ccmixter.org.

The ccHost development community encourages new developers to contribute to the project. While ccHost already supports major audio formats such as MP3, MIDI, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, it also supports video and still image formats. Future development needs more contributors to add more media (file-type) functionality to ccHost as well as help with internationalization (i18n) support for multiple languages. Adding language support does not require coding experience since one may use the administrative string editor to add localization to a ccHost installation.

Chat with other developers on irc channel #cc on irc.freenode.org, join the project mailing list, and edit the project wiki page to help shape this project’s future direction.

ccHost Project Website

ccHost Download

Feature Requests

Bug Reports

Roadmap (Project Timeline)

About ccHost
The goal of this project is to spread media content that is licensed under Creative Commons throughout the web in much the same way that weblogs spread CC licensed text. ccHost is web-based infrastructure that may be used to host and allow for commenting, remixing, and distribution globally. The more installations of ccHost and its variations, the more content there will be available for enjoyment and artistic re-use in a sane and legal setting. ccHost is what is used for the infamous Creative Commons ccMixter project, which supports legal media sharing and remixing.

About Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works – whether owned or in the public domain. Creative Commons licenses provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms that build upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach. Creative Commons is sustained by the generous support of various foundations including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Omidyar Network Fund, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, as well as members of the public. For more information about Creative Commons, visit the organization’s Web site.

Contact
Eric Steuer
Creative Director, Creative Commons
Email

Press Kit

CREATIVE COMMONS TO PORT LICENSES TO CHINA

mia, March 28th, 2006

San Francisco, CA, USA and Berlin, GERMANY — March 29, 2006 — Creative Commons, a nonprofit dedicated to building a body of creative work free to share and build upon, today unveils a localized version of its innovative licensing system in The People’s Republic of China.

Creative Commons copyright licenses are available free of charge from the group’s website. The licenses allow authors and artists to mark their works as free to copy or transform under certain conditions—to declare “some rights reserved,” in contrast to the traditional “all rights reserved”—thereby enabling others to access a growing pool of raw materials without legal friction.

Staff at Creative Commons’ offices in San Francisco and Berlin worked with Project Lead Professor Chunyan Wang to adapt the standardized licenses to Chinese law. Creative Commons’ Mainland China project is being supported by the Law School of Renmin University of China.

Today the Chinese version of the Creative Commons licenses will be launched at the opening ceremony of an international conference on Intellectual Property and Creative Commons, being held at Renmin University of China and Peking University, in Beijing. The event is sponsored by Law School of Renmin University of China, IET Foundation, Peking University Law School, China Open Resources for Education, LI-Ning Company Limited, and other four organizations.

Professor Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University, CEO & Chairman of Creative Commons, will deliver the keynote speech on the Role of Creative Commons in an Information Economy. There will be an array of other diverse and preeminent speakers including Professor William Fisher of Harvard Law School.

The launch event will also feature the announcement of a new music CD titled “Pat Pet” which contains several Chinese songs that are being released under a Creative Commons Mainland China license.

Says Chunyan Wang, “We expect that the launch of the Creative Commons licenses will help pave a path for protecting intellectual property and create a win-win solution for all by allowing for reasonable use and sharing of the creative works. The launch will also help build a formal model to be used for creative products and provide a solution for dealing with the challenge of the new digital, Internet society. We believe that the launch will inspire a new “Creative Commons” community in a country with a rich cultural history and great potential creativity.”

About Law School of Renmin University of China

Renmin University of China (RUC) is a national leading university focusing on humanities, social sciences, economics, law and management. RUC was officially established in 1950. As one of the major schools and departments, the Law School is the first higher legal education institution officially established after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Consisting of 12 Teaching and Research Sections (TRS) and 15 research centers, the Law School boasts two National Key Research Centers — Research Center of Criminal Jurisprudence and Research Center of Civil and Commercial Jurisprudence — and China Law Information Center, a National 211 Project program. With one LL.B, nine LL.M and seven LL.D programs, RUC Law School has a comprehensive legal education system.

For general information, visit the RUC website.

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. Creative Commons licences provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators that build upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach. It is sustained by the generous support of various foundations including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Omidyar Network Fund, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation as well as members of the public. For general information, visit the groups’s website.

Contact

Christiane Henckel von Donnersmarck
Executive Director, Creative Commons International, Creative Commons
Email

Press Kit

Remix Reading art show

Eric Steuer, March 28th, 2006

Remix Reading is running an exhibition of Creative Commons-licensed art at the Riverside Museum at Blake’s Lock in the UK from April 28th through 30th. There’s an open call for submissions until April 6, so get to it! Remix Reading’s Tom Chance tells us:

Anyone can submit, and we’d especially like to receive “real media” submissions (i.e. not digital art or photographs). We can help arrange international shipping of works if anyone submits them.

“A comet hits Reading” by Tom Chance, licensed under CC BY-NC-SA

Submit your artwork to the Sharing Is Daring art show

Eric Steuer, March 27th, 2006

Hot on the heels of Free Culture @ NYU‘s Creative Commons Art Show, the good people of Harvard Free Culture are organizing Sharing Is Daring, an exhibition of Creative Commons-licensed artwork to be held in Cambridge the week of April 10. Wanna be a part? Lucky you — there’s an open call for submissions until this Saturday, April 1. (Thanks to Elizabeth Stark for the info.)

SectionZ: Great CC-licensed electronic music

Eric Steuer, March 27th, 2006

SectionZ is an electronic music community that is home to more than 650 Creative Commons-licensed tracks. There are lots of truly excellent CC sounds on the site — some of my favorites are Vaetxh‘s spacy drum ‘n’ bass anthem “The Moon Is to the Stars as a Dust Mote Is to Mars” and Smiff’s driving trance track “Tilt.”

Bob Ostertag

mike, March 26th, 2006

Influential avant garde musician and activist Bob Ostertag has made all of his recordings that he has the rights to available as digital downloads under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license:

These works are now covered by a Creative Commons “Attribution Non-commercial” license that permits you to freely download, copy, remix, sample, manipulate, fold, spindle, tamper with, defuse, detox, or deconstruct – as long as you credit my work as a source, and the work you make is not marketed commercially.

That’s a pretty standard explanation of BY-NC, but do read the rest of Ostertag’s mini-essay on his decision.

About 8 hours from 11 CDs are now available for download, including the notorious PantyChrist album with Otomo Yoshihide (dj) and Justin Bond (vocals) and other work with Mike Patton, Fred Frith, and others.

Ostertag’s music requires “sustained, concentrated listening” that is well rewarded. Check out the excerpt High Performance‘s review of Sooner or Later for a textual preview. Don’t worry about downloading the large music files — they are generously hosted by the Internet Archive for free. Enjoy listening and remixing!

Spanish Court Recognizes CC-Music

mia, March 23rd, 2006

Following on from the recent decision in a Dutch Court, Creative Commons licenses have also been implicated in a decision in Spain. The issue in this case was not whether the CC license was enforceable, but instead whether the major collecting society in Spain could collect royalties from a bar that played CC-licensed music.

Unfortunately, as we explain on our site, because most collecting societies, especially in Europe (but not in the US), take an assignment of rights from the artist, artists who are members of these collecting societies are not free to CC-license their works. And so far, collecting societies have been reluctant to explore how they could enable those of their members, who are interested in CC-licensing, to do so.

Consequently, it seemed a little odd when in the Fall of 2005, the main Spanish collecting society — Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (“SGAE”) — sued Ricardo Andrés Utrera Fernández, the owner of Metropol, a disco bar located in in Badajoz alleging that he had failed to pay SGAE’s license fee of 4.816,74 € for the period from November 2002 to August 2005 for the public performance of music managed by the collecting society.

On February 17th, 2006, the Lower Court number six of Badajoz, a city in Extremadura, Spain, rejected the collecting society’s claims because the owner of the bar proved that the music he was using was not managed by the society. The music performed in the bar was licensed under CC licenses that allows that public display since the authors have already granted those rights. Specifically, the judge said:

“The author possesses some moral and economic rights on his creation. And the owner of these rights, he can manage them as he considers appropriate, being able to yield the free use, or hand it over partially. “Creative Commons” licenses are different classes of authorizations that the holder of his work gives for a more or less free or no cost use of it. They exist as … different classes of licenses of this type … they allow third parties to be able to use music freely and without cost with greater or minor extension; and in some of these licenses, specific uses require the payment of royalties. The defendant proves that he makes use of music that is handled by their authors through these Creative Commons licenses.“

The full text of the decision (in Spanish) is available here.

This case sets a new precedent because previously, every time that the SGAE claimed a license fee from a bar, a restaurant or a shop for public performance of music, the courts have ruled in their favor on the basis that the collecting society represents practically all the authors. This case shows that there is more music that can be enjoyed and played publicly than that which is managed by the collecting societies.

As CC Spain project lead Ignasi Labastida said: “This decision demonstrates that authors can choose how to manage their rights for their own benefit and anyone can benefit from that choice, too. I expect that collecting societies will understand that something has to change to face this new reality,”

Let’s hope that Creative Commons-licensing and collecting societies will be able to work together in future. If you are an artist who is a member of a collecting society and interested in CC-licensing some of your work, let your society know how you feel so we can get to the future faster!