Deproduction and Civic Pixel combine to form Open Media Foundation

cameron, November 25th, 2009

Deproduction, a Denver-based video production company, and Civic Pixel, an open-source web development group, have joined forces to become the Open Media Foundation. The two groups were previously affiliated through Denver Open Media where they taught local communities media production tools, producing unique and engaging content in the process.

The Open Media Foundation picks up where these two groups left off, focusing upon services (video production, website creation, and graphic packages), education, and accessible tools. One of OMF’s most engaging aspects is the scalability of their mission. Nearly all of the content they produce is either CC-licensed or open-source, allowing it to be adopted easily and legally elsewhere. In January, Access San Francisco will become the 8th station to adopt the open source tools OMF developed as part of the Knight NewsChallenge. Similarly, through support from the Google Summer of Code program, the OMF made major improvements to CC support in Drupal.

To learn more about Open Media Foundation, check out this introductory video at their site – we interviewed Tony Shawcross, then Executive Director at Deproduction, back in January.

ccMixter Curation at the Free Music Archive

cameron, November 25th, 2009

This Monday, we began a guest curation series at our Free Music Archive portal. Rather than attempt to distill the vast landscape of CC-licensed music on our own, we thought it better to reach out to those on the ground working to support and expose these type of artists in their given communities. What better way to start then with a selection of tracks from ccMixter admin/developer/mentor Victor Stone:

For all the activism in the Open Music movement, nothing pushes the ball forward like brilliant, evocative music. While there is plenty of underground music of all sub-genres at ccMixter, there is also a growing collection of mainstream, above-ground producers who understand the value of sharing as a means of boosting their own creativity along with their exposure.

You can listen and download Victor’s full playlist at the FMA and ccMixter – titled Above Ground Collection, it is brimming with excellent music from producers with “an ear for the popular without sacrificing artistry.”

CC Learn Advanced Topics

Jane Park, November 24th, 2009

Earlier this year, CC Learn launched CC Learn Productions, highlighting reports and three document series: CC Learn Recommendations, CC Learn Explanations, and CC Learn Step by Step Guides. Since April, we have greatly expanded our repertoire to about a dozen documents, touching on basic topics such as Why CC BY? to legally incompatible content in OER. We’ve verily become document-making machines, cranking out new publications every month.

In the course of production, we found there are certain topics that cannot be distilled to a general audience, mainly because these topics are too specialized, and impractical, for the majority of CC’s user base. We realized that another document series was necessary, one specifically dealing with advanced topics, topics which require additional expertise and address the concerns of a smaller cross section of the OER community. The CC Learn Advanced Topics series, which is not intended for general consumption or to serve as legal advice, aims for this.

The first CC Learn Advanced Topic is CC Licenses and Trademarks: A Guide for Organizational OER Creators and Distributors. This primer distinguishes between copyright and trademark as they pertain to OER, and clarifies some of the confusion surrounding CC licenses and trademarks. For OER organizations with a strong trademark, or with the plans and capacity to build and sustain one, this primer is a guide to understanding the relationship between your organization’s rights as a copyright owner using CC licenses (particularly CC BY) and your organization’s trademark rights within the context of open educational resources (OER). This primer is not relevant for OER creators generally, as trademark law only pertains to those entities with the capacity to build and sustain a brand.

Though CC and CC Learn are open to consulting around business models generally, we are not in a position to give advice around trademark law. This primer is simply an explanation of a separate set of rights you may have to protect your work – trademark rights – while still allowing for the downstream adaptation, translation, and localization of your work that are so central to the goals of OER. Additionally, this primer is an example of one way certain organizations may deal with their concerns, and we hope that it will become an important document in our ongoing work.

All CC Learn Productions are licensed CC BY.

To Shoot An Elephant, CC BY-NC-SA Documentary, Wins Award at Festival dei Popoli

cameron, November 20th, 2009

Last week To Shoot An Elephant, a CC Attribution-Share Alike CC Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike licensed documentary on life in the Gaza Strip, won the award for “Most Innovative Filmmaker” at Florence’s Festival dei Popoli. From the voting committee:

“After we watched this film we engaged in a long passionate discussion. This film never left us. We want to award the filmmakers for sharing with us an emotional, physical and stressful experience for being there and witnessing the horrors and destruction of the siege imposed on the Gaza Strip earlier this year.”

It is wonderful to see open source cinema receive these types of accolades, solidifying its place in the larger film landscape. Congratulations to film-makers Alberto Arce and Mohammed Rujailah on their win! You can learn more about To Shoot An Elephant at their website.

UPDATE: The film To Shoot An Elephant is licensed under a CC Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike license – the film’s website is licensed under a CC Attribution-Share Alike license.

WikiEducator, Connexions, and MediaWiki join forces in OER Remix Project

Jane Park, November 20th, 2009

In case you haven’t heard, WikiEducator‘s Wayne Mackintosh announced earlier this week that they were joining forces with Connexions “to provide educators with greater freedom of choice to mix and match the best of two OER worlds, namely “producer-consumer” models with more traditional work flow approaches and commons-based peer production.” WikiEducator and Connexions are two collaborative OER projects that use Creative Commons licenses. While WikiEducator, licensed CC BY-SA, focuses “on building capacity in the use of Mediawiki and related free software technologies for mass-collaboration in the authoring of free content,” Connexions, licensed CC BY, focuses on the collaborative development, sharing, and publishing of modular educational content that can be easily integrated into larger collections or courses. According to the announcement, the two projects will partner “to build import export capability between the Connexions and WikiEducator/Mediawiki platforms.”

It’s definitely exciting to see these two OER projects working together, especially since the collaboration is being generously funded by a grant from one of our own biggest supporters, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. There are various ways you can tune into its progress, including visiting the project planning node, subscribing to the Connexions mailing list, or helping them develop use case scenarios.

Costa Rica

michelle, November 20th, 2009

Creative Commons is working with the University of Costa Rica to create Costa Rica jurisdiction-specific licenses from the Unported Creative Commons licenses.

The BY-NC-SA 3.0 license draft adapted to Costa Rican law is ready for public discussion. The Spanish and English versions of the BY-NC-SA license are available, as is a summary of the substantial changes proposed by the legal team to port the licenses to Costa Rican copyright law. The public discussion is an open forum where everyone – from lawyers to active license users, from linguists to translators — is invited to contribute.

If you have comments about the licenses, whether in regards to legal, linguistic or usability issues, please feel welcome to use the wiki’s discussion page or the CC Costa Rican mailing list to share your thoughts.

CC Costa Rica Team

Project Leads: Rolando Coto Solano and Carlos Saborío

Legal Leads: Dr. Andrés Guadamuz and Lic. Denis Campos MBMC

• License draft (v3.0, PDF).
• English retranslation (v3.0, PDF).
• Explanation of substantive legal changes in English (v3.0, PDF).
• Post a message.
• Subscribe to the discussion.
• Read the discussion archives.

More about the University of Costa Rica

The University of Costa Rica is a public university in the Republic of Costa Rica. Its main campus, Ciudad Universitaria Rodrigo Facio, is located in San Pedro, in the province of San José. It is the oldest, largest, and most prestigious institution of higher learning in Costa Rica.

As an independent institution of higher learning, the University of Costa Rica is constituted by a community of teachers, students and administrative staff dedicated to teaching, research, social action, study, reflection, artistic creation and dissemination of knowledge.

There are different perceptions of the mission that a university must meet. For the University of Costa Rica, the primary activity is aimed at advancing knowledge in its highest expression and at responding effectively to the needs generated by the integral development of society.

CC board chair Esther Wojcicki on teachers sharing … and supporting CC

mike, November 19th, 2009

Esther Wojcicki, Chair of the Creative Commons board of directors, has insightful comments on a recent New York Times story on teachers selling lessons online. Esther’s column in the Huffington Post closes with:

While it is an interesting alternative for teachers to have the option of selling their lesson plans, realistically the culture of teachers nationwide is one of sharing, not selling.

How true! Read the whole column, which also includes a good overview of available open educational resources.

Also, our entire board is making a public committment to raise funds for our campaign this year. We’re rolling out “personal campaign pages” for board members, where they explain why they are personally commited to CC and ask you to help them support us. Check out Esther’s campaign page and support Creative Commons today. Currently your contribution will be doubled by WhippleHill, a communications company that shares our values of openness and innovation on the web, with a particular focus on education.

Mr. Mayo's Class Integrates CC, Skypes with Lawrence Lessig

Jane Park, November 19th, 2009

Photo by Mr. Mayo CC BY-NC

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to talk to George Mayo, known as Mr. Mayo to his students, a middle school Language Arts teacher in Maryland. Mr. Mayo was brought to CC Learn’s attention by Lawrence Lessig, CC’s founder and current board member, who Skyped with Mr. Mayo’s class for thirty minutes, answering questions on copyright, YouTube’s take-down policy and downloading music. Mr. Mayo and his class have integrated CC licensed works into their daily activities, documenting it all at mrmayo.org. Instead of elaborating on the various innovative ways Mr. Mayo and his class uses CC, I’m going to let George speak for himself. The following is the interview I had with him via Skype. You can also listen to the audio here.

Read More…

Indaba Launch CC BY Loop Library, Contest With Filter Magazine

cameron, November 19th, 2009

Indaba Music just launched a fantastic new clip library of over 8,000 CC Attribution licensed sounds and loops. Already one of the premier destination for musicians to collaborate online, their new clip library adds to Indaba’s appeal by offering an easy and legal way for musicians to add sounds and loops to their work.

To celebrate, Indaba has teamed up with Filter Magazine on a remix contest, challenging Indaba’s community of over 300,000 (!) musicians to create an original track that includes a minimum of two clips. The contest winner, determined by Filter Magazine, will be profiled in an upcoming issue as well as have their winning track featured in the issue’s monthly digital sampler. The due date for entries is December 8th at 5PM EST.

iPhone application released for the INTO INFINITY project

cameron, November 18th, 2009

Creative Commons Japan + Appliya Studio + DubLab + Creative Commons + corde Japan, US, and worldwide — November 12th, 2009

Today, Creative Commons Japan and iPhone developer Appliya Studio announced the release of a brand new iPhone application, “AudioVisual Mixer for Into Infinity”, specially developed for the launch of the Into Infinity project in Japan. Into Infinity is a collaboration between Creative Commons and non-profit web radio collective Dublab.

Into Infinity comprises a collection of ready-to-remix 12-inch circular artworks and 8-second music loops created by a vast array of artists from around the world. Contributors include world-renowned graffiti artist Kofie, 2008 Whitney Biennial alumni Lucky Dragons, Anticon collective member Odd Nosdam, and electronic musicians Flying Lotus and DNTEL (AKA Jimmy Tamborello of The Postal Service). For its expansion to Japan, the Into Infinity project has additionally collected 50 “EAR” sound loops and 50 “EYE” visual circles from Japanese sound and visual artists (list below).

Creative Commons Japan teamed with APPLIYA on “AudioVisual Mixer for Into Infinity” to celebrate the growth of this free audio visual culture and to promote a more intuitive, open, and unique remix experience around Into Infinity’s Japan launch. The application was developed by Kensuke Sembo from internationally acclaimed media art duo Exonemo and Ages5&Up, an art and design collective known for witty yet solid interaction design.

When opened, the application connects to a server where all the project’s resources are stored, automatically downloading sound loops (“EAR”) that are paired with visual circles (“EYE”). The Into Infinity logo serves as an anchor point to trigger sounds: circles are moved by dragging them with your finger and when brought into the logo’s orbit the sounds start mixing. Here, the act of remixing is enabled by a simple touch interaction with the iPhone screen, allowing literally anyone to enjoy mixing or simply listen to the soundscape.

Users can share their mix instantly by posting to Twitter or by emailing their friends. An URL pointing to the mix generated is attached to the message so others can reenact your experience. You can also set the mix as your iPhone’s ring tone after downloading the mix to your home computer.

All mixes generated by the application’s users are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license, keeping in line with the project as a whole.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

iTunes AppStore information:
Title: AudioVisual Mixer for INTO INFINITY
Released: 12th November, 2009
Seller: Appliya
Copyright: dublab, Creative Commons, Creative Commons Japan

URL:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=338225050&mt=8

About Creative Commons Japan

Creative Commons Japan (CCJP) is an independent Japanese node of the Creative Commons movement active since 2004 mainly in Tokyo area. Besides porting the CC licenses to the japanese legal framework, CCJP has since then collaboratively worked with corporate entities, educational organizations and other non-profit groups in order to propel the open contents movement in Japan by organizing symposia, workshops, and consulting. In 2008 Summer, CCJP co-hosted the iSummit 2008 in the city of Sapporo and deployed an audio-visual remix contest with online video sharing services respectively run by Sony, Yahoo!, NTT, Nifty and FlipClip. In September 2009, CCJP has released a web survey for creators to research how the introduction of fair-use in Japanese copyright law is received and reported to a related working group of the Japan Agency for Cultural Affairs that most Web-aware users are welcoming a more open culture on the Net.
http://creativecommons.jp

About APPLIYA

APPLIYA works hand-in-hand with Japanese iPhone developers to bring the best in Japanese culture, design and ingenuity to the world through the international iPhone community. APPLIYA was founded in October 2008 with financial support from Softbank Inc., the exclusive mobile provider of the iPhone in Japan.
APPLIYA’s main product, APPLIYA STUDIO is an all-new service that allows anyone to easily build applications for the global iPhone/iPod Touch market. We offer fast, inexpensive options that make it easy for you to enter one of the world’s fastest growing marketplaces: the iTunes App Store.
http://appliya-studio.com/en/

About Corde

Corde is a creative collective led by music critique and producer Masaaki Hara that has been active in various fields such as label management, event organizing, writing and editing.

As a music label, soup-disk, the precedent of Corde, produced critical works by RiowArai, Suzukiski, Cappablack, Ill Suono, Inner Science, Conflict and contributed to the advancement of Japanese break beats and electronic music. soup-disk became disques corde in 2005, and started to produce undiscovered talents worldwide along with the release of such artists as RATN (Riow Arai + Tujiko Noriko) and Karafuto (a.k.a. Fumiya Tanaka). Current collaborating labels include Alpha Pup, Plug Research and Ubiquity.
As for event organizing, Corde has realized free-form parties titled “moxa” by inviting international artists such as Pole, Jan Jelinek, Opiate, The Weather(Busdriver, Radioinactive, Daedellus), Lusine, DavidLast, Nobody, Triosk, with the collaboration of Tokyo-based record shop Onsa Records. In 2008 and 2009, Corde realized the Japan tour of LOW END THEORY, the party from Los Angeles. As a writer, Hara published “To be freed from Music – Sound Recycle of the 21st century” in November 2009.

About Dublab

dublab is a non-profit web radio collective devoted to the growth of positive music, arts and culture. We have been broadcasting independently since 1999. More than 300,000 international listeners connect to our streams & podcasts monthly. dublab’s mission is to share beautiful music via the world’s best djs. What you hear on dublab crosses genres and defies classification. Unlike traditional radio, the dublab djs have total freedom of selection. You will experience many different sounds but find they all have the same soulful root. We have extended our creative action to include art exhibits, film projects, event production and record releases. The dublab echo continues to expand across the Earth.
http://dublab.com

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, the 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