Joi Ito at DLD on Creative Commons

Fred Benenson, January 31st, 2009

Creative Commons’ CEO, Joi Ito recently gave a talk at the Digital Life Design conference in Munich. If you’ve been waiting to watch a talk introducing Creative Commons to 2009, this is your talk.

Joi first hits on how CC helps innovators (especially those online) lower the transaction costs when dealing with cultural works restricted by copyright law. Moreover, CC has the potential lower costs in much of the same way that the openness of the early Internet enabled start-ups like Google and eBay to lower their transaction costs and innovate. Joi then discusses some of the successes CC has seen in the last year, making for an great overview of what CC has been up to and where we are headed.

(Apologies if this post appears twice in your feed reader, our original post disappeared.)

Thanks and congratulations to Catherine Casserly!

Melissa Reeder, January 30th, 2009

Catherine Casserly, Director of Open Educational Resources Initiative at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and long-time supporter of CC, has taken a new position at The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. As stated in the press release:

As the first full-time Senior Partner appointed by Carnegie President Anthony S. Bryk, Casserly will be responsible for new program initiatives and will manage the strategic direction of Carnegie’s work in Open Educational Resources. In leading efforts to build a new field of Design, Educational Engineering and Development, Carnegie provides an ideal combination of timing and place to extend the knowledge and evidence base regarding the effectiveness of innovation and Open Educational Resources for learning.

Catherine Casserly and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation have been instrumental in the growth of Creative Commons and in establishing ccLearn. It’s important for the commons community to recognize the work Casserly has done over the years, as she has been and will continue to be a key player in the open movement. Congratulations to Catherine and Carnegie from all of us here at CC!

wikiHow Reaches 50,000 Articles

Cameron Parkins, January 30th, 2009

wikiHow, a community site that aims to be the world’s largest how-to manual, just reached the incredible milestone of 50,000 articles with the publication of How to Obtain a Copy of Your Birth Certificate in New Mexico. All of the content on wikiHow is released under a CC BY-NC-SA license, keeping the content therein open for sharing and reuse according as long as the reuse is noncommercial in intent, the author(s) is properly attributed, and any derivative works are shared under the same license. This has broad ramifications, described by Rebbeca Rojer a little over a year ago as wikiHow passed the 25,000 article mark:

wikiHow is a great example of the possibilities for participatory culture opened by Creative Commons licenses. According to wikiHow founder, Jack Herrick, “Creative Commons licensing has been a necessary ingredient of our success thus far. These licenses allow others to easily share, republish and modify our content which furthers our mission. In addition, the licenses provide our editors with the “Right to Fork”, which gives our community comfort that their work will always be freely available to them and others.”

Jack continues “I’m optimistic that one day wikiHow will offer accurate, helpful how-to instructions on almost every topic in almost every language. I’m looking forward to sharing a how-to manual in Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi, Japanese, Polish and many other languages we don’t currently serve. Fortunately Creative Commons licensing exists in all these languages and will help us along this path.”

Congratulations to wikiHow, who are ever supportive of Creative Commons both in their mission and their actions.

OpenSA – Championing South African heritage

Jane Park, January 29th, 2009

If I hadn’t interned for Clarity Films one summer, I would never have learned most of what I know now about the apartheid, Nelson Mandela, and Desmond Tutu. I spent hours transcribing interviews and condensing documentary footage into some type of digital package that I don’t recall the name of (nor do I remember the outdated technology I used). What I do remember: the world’s reactions to the tumult that surrounded South Africa within the past fifty some odd years.

Now, anyone can learn about South Africa and its rich heritage with the recent launch of OpenSA, “a pilot project to make South African heritage more accessible for remixing and re-publishing by online creators.” From the announcement at The African Commons Project:

“In collaboration with SA Rocks and the African Commons Project, OpenSA! is collecting, tagging and managing donations from people who are willing to make their material freely available online. OpenSA! will also be helping to coordinate outreach to South Africa’s young creators to enable them to learn more about how to find open content that they are free to remix and share.

As access to the Internet grows in South Africa, so too does the range of creative activity by a new generation of active online citizens. Internet publishing in the form of blogging and citizen journalism, online publishing of photographic, video and music publishing are all part of a wide range of democratic speech that we as a young nation are trying to encourage and nurture.”

Some media they’ve found and posted so far:
A documentary about one of the first Chinese restaurants in Cape Town (CC BY-NC by Link Media Inc.)
Photos of Johannesburg (CC BY-NC-SA by Gregor Rohrig)

Anyone can get involved and contribute. We encourage you to choose a CC license and send in your materials, or build on what’s already out there.

Update: CC Salon SF venue announced

Allison Domicone, January 29th, 2009

We’re delighted to announce that the next CC Salon SF (Wednesday, February 11, from 7-9pm) will be held at PariSoMa, located at 1436 Howard Street, San Francisco (map and directions). We extend our sincerest thanks to the generous folks at PariSoMa for offering up their lovely space! We hope you’ll join us in making our first evening in these new surroundings a warm and lively one. Light refreshments will be served.

We’ll have the entire CC staff under one roof, and the evening’s program includes brief presentations from:

Mike Linksvayer, Vice President
Eric Steuer, Creative Director
Catharina Maracke, Director, Creative Commons International
John Wilbanks, Vice President, Science Commons
Ahrash Bissell, Executive Director, ccLearn
Joi Ito, CEO

Following the presentations, we’ll open the floor to questions and discussion. Whether you’ve been a fan of CC from the start or you’re new to the world of free culture, this salon is not to be missed!

You can also check it out on Upcoming!

We rely on the generosity of our community to keep us afloat, so we’ll be accepting donations for CC at the door. If you didn’t get a chance to support us during our fundraising campaign, now is your chance.

CC Salons are global events, and anyone can start one, no matter where you live. We encourage you to check out our resources for starting your own salon in your area.

Clivir

Cameron Parkins, January 28th, 2009

Clivir, a learning community site that allows users to post lessons of any and all types, just added support for CC licensing. The site already has amassed a large amount of teachable knowledge and by adding CC licensing options Clivir are giving users the ability to keep this knowledge open, shareable, and reusable (depending on which license is indicated).

Clivir have a released all of their own lessons under a CC BY-SA license, setting a strong example for the rest of their community to follow suit. While the ability to filter lessons by license choice is unfortunately not available yet, it is still great to see CC licenses integrated into communities like Clivir that pride group collaboration and collective knowledge.

Macedonia Timeless: CC-Licensed Tourist Video

Cameron Parkins, January 28th, 2009

Macedonia Timeless is the name of a recently produced Macedonian tourist video written and directed by Milcho Manchevski. There is nothing new about these sort of videos being produced, but what is novel is that the video is being released under a CC BY-ND license, a decision that encourages the legal sharing of the video.

If the point of Macedonia Timeless is to drive tourism to Macedonia, then licensing the content in a way that allows legal re-posting shows foresight – fans of the video can upload it to whatever video sharing site they like as long as the provide proper attribution. You can watch the video on YouTube or download it here. Be sure to read Global Voices’ nice analysis of the video as well, which touches upon a variety of issues beyond CC licensing.

The Legal Education Commons

Jane Park, January 27th, 2009

The Legal Education Commons launched yesterday with open access to over 700,000 federal court decisions. The LEC is an “open, searchable collection of resources designed specifically for use in legal education.” It is made possible by a collaboration between the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) and Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. From the press release:

“All teachers of law have materials and notes they use in teaching,” says John Mayer, CALI Executive Director. “Many freely share their materials with colleagues, but there has never been a singular searchable, taggable space to serve that function for the entire legal academy,” he explains, “until now.”
…

CALI implores faculty and staff at CALI member schools to share any files from personal collections that may facilitate learning amongst the legal education community. “Especially as we increasingly garner more participation and sharing from legal educators,” says Mr. Mayer, “the Legal Education Commons will be a great, non-commercial tool for those who are both teaching and learning the law.”

All material in the Legal Education Commons is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-alike license (CC BY-SA), making it interoperable with a great deal of other open educational resources.

Runes of Gallidon, CC-Licensed Online Fantasy World, Launches Public Beta

Cameron Parkins, January 26th, 2009

The Hunt, Andy Underwood/Runes of Gallidon | CC BY-NC-SA

Runes of Gallidon is a “user-generated online fantasy world of swords, magic, adventure and mystery” that just launched in public beta. Distinguishing Runes of Gallidon from other virtual worlds is the decision to license all the content in the ROG universe under a CC BY-NC-SA license. Any work that the community creates is kept free and open for the rest of the community to use and build upon, a choice that allows the plot lines and characters of Runes of Gallidon to evolve naturally and legally.

While the ROG universe evolves through user-submitted content, Brain Candy, LLC (the group behind Runes of Gallidon) will be doing legwork to turn Rules of Gallidon into a source of potential revenue, namely in film/TV and merchandise will be marketing the website to help audiences find the creative community’s Gallidon works (content creators have the ability to shop their ideas to interested parties as well). The monetary gains from these endeavors will be split between community and Brain Candy in two distinct ways:

If Brain Candy, LLC, prints your story in a book, prints a poster, a T-shirt, etc. and makes any money directly from your Work, you receive 50% of the money. If you sell your Work set in Runes of Gallidon (a published book, album cover art, posters, etc.), we ask that you contribute to Brain Candy, LLC 10% of the money you receive.

That is the basic formula: each Artisan owns the Work they create, but the world of Runes of Gallidon and everything in it is shared by the entire Gallidon creative community.

This is a unique implementation to our CC+ protocol and a fresh approach to crafting an online fantasy world. By using CC licenses, the group behind Runes of Gallidon have created a hybrid-economy where the sharing of content (enabled by CC licenses) is monetized based on an additional set of legal guidelines, in turn encouraging growth through legal protection and an opportunity for monetary gain.

Rock Proper Release Jitney’s 86-300, CC BY-NC Licensed Album

Cameron Parkins, January 26th, 2009

Chicago-based record label Rock Proper just added another impressive notch to their discography with today’s release of Jitney’s 86-300. The work of musician Casey Meehan, 86-300 is released under a CC BY-NC license, making the experimental rock songs therein freely sharable/remixable as long as Jitney is properly attributed and reuses are noncommercial in intent.

This is the second featured release from Rock Proper, who previously put out Jay Bennett’s CC-licensed Whatever Happened I Apologize. Of interest to those in the CC community is a remix from artist Fabakis who took Bennett’s stripped down I’ll Decorate My Love and transformed it into a song complete with drums, organ, electric guitar/bass, piano, and a slew of instrumental treats. All of this was legal and encouraged through the album’s CC BY-NC license, and if comment sections are to be trusted, might even result in an unexpected collaboration between the two artists in teh future.