Weblog
2006 August
PopSci.com and CC present: Second Life concert with Jonathan Coulton + more!
Mark your calenders: On Thursday, September 14 at 5PM (SL/Pacific), PopSci.com and Creative Commons will be hosting a special concert in Second Life featuring Jonathan Coulton as well as popular Second Life musicians Melvin Took, Kourosh Eusebio, Etherian Kamaboko, and Slim Warrior. From Jonathan Coulton’s blog:
I will be playing live from a secure, undisclosed location in the real world, but you will see my handsome avatar onstage at a venue called Menorca in the Second Life universe. You can also listen to the concert via a number of streaming type websites … The whole concert, audio and video, will be Creative Commons licensed, so feel free to record it.
More information is available on this wiki. We’ll post more information on the CC blog as soon as it becomes available.
Pachelbel’s Commons
An NYT story on classical and rock guitar players posting versions of 17th century chamber piece
Pachelbel’s Canon to YouTube demonstrates the value of public domain materials and web-based collaboration:
This process of influence, imitation and inspiration may bedevil the those who despair at the future of copyright but is heartening to connoisseurs of classical music. Peter Robles, a composer who also manages classical musicians, points out that the process of online dissemination — players watching one another’s videos, recording their own — multiplies the channels by which musical innovation has always circulated. Baroque music, after all, was meant to be performed and enjoyed in private rooms, at close range, where others could observe the musicians’ technique. “That’s how people learned how to play Bach,” Mr. Robles said. “The music wasn’t written down. You just picked it up from other musicians.”
Now if only YouTube facilitated CC licensing of contributed videos (like blip.tv) some of those modern reworkings of Pachelbel’s Canon would be legally available for other forms of remix, e.g., sampling (mp3).
No Comments »MozCC Support for RDFa
MozCC 2.2 is now available for Firefox 2 (beta 1). This release adds support for metadata described with RDFa, as well as correcting a few minor bugs. As usual you can find download information in the wiki.
No Comments »‘Organic’ for your brain
Scott Leslie of EdTechPost writes:
I have been working away listening to streams of fully CC-licensed remixes and tracks from the awesome CCMixter site all day, and just wanted to tell someone. What brought me there was the announcement that my old favourite, Freesound, is now integrated into ccMixter via the Sample Pool API. Ahh, CreativeCommons content – think “Organic,” but for your brain ;-)
Thanks Scott! That’s what I’m talking about.
No Comments »Splice Music Beta
Splice is a new music remixing site featuring an in-browser sound editor. All tracks in the beta are licensed under CC Attribution and creative reuse of works from Freesound and ccMixter is encouraged. Hopefully in the future we’ll see more thorough integration.
No Comments »Commercial under CC
CC licensing commercials, at least under a restrictive Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, seems like a no-brainer (adverisers should want their message spread as much as possible) and allowing derivatives not much of a stretch (going “viral” and all that), but not many have taken these steps.
Now multimedia pioneer Marc Canter has published a commercial for his PeopleAggregator startup under our liberal Attribution license. I don’t suppose Marc would mind if you made him “go viral.”
Watch the commercial. Also note that PeopleAggregator, an “open social network”, enables CC licensing of user created images and videos.
No Comments »KCentric on ccMixter
ccMixter admin and ccHost developer Victor says this is better than any award.
Listen (mp3) to KCentric talk about ccMixter.
Victor also says “If you don’t know KCentric is an amazing talent, remixer, and rapper.” Check out KCentric’s music on ccMixter.
No Comments »Audio book commons
The New York Times has a story on LibriVox, a community of 1,800 volunteers reading out of copyright books and releasing them as public domain audiobooks. We mentioned LibriVox’s one year birthday earlier this month.
The Times article mentions two more audiobook projects using public domain books: Literal Systems, which releases recordings under Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs terms, and the Spoken Alexandria Project, which releases recordings under Attribution-NonCommercial after five years or 100,000 downloads from Telltale Weekly, whichever comes first.
Lucky 7s: Awesome CC-licensed jazz music
Lucky 7s is a jazz band made up of musicians from the New Orleans and Chicago jazz scenes:
Lucky 7s is the brainchild of Jeb Bishop and Jeff Albert. In September 2005, shortly after Hurricane Katrina blew through Jeff’s hometown of New Orleans, Jeb and Jeff were discussing the future. Jeff wanted to try to book some gigs for his group in the Chicago area, since it seemed that the regular New Orleans creative scene would be out of sorts for quite some time. Jeb suggested a co-op project with some Chicago musicians along with players from the New Orleans scene. Wish lists were made and emails were sent and answered, and a band was born.
The septet offers several mp3s on its site as free downloads under the Creative Commons Music Sharing license. It’s great stuff — modern yet steeped in improv traditions. If you like what you hear, you can buy Lucky 7s new CD, Farragut via Lakefront Digital or through CD Baby.
No Comments »Blip.tv ranked #1 video sharing site by Light Reading
Many congratulations to blip.tv, which was recently ranked the top video sharing site by Light Reading. The free videoblogging, podcasting, and video sharing service — which allows its users to publish their work under Creative Commons licenses — scored an incredible 95 out of 100 points. The review cited blip’s “simplicity … responsiveness, and impressive distribution options” (one of which, of course, is distribution under CC terms.) Good going, blip.tv — keep up the great work!
