Mob Spots, collaboration, and Creative Commons

Matt Haughey, September 29th, 2003

Steven Johnson coined the term “mob spots” to describe a group creating political spots using simple desktop tools. Jason Kottke suggests campaigns create spaces filled with seed material specifically so people can voluntarily create material for the campaign.

We have dipped our toe into the community creativity pool with our Moving Image Contest and most recently with a music remixing mini-contest, and both projects have produced some amazing creative works that were facilitated by our licenses and we intend to do larger, similar projects in the future.

We love the idea of “mob spots”; that interested communities could spring up around a candidate, issue, or topic and using a common set of raw materials, produce clever and engaging works. The process is exactly what our licenses intend to do: let others know that you’d like them to take, use, and reuse your work in new works. It is our hope that any candidates or citizen groups considering such an open collaborative place might license their creative pool of raw resources under Creative Commons to make it clear the works are free to build upon by others.

Silenced: a censorship study

Matt Haughey, September 24th, 2003

“Silenced: Censorship and Control of the Internet” is a new paper covering findings from a 12-month study of Internet censorship around the world. The study, published jointly by Privacy International and GreenNet Educational Trust, found that in the wake of September 11, 2001, over 50 countries stepped up efforts to control the Internet within their boundaries, among other conclusions.

The full report is available here as a 2Mb PDF, and it licensed under an Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike license.

Practical RDF

Matt Haughey, September 23rd, 2003

Developers interested in Creative Commons may like a new O’Reilly book authored by Shelly Powers called Practical RDF. A couple chapters discuss real-world applications using RDF and Creative Commons is covered in one section. It summarizes our metadata model and builds upon other concepts in the book.

A comprehensive review of the book was posted to Slashdot today.

Magnatune

Matt Haughey, September 18th, 2003

Magnatune is an amazing new record label that is completely rethinking old music industry business models. They offer music from a wide range of genres that you can download, stream, and listen to. And, like computer shareware, you buy stuff you like only after trying it out first. The label splits profits with artists 50-50 and even offers a sliding scale for purchases through Paypal.

On top of all that, they’ve released every song on the label under a Creative Commons license. Like their slogan says, “We are not evil.” Sounds like an understatement.

Fray Audio Archive

Matt Haughey, September 17th, 2003

This week we’re highlighting Derek Powazek‘s online storytelling work at The Fray, specifically The Fray Audio Archive. The Fray is a site where people tell stories and others comment on those stories, and once a year there are worldwide gatherings to do open-mic storytelling live, dubbed Fray Day. The Fray Audio Archive contains recordings from the past 5 years of events, totalling over 18 hours of Creative Commons licensed audio. If you like what you hear, you might want to check out this year’s Fray Day, taking place between October 3rd and 5th in 14 cities across the globe.

Also worth noting is that all Fray audio is being generously hosted by the Internet Archive, free of charge. We’ve recently updated the licensing process to point out the Archive’s Open Source Audio and Open Source Movies areas. The Archive offers free hosting of audio and video works you have created and licensed under Creative Commons, so if storage and bandwidth are holding your creativity back, do yourself a favor and check out the Internet Archive.

Can you remix? Want to be on our CD? Want a free T-shirt?

Neeru Paharia, September 16th, 2003

If you send us a remix of Superego Exchange by September 23rd, we will send you a free Creative Commons T-shirt — a $20 dollar value. The best entry will go on the Creative Commons promotional CD. Send us your remixes in now!

The New York Times

Press Robot, September 15th, 2003

“Whatever Will Be Will Be Free on the Internet,” by Steve Lohr.

Creative Commons awarded prize for Best Social Innovation

Glenn Otis Brown, September 15th, 2003

We’ve just learned that the Institute for Social Inventions (UK) has named our licensing project the Best Social Innovation in 2003 in the Communications Category.

The Institute is an educational charity founded in 1985. Its patrons include Brian Eno, Anita Roddick, and Fay Weldon.

We’ll pass on details as we learn more.

Creative Commons in NYT

Glenn Otis Brown, September 15th, 2003

A piece on digital music from the Sunday New York Times mentions Creative Commons and quotes our chairman.

Kottke.org

Matt Haughey, September 11th, 2003

September 11, 2001 was a day of shock, horror, sadness, and confusion for many of us. In the midst of all that, a few tried their best to gather as much information as they could about it, to help make sense of things. Kottke.org’s September 11 post was a hub for breaking news, photos, and personal perspectives from NYC.