Creative Commons Recognition « Open Education News

Creative Commons Recognition « Open Education News 

Creative Commons Recognition

June 9, 2009 · 2 Comments

Glyn Moody points to a survey conducted by UK’s Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) regarding copyright terminology and presentation on government websites. The results found that 75% of the public did not recognize the Creative Commons license logos, nor what they means. The survey had 1350 respondents. From the survey results:

Only those likely to be more familiar with copyright (inferred from their route to the survey) are likely to have a previous understanding of Creative Commons terminology and imagery. One might argue that if these are used moving forward, more people will become more familiar with these, however, the benefits at this stage of shared / added meaning would only really apply to a minority…

Creative Commons Recognition « Open Education News

CC Licensing Your Dissertations - Creative Commons

CC Licensing Your Dissertations - Creative Commons 

CC Licensing Your Dissertations

Jane Park, February 17th, 2009

PhD students slave for years on researching, writing, and drafting a final product, usually text, that marks the culmination of their candidacy for the highly esteemed doctoral degree. This product is then reviewed by a tenured member of the faculty in their domain of expertise, or a small committee of said members. Upon passing this review, the student is finally rewarded the title of “Doctor” along with its perceived reputation. The dissertation, unfortunately, usually falls to the wayside and is, for the most part, never read again.

Furthermore, because most dissertations are fully copyrighted, these significant pieces of work cannot be reproduced or redistributed for future students’ research. So why not do the obvious? Why not work with copyright law and publish your dissertation under an open license, thereby increasing its exposure to the world, academic or otherwise?

Two UC Berkeley graduates from the School of Information have gone ahead and taken a stab at doing this by CC licensing their dissertations. In the words of The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley’s independent, student-run newspaper:

“This license opens up many possibilities in the academic world such as free online course readers, zero cost educational multimedia, gratis online tutorials-even the price of paper textbooks could be drastically reduced. Perhaps more important than cost, however, by using Creative Commons you are essentially “paying it forward” by sharing your intellectual output with the academic community because future generations of scholars will have greater access to your work.

Two recent Berkeley students to file their dissertations using a Creative Commons license are Joseph Lorenzo Hall and danah boyd. Hall navigated through much bureaucratic red tape, but found that most of his difficulty came from simple formatting issues, not any ideological disagreement by the univerisyt. Another School of Information graduate, danah boyd, also filed her dissertation under Creative Commons shortly thereafter.

On Jan. 28, the Dean of the Graduate Division committed to make Creative Commons licensing available to future students. All students interested in contributing to the effort to make education more affordable and accessible should consider using Creative Commons instead of traditional copyright.”

Both danah’s and Joseph’s dissertations are licensed CC BY-NC-ND and are respectively entitled “Taken Out of Context — American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics” and “Policy Mechanisms for Increasing
Transparency in Electronic Voting“.

We hope that other institutions and individuals will also embrace the significant benefits gained by CC licensing academic outputs such as dissertations. For one thing, CC licensing increases your creation’s visibility, even if by only a small margin at first. It lets current and future students access and read (and even derive, based on the specific CC license you choose) your work so that they can build and improve upon it—all the while giving credit where credit is due, namely, to you.

CC Licensing Your Dissertations - Creative Commons

RiP: A remix manifesto (Trailer) by Gaylor Brett, - NFB

RiP: A remix manifesto (Trailer) by Gaylor Brett, - NFB 

"Should follow the link for the Video....HSM"

 

RiP: A remix manifesto (Trailer)

Gaylor Brett, 2008, 2 min 30 s

Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 21st ...
[ more ]

Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 21st century and shattering the wall between users and producers.

The film’s central protagonist is Girl Talk, a mash-up musician topping the charts with his sample-based songs. But is Girl Talk a paragon of people power or the Pied Piper of piracy? Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, Brazil's Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil and pop culture critic Cory Doctorow are also along for the ride.

A participatory media experiment, from day one, Brett shares his raw footage at opensourcecinema.org, for anyone to remix. This movie-as-mash-up method allows these remixes to become an integral part of the film. With RiP: A remix manifesto, Gaylor and Girl Talk sound an urgent alarm and draw the lines of battle.

Which side of the ideas war are you on?

RiP: A remix manifesto (Trailer) by Gaylor Brett, - NFB

Microsoft Research Unveils Free Software Tools to Help Scholars and Researchers Share Knowledge

 

Microsoft Research Unveils Free Software Tools to Help Scholars and Researchers Share Knowledge

REDMOND, Wash., July 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- At the ninth annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit today, leaders from Microsoft Research outlined their vision for how Microsoft Corp. and academics can collaborate on research projects to develop technological breakthroughs that will define computing and scientific research in the years ahead.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20000822/MSFTLOGO)

Speaking to more than 400 faculty members from leading research institutions worldwide, Tony Hey, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s External Research Division, emphasized the role his group plays not only in supporting specific collaborative research projects, but also in improving the process of research and its role in the innovation ecosystem, including developing and supporting efforts in open access, open tools, open technology and interoperability. Toward that end, Hey announced a set of free software tools aimed at allowing researchers to seamlessly publish, preserve and share data throughout the entire scholarly communication life cycle. He also discussed collaborative initiatives intended to unlock the potential of multicore computing.

In the area of scholarly communication, Hey said, "Collecting and analyzing data, authoring, publishing, and preserving information are all essential components of the everyday work of researchers -- with collaboration and search and discovery at the heart of the entire process. We’re supporting that scholarly communication life cycle with free software tools to improve interoperability with existing tools used commonly by academics and scholars to better meet their research needs."

Microsoft researchers partnered with academia throughout the development of these tools to obtain input on the application of technology to the needs of the academic community, while Microsoft product groups submitted feedback on how the company’s technology could optimally address the entire research process. The collective efforts resulted in the first wave of many tools designed to support academics across the scholarly communication life cycle.

The following tools are freely available now at http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/tc/scholarly_communication.mspx:

-- Add-ins. The Article Authoring Add-in for Word 2007 enables metadata to be captured at the authoring stage to preserve document structure and semantic information throughout the publishing process, which is essential for enabling search, discovery and analysis in subsequent stages of the life cycle. The Creative Commons Add-in for Office 2007 allows authors to embed Creative Commons licenses directly into an Office document (Word, Excel or PowerPoint) by linking to the Creative Commons site via a Web service.

-- The Microsoft e-Journal Service. This offering provides a hosted, full-service solution that facilitates easy self-publishing of online-only journals to facilitate the availability of conference proceedings and small and medium-sized journals.

-- Research Output Repository Platform. This platform helps capture and leverage semantic relationships among academic objects -- such as papers, lectures, presentations and video -- to greatly facilitate access to these items in exciting new ways.

-- The Research Information Centre. In close partnership with the British Library, this collaborative workspace will be hosted via Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and will allow researchers to collaborate throughout the entire research project workflow, from seeking research funding to searching and collecting information, as well as managing data, papers and other research objects throughout the research process.

"Technology that effectively addresses the increasing need to integrate the research life cycle and provide a holistic end-to-end perspective has the potential to revolutionize the way academics collect data, publish findings and preserve information," said Daniel Pollock, vice president and lead analyst at Outsell Inc., a research and advisory firm specializing in the information and education industries. "Companies that work closely with academia can understand how their products might benefit the scholarly workflow and so inform their product development. Microsoft is engaged with the academic community and is releasing a series of tools aimed at streamlining the academic workflow."

Microsoft External Research has a history of supporting groundbreaking research, supporting approximately 400 research projects worldwide last year alone. One area of particular focus has been parallel computing, as exemplified by the creation of a Joint Research Centre with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, and two Universal Parallel Computing Research Centers in partnership with Intel Corporation, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the past year. Furthering Microsoft’s efforts to unlock the potential of multicore processing, Hey announced that his group will provide $1.5 million to seven academic research projects as part of the Safe and Scalable Multicore Computing Program, with the goal of stimulating impactful research in multicore software.

Under Hey’s leadership, the Microsoft External Research team, which complements the work pursued by more than 800 Microsoft researchers in the larger Microsoft Research organization, accelerates the company’s efforts to build lasting public-private partnerships with global scientific and engineering communities. In collaboration with scientists and researchers from industry, academia and government, the External Research team pursues advances in four important areas of research: computer science; earth, energy and environment; education and scholarly communications; and health and well-being.

More information about the annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit is available at http://www.research.microsoft.com/workshops/FS2008.

Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

 Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

"Interesting article from wired magazine......" HSM

 

Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

By Chris Anderson 02.25.08 | 12:00 AM

 

At the age of 40, King Gillette was a frustrated inventor, a bitter anticapitalist, and a salesman of cork-lined bottle caps. It was 1895, and despite ideas, energy, and wealthy parents, he had little to show for his work. He blamed the evils of market competition. Indeed, the previous year he had published a book, The Human Drift, which argued that all industry should be taken over by a single corporation owned by the public and that millions of Americans should live in a giant city called Metropolis powered by Niagara Falls. His boss at the bottle cap company, meanwhile, had just one piece of advice: Invent something people use and throw away.

Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

Open Data Commons » ODC Public Domain Dedication and Licence

Open Data Commons » ODC Public Domain Dedication and Licence 

ODC Public Domain Dedication and Licence

PLEASE READ: This is a beta release, or a draft version of the licence, for comment and criticism by communities interested in licensing databases using a public domain approach. Distribution of this draft document does not create an attorney-client relationship. This information is provided ‘as is‘, and this site makes no warranties on the information provided. Any damages resulting from its use are disclaimed.

READ the full disclaimer here.
*****

PLEASE WAIT UNTIL THIS DRAFT IS FINALISED BEFORE USING

Available in: PDF | ODT | RTF

Open Data Commons – Public Domain Dedication & Licence

Preamble

The Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication & Licence is a document intended to allow you to freely share, modify, and use this work for any purpose and without any restrictions. This licence is intended for use on databases or their contents (”data”), either together or individually.

Many databases are covered by copyright. Some jurisdictions, mainly in Europe, have specific special rights that cover databases called the “sui generis” database right. Both of these sets of rights, as well as other legal rights used to protect databases and data, can create uncertainty or practical difficulty for those wishing to share databases and their underlying data but retain a limited amount of rights under a “some rights reserved” approach to licensing. As a result, this waiver and licence tries to the fullest extent possible to eliminate or fully license any rights that cover this database and data. Any Community Norms or similar statements of use of the database or data do not form a part of this document, and do not act as a contract for access or other terms of use for the database or data.

The position of the recipient of the work

Because this document places the database and its contents in or as close as possible within the public domain, there are no restrictions or requirements placed on the recipient by this document. Recipients may use this work commercially, use technical protection measures, combine this data or database with other databases or data, and share their changes and additions or keep them secret. It is not a requirement that recipients provide further users with a copy of this licence or attribute the original creator of the data or database as a source. The goal is to eliminate restrictions held by the original creator of the data and database on the use of it.

The position of the dedicator of the work

Copyright law, as with most other law under the banner of “intellectual property”, is inherently national law. This means that there exists several differences in how copyright and other IP rights can be relinquished, waived or licensed in the many legal jurisdictions of the world. This is despite much harmonisation of minimum levels of protection. The internet and other communication technologies span these many disparate legal jurisdictions and thus pose special difficulties for a document relinquishing and waiving intellectual property rights, including copyright and database rights, for use by the global community. Because of this feature of IP law, this document first relinquishes the rights and waives the relevant rights and claims. It then goes on to license these same rights for jurisdictions or areas of law that may make it difficult to relinquish or waive rights or claims.

The purpose of this document is to enable rightsholders to place their work into the public domain. Unlike licences for free and open source software, free cultural works, or open content licences, rightsholders will not be able to “dual licence” their work. This is because they have allowed anyone to use the work in whatever way they choose. Rightsholders therefore can’t re-license it under copyright or database rights on different terms because they have nothing left to license. Doing so creates truly accessible data to build rich applications and advance the progress of science and the arts.

This document can cover either or both of the database and its contents. Because databases can have a wide variety of content – not just factual data – rightsholders should use the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication & Licence for an entire database and its contents only if everything can be placed under the terms of this document. Because even factual data can sometimes have intellectual property rights, rightsholders should use this licence to cover both the database and its factual data when making material available under this document; even if it is likely that the data would not be covered by copyright or database rights.

Rightsholders can also use this document to cover any copyright or database rights claims over only a database, and leave the contents to be covered by other licences or documents. They can do this because this document refers to the “Work”, which can be either – or both – the database and its contents. As a result, rightsholders need to make it clear what they are dedicating under this document when they dedicate it.

Just like any licence or other document dealing with intellectual property, rightsholders should be aware that one can only license what one owns. Please ensure that the rights have been cleared to make this material available under this document.

This document permanently and irrevocably makes the Work available to the public for any use of any kind, and it should not be used unless the rightsholder is prepared for this to happen.

Part I: Introduction

The Rightsholder (the Person holding rights or claims over the Work) agrees as follows:

1.0 Definitions of Capitalised Words

“Copyright” – Includes rights under copyright and under neighbouring rights and similarly related sets of rights under the law of the relevant jurisdiction under Section 6.4.

“Data” – The contents of the Database, which includes the information, independent works, or other material collected into the Database offered under the terms of this Document.

“Database” – A collection of Data arranged in a systematic or methodical way and individually accessible by electronic or other means offered under the terms of this Document.

“Database Directive” – Means Directive 96/9/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 1996 on the legal protection of databases.

“Database Right” – Means rights over Data resulting from the Chapter III (”sui generis”) rights in the Database Directive (as applied in national law) as well as any similar rights available in the relevant jurisdiction under Section 6.4.

“Document” – means this relinquishment and waiver of rights and claims and back up licence agreement.

“Person” – Means a natural or legal person or a body of persons corporate or incorporate.

“Use” – As a verb, means doing any act that is restricted by Copyright or Database Rights whether in the original medium or any other; and includes modifying the Work as may be technically necessary to use it in a different mode or format. This includes the right to sublicense the Work.

“Work” – Means either or both of the Database and Data offered under the terms of this Document.

“You” – the Person acquiring rights under the licence elements of this Document.

Words in the singular include the plural and vice versa.

2.0 What this document covers

2.1. Legal effect of this Document. This Document is:

a. A dedication to the public domain and waiver of Copyright and Database Rights over the Work; and

b. A licence of Copyright and Database Rights over the Work in jurisdictions that do not allow for relinquishment or waiver.

2.2 Rights not covered.

a. This Document does not apply to computer programs used in the making or operation of the Database;

b. This Document does not cover any patents over the Data or the Database. Please see Section 4.2 later in this Document for further details; and

c. This Document does not cover any trade marks associated with the Database. Please see Section 4.3 later in this Document for further details.

Users of this Database are cautioned that they may have to clear other rights or consult other licences.

2.3 Facts are free. The Rightsholder takes the position that factual information is not covered by Copyright. This Document however covers the Work in jurisdictions that may protect the factual information in the Work by Copyright, and to cover any information protected by Copyright that is contained in the Work.

Part II: Dedication to the public domain

3.0 Dedication, waiver, and licence of Copyright and Database Rights

3.1 Dedication of Copyright and Database Rights to the public domain. The Rightsholder by using this Document, dedicates the Work to the public domain for the benefit of the public and relinquishes all rights in Copyright and Database Rights over the Work.

a. The Rightsholder realises that once these rights are relinquished, that the Rightsholder has no further rights in Copyright and Database Rights over the Work, and that the Work is free and open for others to Use.

b. The Rightsholder intends for their relinquishment to cover all present and future rights in the Work under Copyright and Database Rights, whether they are vested or contingent rights, and that this relinquishment of rights covers all their heirs and successors.

The above relinquishment of rights applies worldwide and includes media and formats now known or created in the future.

3.2 Waiver of rights and claims in Copyright and Database Rights when Section 3.1 dedication inapplicable. If the dedication in Section 3.1 does not apply in the relevant jurisdiction under Section 6.4, the Rightsholder waives any rights and claims that the Rightsholder may have or acquire in the future over the Work in:

a. Copyright; and

b. Database Rights.

To the extent possible in the relevant jurisdiction, the above waiver of rights and claims applies worldwide and includes media and formats now known or created in the future. The Rightsholder agrees not to assert the above rights and waives the right to enforce them over the Work.

3.3 Licence of Copyright and Database Rights when Sections 3.1 and 3.2 inapplicable. If the dedication and waiver in Sections 3.1 and 3.2 does not apply in the relevant jurisdiction under Section 6.4, the Rightsholder and You agree as follows:

a. The Licensor grants to You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, licence to Use the Work for the duration of any applicable Copyright and Database Rights. These rights explicitly include commercial use, and do not exclude any field of endeavour. To the extent possible in the relevant jurisdiction, these rights may be exercised in all media and formats whether now known or created in the future.

3.4 Moral rights. This section covers moral rights, including the right to be identified as the author of the Work or to object to treatment that would otherwise prejudice the author’s honour and reputation, or any other derogatory treatment:

a. For jurisdictions allowing waiver of moral rights, Licensor waives all moral rights that Licensor may have in the Work to the fullest extent possible by the law of the relevant jurisdiction under Section 6.4;

b. If waiver of moral rights under Section 3.4 a in the relevant jurisdiction is not possible, Licensor agrees not to assert any moral rights over the Work and waives all claims in moral rights to the fullest extent possible by the law of the relevant jurisdiction under Section 6.4; and

c. For jurisdictions not allowing waiver or an agreement not to assert moral rights under Section 3.4 a and b, the author may retain their moral rights over the copyrighted aspects of the Work.

Please note that some jurisdictions do not allow for the waiver of moral rights, and so moral rights may still subsist over the work in some jurisdictions.

4.0 Relationship to other rights

4.1 No other contractual conditions. The Rightsholder makes this Work available to You without any other contractual obligations, either express or implied. Any Community Norms statement associated with the Work is not a contract and does not form part of this Document.

4.2 Relationship to patents. This Document does not grant You a licence for any patents that the Rightsholder may own. Users of this Database are cautioned that they may have to clear other rights or consult other licences.

4.3 Relationship to trade marks. This Document does not grant You a licence for any trade marks that the Rightsholder may own or that the Rightsholder may use to cover the Work. Users of this Database are cautioned that they may have to clear other rights or consult other licences.

Part III: General provisions

5.0 Warranties, disclaimer, and limitation of liability

5.1 The Work is provided by the Rightsholder “as is” and without any warranty of any kind, either express or implied, whether of title, of accuracy, of the presence of absence of errors, of fitness for purpose, or otherwise. Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of implied warranties, so this exclusion may not apply to You.

5.2 Subject to any liability that may not be excluded or limited by law, the Rightsholder is not liable for, and expressly excludes, all liability for loss or damage however and whenever caused to anyone by any use under this Document, whether by You or by anyone else, and whether caused by any fault on the part of the Rightsholder or not. This exclusion of liability includes, but is not limited to, any special, incidental, consequential, punitive, or exemplary damages. This exclusion applies even if the Rightsholder has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

5.3 If liability may not be excluded by law, it is limited to actual and direct financial loss to the extent it is caused by proved negligence on the part of the Rightsholder.

6.0 General

6.1 If any provision of this Document is held to be invalid or unenforceable, that must not affect the validity or enforceability of the remainder of the terms of this Document.

6.2 This Document is the entire agreement between the parties with respect to the Work covered here. It replaces any earlier understandings, agreements or representations with respect to the Work not specified here.

6.3 This Document does not affect any rights that You or anyone else may independently have under any applicable law to make any use of this Work, including (for jurisdictions where this Document is a licence) fair dealing, fair use, database exceptions, or any other legally recognised limitation or exception to infringement of copyright or other applicable laws.

6.4 This Document takes effect in the relevant jurisdiction in which the Document terms are sought to be enforced. If the rights waived or granted under applicable law in the relevant jurisdiction includes additional rights not waived or granted under this Document, these additional rights are included in this Document in order to meet the intent of this Document.

Open Data Commons » ODC Public Domain Dedication and Licence

What the Creative in 'Creative Commons' Really Means - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

What the Creative in 'Creative Commons' Really Means - News and Analysis by PC Magazine 

What the Creative in 'Creative Commons' Really Means

by Matt Safford

At the turn of the millennium, Stanford law professor and cyber-law expert Lawrence Lessig had an idea.

In the midst of a Supreme Court case arguing that the latest lengthening of American copyright laws was unconstitutional, Lessig decided that if he couldn't stop the strengthening of copyright law, which was extended by an additional twenty years in 1998, he would help create an alternative.

In 2001, Lessig and a board of directors founded a non-profit organization called Creative Commons, to create legal licenses that expanded the options of traditional copyright laws, enabling users to selectively allow use of their works by others. Loosely based on earlier ideas already popular online, such as open-source software, the first six licenses were released via the Creative Commons website in December of 2002.

Five years later, the Commons pool of content contains more than 60 million individual works. From Bangladeshi blogs to Flikr photos from Fresno, Creative Commons has been embraced by recording artists, filmmakers, code writers, and other content creators who believe that collective culture benefits when creative minds build upon the ideas of others. Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of Media Studies and Law at the University of Virginia, and author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How it Threatens Creativity, says that Creative Commons' real power is in its ability to inform users.

"It gives creators who never went to law school the vocabulary they need to work through the copyright system," says Vaidhyanathan. "It lets creators understand that copyright is not one right; it's a bundle of rights. And that if you create a work, you have the ability to let the world use it in useful and beneficial ways."

But the concept isn't all free love and file-sharing. Using Creative Commons licenses, content producers can release their work into the public domain, for anyone to cut up, mash up, or mark up. Or they can simply allow people to distribute it as a whole, without the ability to alter it. The other licenses fall somewhere in-between, but all require attribution, so creators get the credit they're due.

That isn't to say all users of Creative Commons give their content away for free. Though many allow for free non-commercial use, they commonly restrict commercial use. And the "sampling plus" license, popular among musicians, lets other recording artists sample pieces of their work, while still allowing the original musicians to sell their albums. But the bulk of Creative Commons-licensed content comes from bloggers, who are largely more interested in traffic and relevance than sales.

"Most text on the web doesn't have a price tag attached to it, so there's no big corporate regime with accountants worried about the idea of giving anything away free," says Vaidhyanathan. "Secondly, it's real easy to tag text on the web with a little Creative Commons [button] and if people are curious about it, they click on it and they find out. It really is remarkably easy for that medium. It's a little bit more challenging for things like video and music."

"Commons' license can mean exposure

Still, many recording artists, frustrated over the way copyright laws have stifled sampling over the last fifteen years, are embracing Creative Commons and releasing their music under a license that specifically allows their music to be sampled.

Chris Randall, former front man of the band Sister Machine Gun and founder of Positron Records, released his last three albums under Creative Commons' Sample Plus license. He lets other artists on his label release content under Creative Commons, and so far has yet to meet any strong resistance from his label mates. In fact, he says, once he explains it to them, they're pretty open to the idea, because it can provide them a different type of exposure.

"People that do internet radio as a hobby, rather than a business, tend to seek out Creative Commons-licensed music," says Randall. "So we do get some exposure that way, that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise."

Contrary to the actions of the major record labels, Positron also uses Creative Commons to expressly allow fans to upload songs onto peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, as long as they are properly labeled, so that the artist gets credit.

Randall doesn't see this as a threat to his sales. Indeed he sells CDs directly on his site, along with digital downloads through iTunes and other download sites. He thinks the major labels that spend millions trying to curb piracy on the internet are fighting a futile battle.

"The way I see it, there are people in this world that pay for things and people that try to get over. And the people of this world that try to get over are gonna get over no matter what you do," says Randall. "So why fight it, you know?"

All the label's albums are released under Creative Commons, and Randall says it's getting easier to convince other musicians to release their music under Creative Commons.

To Vaidhyanathan, this isn't surprising at all. "The artists seem to get it better than the intermediaries," says Vaidhyanathan. "Right now I'm currently negotiating a couple different book contracts, and I'm trying to get my publishers to let me release the works under a Creative Commons license…I have to make those arguments fresh every time. Because a lot of people in those industries are not as well versed in the ways these things work, as, say, the Beastie Boys or David Byrne are."

Film, literature see benefits

Those musicians, along with best-selling novelist Jonathan Lethem, are a few of the "stars" that have embraced Creative Commons, or in Letham's case a derivation of the idea. The author is selling film and theater production rights to several of his short stories for $1 apiece, and giving away the film rights to his last novel, You Don't Love Me Yet. With more mainstream talent embracing these ideas, Vaidhyanathan says Creative Commons could become the default method of distributing cultural products.

But until that happens, if it ever does, getting Creative Commons licenses translated into as many languages and legal jurisdictions as possible is the next phase in the process, and it's already well underway. There are currently 34 jurisdiction-specific licenses, with nine other jurisdictions in the drafting process, according to the Creative Commons website.

Countries around the world are beginning to use Creative Commons to promote and distribute content. A Creative Commons photography contest just wrapped up in mainland China. And a Dutch court last year ruled a Creative Commons license legally binding in a lawsuit brought by former MTV host Adam Curry against a Dutch newspaper that printed Creative Commons-licensed photos of Curry's daughter, which were posted on his Flickr account.

Along with the challenge of globalizing the concept, Vaidhyanathan sees people's resistance to Creative Commons as a hurdle, but not an insurmountable one.

"I'm pretty sure that all of this sort of emotional reaction to Creative Commons as some sort of hippy, anarchistic movement, is going to go away," says Vaidhyanathan. "People are going to realize that it is a sort of down to earth business tool that actually helps communities of creators do their work together, and reflects how creativity actually happens. I think that's going to be step number one."

What the Creative in 'Creative Commons' Really Means - News and Analysis by PC Magazine

BetaNews | MPAA's student P2P sniffer pulled over copyright issues

BetaNews | MPAA's student P2P sniffer pulled over copyright issues 

MPAA's student P2P sniffer pulled over copyright issues

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

December 4, 2007, 2:45 PM

In an embarrassing blunder for an organization that has made copyright one of its signature issues, the MPAA is now being accused of violating copyright itself.

As part of the organization's fight against the pirating of movies, the Motion Picture Association of America had been urging universities to install an Ubuntu-based toolkit that would assist it in tracking and reporting students who were participating in file-sharing. The Association proposed the so-called "University Toolkit" as part of letters sent to 25 universities back in October.

MPAA's software was not above criticism: One security researcher found it could pose significant privacy concerns depending on how the school's network was set up.

But that's not the whole of it. On Monday, it was disclosed that the organization is actually breaking copyright itself by providing the toolkit. One of the developers behind the Ubuntu toolkit began defending the distribution by issuing takedown notices.

Ubuntu is licensed under the General Public License. In order to comply with the terms, developers creating applications must not only provide the binary, but the source code behind it as well as publish changes made. Without the source code, distributing the binary alone constitutes copyright infringement under the GPL.

Obviously, such a setup would not benefit MPAA. With source code in hand, enterprising hackers would probably be able to find ways to subvert the tracker, and continue to trade files.

When Ubuntu developer Matthew Garrett caught wind of the MPAA's activities, he complained to the organization directly. However, the group didn't respond to his e-mails, and calls to the organization's office were met with bewildered receptionists unsure of how to direct his call and with promises that he would be called back.

Frustrated, Garrett took it to the next level, contacting the group's ISP and demanding that the offending content be removed from its servers. It apparently has complied, and the package was missing from the MPAA's Web site as of Tuesday.

"MPAA don't [expletive] with my [expletive]," Garrett wrote on his Web log Monday.

Lawsuit Against Creative Commons Dropped

Photo-sharing copyright license is unclear, says family whose daughter's image was used in an ad.

Grant Gross, IDG News Service

Saturday, December 01, 2007 01:00 PM PST

A Texas family has dropped its lawsuit against the
nonprofit Creative Commons copyright licensing organization, after an
apparent misunderstanding over commercial use of a photo of a teenage
member of the family.

Susan Chang of Dallas, filed the lawsuit in September against Creative Commons,
Virgin Mobile USA and Virgin Mobile of Australia, alleging that the
Australian company's use of her daughter's photo in an advertising
campaign violated her privacy rights. But Justin Wong, the photographer
who took the photo, posted the image on the Flickr photo-sharing site
under the Creative Commons Attribution copyright license, which allows
others, including commercial entities, to reuse the copyright work
without paying for it.

Susan Chang and Wong accused Creative
Commons of failing to "adequately educate and warn him .... of the
meaning of commercial use and the ramifications and effects of entering
into a license allowing such use," according to their complaint.

Chang
and Wong dropped the lawsuit against Creative Commons and Virgin Mobile
USA Tuesday. Their lawyer, Ryan Zehl, said the plaintiffs instead would
focus on their lawsuit against Virgin Mobile of Australia.

Chang
and Wong weren't seeking monetary damages from Creative Commons, Zehl
said. Instead, they wanted the organization to add three sentences to
its licenses clarifying that the license doesn't deal with privacy
rights, he said. "There's only so far we can go with spending money
without getting money in return," he said.

Creative Commons,
launched in 2001, attempts to give copyright holders additional options
for licensing their work. The organization has created a series of
licenses between full copyright, in which all rights are reserved, and
the public domain, in which no rights are reserved. The group's six
licenses attempt to allow creators to have "some rights reserved."
Three of the six licenses forbid commercial use without permission.

Creative
Commons said Chang and Wong didn't have a strong case. Flickr users do
not have to license their photos or allow reuse, and the Creative
Commons licensing is not the default option, the organization said.

"Although
we are confident that any court would have agreed that there was no
valid legal claim against us, this is a good result," the organization
said in a statement.

Still Creative Commons founder and CEO
Lawrence Lessig said the organization will look at ways to make its
licenses clearer to users.

"The fact that the laws of the
United States don't make us liable for the misuse in this context
doesn't mean that we're not working extremely hard to make sure misuse
doesn't happen," Lessig wrote on his blog.
"It is always a problem (even if not a legal problem) when someone
doesn't understand what our licenses do, or how they work. We need to
work harder to make that clear."

Zehl said he's not convinced
Creative Commons will make license changes his plaintiffs have asked
for. The organization so far has not acted, he said. "Maybe they will,
maybe they won't," he said. "We can't spend all day trying to get them
to do something they should've done in the first place."

The lawsuit cost the nonprofit about US$15,000, Lessig wrote.

Lessig
also apologized for the confusion. "We thought the meaning was clear,"
he said. "We work hard to make this as clear as we can. We will work
harder."

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