Das 2006 gegründete Netlabel headphonica ist vor Kurzem Opfer einer seltsamen Domainübernahme geworden. Nun wird ihre alte Seite von den neuen Domainbesitzern - inklusive Teilen der insgesamt 80 bisherigen cc-lizenzierten Releases - weitgehend unverändert weiterbetrieben und wurde den Headphonica-Gründern zum Rückkauf angeboten.

Wer sich rechtlich an dem Fall versuchen möchte, ist hiermit herzlich dazu aufgerufen (Kontaktdaten am Ende der Seite), vor allem aber ist dies ein Aufruf an alle, ihre alten Links zur headphonica-Seite auf deren neue Domain headphonica.com zu ändern.

Hier ist die ganze Geschichte:

Wir dachten, wir seien “kleine Fische” und hätten es bei unserem geplanten Providerwechsel vor knapp einem Monat nicht für möglich gehalten, dass wir als unkommerzielles Netlabel die Aufmerksamkeit von Domaingrabbern (eigentlich “Cybersquatting”) erregen könnten. Doch unsere bisherige Domain www.headphonica.net war von einem auf den anderen Tag neu registriert - aber nicht von uns.

Interessant dabei: die Struktur unserer Webseite wurde perfekt kopiert, vermutlich per “web scraping” [http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scraper_Site - aufgrund des Alters der Links, muss der "Scrape" vor ca. 2 Jahren stattgefunden haben]. Darüber hinaus enthält die Seite Teile unseres Contents, konkret auch unsere eigene Musik die wir unter Creative Commons veröffentlicht haben, allerdings ohne Hinweis auf die Lizenz. Weil der Neu-Eigentümer von uns 200 $ haben wollte, um uns die Domain zurück zu übertragen, haben wir beschlossen auf www.headphonica.com umzuziehen. Äußerst perfide und Teil dieser Erpressungstaktik ist es, dass auch das Kontaktformular mit übernommen wurde - über das wir bisher die meisten Demos (Demotapes) bekommen haben.

Der neue Provider der Seite meinte, wir sollten auf das Angebot des Neu-Eigentümers eingehen und hat offenbar keinerlei rechtliche Bedenken. Dass die Musik unter Creative Commons veröffentlicht wurde und bei Weiterverbreitung immer die Lizenz mit angegeben werden muß (Absatz 4, Unterabsatz a) läßt den Seitenbetreiber dabei kalt. Wir hätten ja eigentlich nichts einzuwenden gegen die Weiterverbreitung der Musik - grundsätzlich ist das ja genau unser Ziel - dennoch ist die Absicht hinter der Webseite headphonica.net offenbar nicht das Verbreiten von schöner Musik, sondern einzig und allein, uns Labelbetreiber mit der gefakten Seite zu erpressen.

Auch das wäre nicht weiter schlimm, weil es technisch kein Problem war, umzuziehen und wir das neue Seitendesign schon vorher vorbereitet hatten. Allerdings zeigen alle Links die in den letzten Jahren irgendwo hinterlassen wurden auf headphonica.net - entsprechend hoch ist der page-rank bei Google im Vergleich zu www.headphonica.com. Wir haben mittlerweile alle Links auf die wir Zugriff haben, zb. in Social Networks usw., auf headphonica.com umgestellt. Trotzdem gibt es da draußen etliche Links die wir nicht beeinflussen können.

Wer dies hier liest und irgendwann mal auf headphonica.net verlinkt hat, sei hiermit gebeten den Link nach www.headphonica.com zu korrigieren - Vielen Dank! Bitte auch keine neuen Links auf headphonica.net anlegen.

Kontakt zu Martin Enderlein & Co. siehe http://www.headphonica.com/?page_id=3

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

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.

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.

Since the release of CC0, I’ve been talking to many people about when and how to use it. A group of scientists and science policy experts recently endorsed public domain data sharing, and the use of CC0 to do so, in a letter to Nature. This is a significant affirmation of our approach to data sharing. But a question that inevitably arises in many discussions is: What about data providers that are unable or unwilling to commit their data to the public domain? Will Creative Commons support providing a flexible set of licensing options, intermediate between public domain, on the one hand, and full control (secrecy), on the other?

First, I have to clarify what I mean by “data” in this discussion. “Data” by itself can mean anything, including music, movies, pictures, and other things that are clearly copyrightable. But in this discussion, I will use the term “data” in a narrower and more specific sense:  we mean facts, ideas, and concepts that are not copyrightable by themselves. An example would be Einstein’s E=MC^2 equation, the height of Mount Everest, or the coordinates of a particular star. The unprotected status of these data was affirmed in Feist Publications vs. Rural Telephone Service, where the U.S. Supreme Court found that originality is a basic Constitutional prerequisite for copyright to exist, or as Justice O’Conner, writing for the majority, said: “It is this bedrock principle of copyright that … No one may claim originality as to facts.” (emphasis added) The U.S Copyright Act further codifies this principle as a limitation on the scope of copyright protection (at Section 102(b)). Likewise, other countries recognize this limitation in their originality requirements.

This basic limitation on the scope copyright acknowledges that copyright is inherently a social compromise between the desire to reward authors for creative output and the need to protect a reservoir of facts and ideas available for everyone to draw upon. Without this “commons” of facts and ideas, social discourse and creativity would suffer. As Lawrence Lessig writes, in The Future of Ideas, “”Free resources have been crucial to innovation and creativity… without them, creativity is crippled. Thus, and especially in the digital age, the central question becomes not whether government or the market should control a resource, but whether a resource should be controlled at all. Just because control is possible, it doesn’t follow that it is justified. Instead, in a free society, the burden of justification should fall on him who would defend systems of control.”

And yet, over time, copyright control has expanded dramatically in scope and duration, straining this delicate social compromise. Ironically, it is the growth and success of the Internet, with its extraordinary power and freedom, that has spurred renewed interest in extending copyright-like controls even beyond the traditional realms of copyright itself. Databases containing myriad facts and ideas, once considered public domain if shared publicly, are now the subject of efforts to create new systems of control. In Europe, by E.U. Directive, countries have implemented “sui generis” database rights that protect databases and their contents even if they are too unoriginal to merit copyright protection. Other countries grant copyright protection to databases under relaxed copyright standards that demand less than full originality or creativity.

Finally, there are attempts to create systems of control based on contract law (like click-wrap agreements, Web site terms of use, etc.), premised not on the existence of any copyright or statutory right, but merely on voluntary agreement. Contracts can expand copyright-like controls well beyond the boundaries of traditional copyright or even sui generis protections, and indeed have no inherent limits other than the enforceability of the agreement (which can be problematic in itself). Not only do such contracts apply to uncopyrightable data, but they can also impose controls on data already otherwise in the public domain, since the issue is not the status of the data but whether you consented to abide by a contract. A recent example is the Open Data Commons’ Open Database License (ODbL), which is being considered for adoption by the OpenStreetMap community, among others. The Open Data Commons not only has been a strong supporter and advocate for open data sharing, but it has provided important community tools, including the Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL). But unlike the previously released PDDL, the new ODbL contains attribution and share-alike obligations, among other requirements. Its terms and conditions are imposed on copyright or sui generis database rights, but it also purports to act as a contract in the absence of these protections. As a result, it attempts to impose obligations on data that even copyright and sui generis rights do not reach.

With CC0, Creative Commons has chosen to take a different approach (or rather, to stick with an approach similar to the PDDL). CC0 is a way to give up controls and dedicate data to the public domain (or as close to it as we can legally achieve). As I have explained elsewhere, we were concerned about the practical impact of “attribution stacking” and license compatibility problems for data sharing communities. Attribution stacking can burden large-scale data sharing projects that draw on many sources and license compatibility problems can shut down data integration efforts altogether.

In science, an area that I focus on, sharing data in the public domain is in fact part of a long and honored tradition. Before the Internet, data was published, if at all, in journals in print. The articles themselves may be copyrightable, but the facts and ideas revealed there were presumed to be in the public domain. Only with the advent of the Internet and digital technology has there been interest in “licensing” contents of databases including such facts and ideas. Thus, where there is an established tradition of public domain data sharing that has worked well for a community–and continues to work well– any new system of control must meet a high burden of justification. But based on our experiences with other licensing schemes, we know that such controls carry risks. Even a simple requirement like attribution, when aggregated over thousands or millions of data elements, can become a very serious burden. Scientists should provide attribution (and citation) for valid scientific reasons, and no legal requirement may be flexible enough to replace common sense or professional judgment, an important ingredient in deciding what to attribute and how. In addition, license incompatibility problems, which are especially relevant with share-alike licenses, can prevent databases or data sources from being combined or integrated or data from being reused. All of this can have a negative impact on the usability of scientific data.

In light of such risks, what could justify departures from the public domain? One argument, made to me eloquently by several data project organizers, is that unless we grant providers the flexibility to impose some controls–rather than none–they will be reluctant or unwilling to grant any access. And even restricted sharing, with some conditions, is better than no sharing at all. Further, they argue that some extremely valuable data sets might fall into this category, because the more valuable the data, the less likely it is that someone would consider simply releasing it into the public domain. And so by not offering a graduated system of controls, like the CC suite of copyright licenses, important opportunities to share are being missed, with serious consequences for those communities and perhaps for all of us. I have to admit that it’s a powerful argument against being too dogmatically attached to the public domain, and if true, it might justify other approaches.

At issue is whether more data would be made available under a more restrictive system than the public domain and to what extent those restrictions impair the value of that data to the community. I don’t think we know the answer fully yet. It’s a question that undoubtedly deserves more research by sociologists and other scholars, based on empirical evidence. But, when in doubt, what should be done? I come back to Lessig’s admonition that, “the burden of justification should fall on him who would defend systems of control.” I think the best that can be said for more restrictive systems of sharing data is “not yet proven.” And that’s why we will continue to advocate public domain and CC0 for data sharing.

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.

You were originally brought to our attention by Larry, who said he spoke to your classroom for half an hour about copyright and Creative Commons. And putting aside the fact that it’s awesome that you got half an hour of his attention, what is it that you teach and that spurred you to set up this first conversation with Larry?

Yeah, that was really cool that he gave us that much time; it was so nice of him to do that, and the way that he interacted with the kids was really awesome; he really took them seriously and gave very thoughtful responses. But what I teach this year–I’m a language arts teacher, but this year I’m teaching a film and literacy class. So it’s kind of a cool thing for middle schoolers to be able to take. My district is offering it and basically, we watch films and we make our own short films. And it’s all geared around kids building literacy skills through studying and making their own films.

So do they actually shoot their own films? Or do they use material that’s online and remix it, or do a little bit of both?

Right now, they shoot their own films. They have cameras and Apple laptops. The remixing part–I would like to; I have an after school club where we make stop motion films and we sort of mess around with some remixing in that club.

Do you encourage them to use Creative Commons licensed soundtracks or images or anything like that?

I do. That’s where, particular last year, as we started making films and I knew about all of the wealth of content online that you could use through Creative Commons, I started opening up all those resources to my students. So we’ve been using ccMixter and we use Freesound quite a bit, and so we basically tap into all those resources under the Creative Commons licenses, so it really just opens up just an amazing amount of resources. Like we drop in all this different music and sound effects, [and] it really helps the kids a lot and on their projects.

That’s really cool! So you’ve been doing that for the past year?

Yeah, I did that all last year. And even before that, as a language arts teacher, we were kind of experimenting with some of these resources, but really heavily over the last year.

How did you as a–you’re a middle school teacher right? You teach seventh and eight grades?

Right now I’m teaching sixth and seventh grade.

So how did you, as a middle school teacher, become aware of Creative Commons and decide to incorporate that into your film class?

Well one of the things is, as a teacher I was pretty confused about copyright, and when we first started making movies before I even started teaching the film class, I knew that we were using copyrighted material in some of our projects, and I just wasn’t sure what the rules were. And so as I started learning about Creative Commons I thought, as a way to learn more myself, we would start looking into it as a whole class.

So it was kind of a learning process together?

Exactly, yeah. I know we were making these video projects and posting them online, and I didn’t want to model inappropriate copyright, so I thought, well we’ll look into Creative Commons. And I just started learning more, and when you start looking into it you realize how easy it is and the wealth of resources that are out there at your fingertips. You know, it becomes really advantageous for the teacher to figure it out because the kids really get into it, it makes their projects better, and it helps us all learn about these issues of copyright. So I got into it because I wanted to learn about it, and I wanted to open up these resources for my students.

What are some of the resources that you started with and that were the most help to you?

The main one we used–last year there were two, there was ccMixter.org and there was another one called Freesound. And this year with Freesound… all last year, we took a lot of content from these websites–we just took and took. And this year we though it would be interesting if we added some to these sites as well. So we have a classroom Freesound account called “Pay Attention”, and we capture free sounds around our school with this nice digital recorder and we upload them to the account. So we’re trying to get the kids to understand that these are online communities where you take stuff, but it’s also really good to contribute content. So we’re making a point this year to rate the sounds in the songs as we download them to give feedback to the artists who uploaded them, and then we’re adding our own content that people are really downloading–we have some sounds that have been downloaded dozens of times, which the kids–they see that and they’re like wow, we’re part of this community.

Yeah, a community of sharing. That’s really cool, so how do you guys decide which license to upload your own content under?

Well the movies that we make, the stop motion movies, in the stop motion club called Longfellow Ten, those are all Creative Commons Attribution 3.0.

Ok, Attribution Only (CC BY), yeah.

And, however, with the stop motion, I like to change that to where there can be remix and mash-ups. However, movies where the kids are in it themselves, those are “all rights reserved” because they’re middle school students and we kind of just keep “all rights reserved” on those. But how are the sounds that we upload–[they] are sampling plus 1.0 license so they can take them, do anything they want, remix them, mash up, whatever.

So I guess when the kids are engaging in these projects, remixing, etc., where does the discussion about licensing and copyright issues come in? Do they see that ccMixter has Creative Commons licensed music and go, hey that icon is Creative Commons licensed music–what’s that? And you kind of go over it with them? How does that discussion come in?

Basically, it’s really just kind of a discussion that goes on all year. Creative Commons content and copyright is a discussion that we have throughout the whole school year. I have printed out some large Creative Commons posters that you guys make available on your site (which are really nice classroom posters), so we have this up and as the kids are downloading songs that they want to use, we have a format that makes sure they attribute the artist, that they cite the exact URL, that they cite the title of the track and the licensing status it’s licensed under. So they really learn about it by doing it. I don’t stand up there and lecture to them, but by going through the process they really get a grasp on the license and how it works. And why–the idea that artists want to share their stuff.

So they have an idea of–if it weren’t for the Creative Commons license the artists wouldn’t be able to share legally? Do you talk about how restrictive copyright naturally is? Or, have you gone over that with them?

Yeah, that comes up a lot because they don’t quite understand that you can’t take a 50 cent song or something and just drop it into your video.

They just do it anyway.

Yeah, and they do do it anyway because a lot of these kids are posting all kinds of content online as everybody knows, and then I’ll say, have you guys had YouTube videos taken down? And they’ll all raise their hands. And those are some questions we had for Professor Lessig.

Wow, so a lot of them have uploaded on YouTube and have gotten their stuff taken down?

Yeah, they’re all completely familiar with having videos taken down and it’s because of copyright. Some of the questions for Lessig were, you know, how are the filters on YouTube? How do they work? How does YouTube catch this? And the problems with that, and how the filters are distinguished between different types of use. So that’s another thing that’s interesting with the discussions of copyright is [that] the kids are really interested; they want to know what the rules are and they don’t know. Like particularly when one of the questions was can I take a song on iTunes and use it in a movie and upload it to YouTube, you know, again, underneath fair use there are ways you can do that, but generally, no, you really can’t. And then a lot of questions–when you talk about these issues of copyright, they’re really interested in this because, I mean they’re all using this. They’re using the website and uploading content all over the place, but they have sort of a–not a clear idea of what the rules are.

So do you find that once they–over the process of the year that they’ve been learning more and more about Creative Commons and copyright law–that once they know more about it, they start following the law more and they don’t post 50 cent videos up onto YouTube?

I think they do, and I know I’ve had some students who tell me, oh in our videos now we’re using ccMixter songs–you know, on our videos we’re making on our own at home. So a lot of this, it’s transferring to what they’re doing outside of the classroom. In my class, they can’t, I mean they have to use, they have to follow the copyright rules. But outside, I know from a few students who have told me that, they’re taking what they learn and they’re applying it to what they’re doing on their own.

So do you think that was kind of the biggest barrier to sixth and seventh graders (like breaking the law before)–[that] they just didn’t know about it?

I don’t think they had an idea. You know, even as a teacher, as far as fair use, it seems kind of complicated… I know talking to other teachers and being online and seeing what teachers say about this topic–even teachers are confused by it, so students are as well.

Yeah… I think everyone in general is confused about copyright and fair use.

But if they use Creative Commons it’s so simple. It just kind of bypasses all that complexity and it’s so clear.

Have you focused on any of the international aspects of Creative Commons? Because our licenses are global, so have you found that your students have been interacting with media from other countries or connecting even with video makers or video clips that were made in other countries under a Creative Common license? And if they have, what they think about that?

We’ve done projects in our classroom where we collaborated with students from other countries. We have projects that we’ve done but not directly related to Creative Commons. It’s very, very likely that the content they’ve downloaded is from countries besides the United States, but they don’t–that’s not something that they are actively sort of recognizing.

Right. What are these projects that are international projects?

Well we did one last year, actually a year and a half ago where we wrote a Twitter story. One classroom got the Twitter account and wrote a chapter, and then I sent it off to the next classroom and when it was done we had over a hundred kids in six different countries who added to the whole story. And then we published it as a little book and it was 140 posts total, so it was a cute little science fiction story.

So it’s kind of a story game where each student contributes a Twitter?

Yeah, but like in each classroom would be a chapter. So each classroom had 5-10 students and they would write, and we would get done with that chapter in a day and we would ship it off to the next class, and then they would add a chapter and figure out where the story goes. And it was at the 140th entry that was the ending.

So how did you coordinate among the different schools? Did you set this up beforehand, contact the schools and say we should all have Twitter accounts and do this? Or…

No it was really just on the fly, totally. Actually, we were sitting around at lunch and we came up with the idea and we sent it out, and I was talking with the teachers on Twitter… somebody in Canada, this teacher in Canada, grabbed the next chapter. We actually had like kids in England, China even, we had kids in China, like all over the place! And then another project we did recently, like a year or so ago, was the mini voices for Darfur–like March 6th we declared it Darfur day and we invited students from all over the place to come and comment on efforts to raise awareness about genocide. And we had almost 700 comments within a 24 hour period.

And this was on Twitter?

This wasn’t on Twitter; we used Twitter heavily to sort of promote it…

Was this on your blog?

Yeah, it’s on my blog.

Where is the Twitter Sci-fi story located? Is that on your blog as well?

It is, and it’s still up.

Are you planning to have any other projects kind of like that? Like another Twitter project–it might not be a Sci-fi story, it might be something else.

Yeah, I’m always open. Like one thing on my mind lately that I thought would be really interesting is to do a collaborative–and I’m just thinking middle school–is to do a remix project. I saw this thing online, following Creative Commons, and it was Infinity–you had artists create a picture, and musicians grab the picture and add a loop, soundtrack to it. This year it would be neat to do some sort of remix collaboration project where we upload all this content and everybody grabs it and remixes each others content as a way of teaching about Creative Commons and the whole idea of remixing. That’s kind of what’s floating in my mind lately and I have a couple teachers who seem like they would be interested.

One of the things I’ve always done with my projects is I make it super, super easy. Like lower the barrier to participating and just make it so stripped down and easy for people to participate so they can–I mean that’s why some of the projects have worked well, because people can jump in and it’s not very complicated. It’s very clear cut.

So have you found that your students are pretty adept at using the Internet and Web 2.0 tools? For them to just jump in and Twitter? Do your students come from a background where they have computers at home?

Yeah, many of my students, this year they do. Like in the past as a Language Arts teacher we used lots of blogs and wikis. When I’m just teaching this film class we share many of our movies online on a blog, but the kids aren’t actively blogging themselves in this video class. In the past I’ve had all my kids blogging, they’ve had individual blogs and stuff, but with the film class we’re just focusing on the movies and we share our movies on one collective blog.

So have you come across students that aren’t as comfortable with technology? And if you have, how have you dealt with their skills?

Well, yeah, there seems to be… even just going on ccMixter, downloading a song and putting it on a flash drive, putting it into the Mac and grabbing the song–just simple things like that, some kids aren’t quite clear on some of those things. And since we’re all together, we’re all sort of learning and doing this, you find that kids help each other, and the kids that don’t quite have a grasp on some of the things we’re doing quickly learn by watching and being helped by other students.

So I guess, going back to your Skype conversation with Lawrence Lessig, I was wondering about your students’ reactions to Larry. After they finished interviewing him, what did they think about Larry? Did they feel like they got their questions answered?

Well, I think they were really proud of themselves because you know he had answered the question and there wasn’t any sort of playing around, and I think it helped clarify some of the issues. I mean one thing that stood out–they had a lot of questions about peer to peer file sharing sites and they’re not clear why that’s illegal, and then Mr. Lessig spent some time talking to them about that. I think that overall, they felt really good about the conversation. That was the last week… We haven’t had a lot of reflection time with that particular class (yet) but I know things went well. We had a bunch of students come in from other classes to watch that, [and] the principal was in it. I thought we had a really good conversation and the students felt good about it. Mr. Lessig was really awesome with the way he talked to and treated them.

What do you consider was the most interesting student question and answer from Larry?

I thought the questions about the filters on YouTube and how that can start to restrict–he was mentioning if the content industry has their way, YouTube would have heavy filters that would really limit the YouTube as we know it now. We were interested in that, and then another thing that I was really surprised by is their questions about peer to peer file sharing. Because they all used the site, they all use various peer to peer file sharing sites to basically download copyrighted content, and they weren’t aware that was really illegal, so that really helped them clarify that for them.

What did Larry say about that?

Well, he said–another question was, why are these sites allowed to exist if everybody’s using them illegally? And he kind of clarified how peer to peer file sharing sites can be used legally. I mean, if you’re downloading CC licensed content, you can do that. And he went up and talked about how these make it possible for artists to sort of distribute their content to a larger number of people, and he explained how the supreme court said these sites are allowed to exist, even though as a tool people are using them for illegal things, he said the tool itself is not an illegal tool.

So this is kind of off topic, or it’s more about yourself, because I remember middle school teachers–I remember when I was in middle school myself, and I hated it, because you know, middle school is just known as the age when students are not at their best, and I was wondering what in the world made you want to be a middle school teacher? Because you’re obviously really involved with your kids and really involved with copyright and Creative Commons issues and what made you, I guess, want to be a middle school teacher first of all and second of all, to delve into these issues with your students? I mean, for instance, do you have any background in your schooling with open issues or copyright issues?

I don’t, actually. I was actually a construction worker and a truck driver for a number of years. I dropped out of college. And I always wanted to be a teacher so I went back to night school for like a number of years. In San Diego I got my teaching degree. So I come to teaching after having a lot of other jobs. I just always wanted to do it.

And middle school–I don’t know what it is, I really like teaching middle school students. I have a sub this week, I was talking to him yesterday and he was telling me how hard middle school is, you have to deal with behavior issues and it’s kind of a tough age group. But it’s really–something about middle school appeals to me. It’s kind of crazy, you never know–you know the kids are going through so many different changes, and there’s so much psychology involved, and sort of like getting the problem students and the good students and making everything move along. It’s kind of just mentally appealing. And also I like the creative aspect, where you can do all these creative things, you have a lot of room to sort of do out-of-the-box types of things. If they see that the kids are engaged and learning the content, you really can kind of go out there and do some kind of crazy stuff, so it’s kind of open in that regard. So we have a lot of fun and do some kind of nutty, you know, just projects that are a little unusual sometimes.

Reflecting back to your own middle school experience, how would you compare yourself with the kids of this generation? Do you think they’re all that different from you? Do you think they’re much more–obviously the Internet just recently took off–has that made things different about the way you teach and the way you were taught in middle school?

I don’t even remember. I mean I can remember one or two of my middle school teachers. I don’t remember anything particularly that I learned or like what I was–

I don’t either.

I think it’s sort of a gray area, the whole experience of middle school. I remember being really awkward and skinny and self conscious. And I was in Texas and we were still using typewriters. We didn’t have computers when I graduated from high school–there weren’t even computers yet in the buildings really. So I mean it’s just so different now. The kids today–all they know is the Internet, they grew up with it. So not a lot of parallels I don’t think, and I sort of blacked out my middle school years, to tell you the truth.

They were too traumatic. Do you think your kids are awkward too at this age? Or do you think they’re a little bit more well adjusted than we were?

I guess a little bit of everything?

What do you think the value of them learning about Creative Commons now and copyright issues will be for their future?

Well, I think as they–I think these are skills that are worthwhile knowing as they move on. ‘Cause the whole world is sort of going into this Web 2.0 and everybody is sharing and adding content, and I guess as Mr. Lessig was saying, “the Read Write Web,” so it’s good to have them understand these basic issues of copyright and to open up the world of Creative Commons to them. So I just think that it will be helpful to them as they go through knowing that they have all these resources and that they can sort of–what they make and create can be added to all the content that’s out there. They’re not just consumers, as Mr. Lessig would say, they’re artists themselves.

What advice would you have for other teachers? A lot of teachers are in the dark about copyright and Creative Commons just as you and I probably were a few years ago. What advice would you have for them to incorporate that kind of education into their classrooms and why should they do so?

Photo by Mr. Mayo CC BY-NC

I think why is just to show their students how much great resources are out there for them to use. That’s a great entry point. And also if they’re doing a project, like many classrooms now are doing multimedia projects, it’s worth the teacher’s effort to go to a site like Freesound.org, which is a really great community for classrooms because it’s a very–it’s middle school safe as far as being appropriate. If you find one of these sites that have Creative Commons content and just allow your students to investigate it for possibilities of sound effects and music to use in their multimedia projects, it doesn’t even have to be music. Obviously, Archive.org has all these resources, so I think it’s very much in the teacher’s interest to open up the doors for the students to see this stuff, and I mean it’s just so easy. Right click, download, download, I mean you can grab this stuff so quickly that it’s just crazy not to allow kids the access to this content… It’s a good entryway into starting a conversation about copyright.

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.

Die neueste Veröffentlichung der Wissenschaftlichen Dienste des Deutschen Bundestages finden Sie im Internet-Angebot des wissenschaftlichen Dienstes des Deutschen Bundestages:

Creative Commons
http://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/analysen/2009/creative_commons.pdf

De (Un)limited Design expositie is van 12 november tot 10 januari 2010 te zien bij ProtoSpace in Utrecht. Oorspronkelijk was deze expositie, gemaakt door Featuring in Amsterdam, te zien in het Gaslab van de TU/e tijdens de Dutch Design Week, als afsluiting van de (Un)limited Design Contest, georganiseerd door Premsela en Waag Society in samenwerking met Creative Commons Nederland en de Nederlandse Fablabs. De expositie toont Open Design ontwerpen van de wedstrijd, waaronder de winnaars. Alle ontwerpen kunnen worden nagemaakt in een Fablab en het is zelfs mogelijk alle ontwerpen aan te passen, aangezien deze zijn gepubliceerd onder de Creative Commons licentie Naamsvermelding-GelijkDelen-NietCommercieel. Hoewel de wedstrijd van 2009 is afgelopen, kunnen nog steeds ontwerpen aan de (Un)limited Design website worden toegevoegd!

Open Design expo bij Protospace in Utrecht

ProtoSpace, het Fablab in Utrecht, is een laagdrempelige werkplaats waar startende ondernemers, ontwerpers, kunstenaars, uitvinders en studenten zelf hun ideeën of concepten letterlijk tastbaar kunnen maken. Het lab beschikt over moderne, digitaal aangestuurde machines, waarmee een ontwerp wordt vertaald van computerbestand naar een 2D- of 3D-model in één of meerdere kleuren.

De expo was eerder te zien in het Open Design Museum van de museumnacht (n8) in Amsterdam, waar bijna 1500 bezoekers de ontwerpen kwamen bekijken en maken. Creative Commons Nederland liet toen tientallen voorbeelden zien van open source designs, waaronder inzendingen en de winnaars van de (Un)limited Design Contest. Je kon ter plekke het geëxposeerde werk namaken met behulp van Fablab machines en meenemen naar huis.

Die Open Web Foundation hat diese Woche ihr Agreement vorgestellt. Das soll in Anlehnung an Creative Commons dazu dienen, Software-Spezifikationen unter eine einfache, offene Lizenz zu stellen:

The Open Web Foundation Agreement [OWFa] itself establishes the copyright and patent rights for a specification, ensuring that downstream consumers may freely implement and reuse the licensed specification without seeking further permission.

Ähnlich wie bei Creative Commons gibt es für das OWFa ein “Deed“. Darin sind die Bedingungen der Lizenzierung in verständlichen Worten erklärt. Eine Anleitung erklärt, wie man das OWFa auf eigene Spezifikationen anwenden kann.

Die Foundation hat es sich zum Ziel gesetzt, der “Welt der Formate und Protokolle” den erfolgreichen Graswurzel-Ansatz der Open-Source-Gemeine nahezubringen. Das Agreement soll dazu dienen, Software-Entwicklung “einfach, sicher und nachhaltig” zu machen.

Zu den ersten Unternehmen, die eine Implementation des Agreements für ihre Spezifikationen (oder einen Teil davon) zugesagt haben, gehören Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! und Facebook.

Our 2009 fundraising campaign continues, and to help us reach our goal of $500,000 by the end of the year, we’re delighted to announce a second corporate matching challenge, this time sponsored by WhippleHill Communications. WhippleHill will generously match every donation dollar for dollar for the next week – up to $5,000! Donate now to help us meet the challenge!

WhippleHill Communications was founded in 1998 and is based in Bedford, New Hampshire. This innovative company provides targeted communications solutions for independent schools seeking next-generation Web services. Like CC, WhippleHill values openness and innovation on the Web, with a particular focus on education, a realm CC is also heavily involved in through ccLearn.

Join WhippleHill in investing in the future of creativity and knowledge. Give what you can today!

De eerste selectie van beeldmateriaal voor Open Beelden staat inmiddels onder online! De 469 items die nu op Open Beelden te vinden zijn, komen voornamelijk uit de Polygoon Hollands Nieuws collectie en enkele uit de RVD collectie van het Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid. Alle 469 istems zijn voorzien van een Creative Commons Naamsvermelding GelijkDelen licentie. Deze licentie staat hergebruik van de videos vrij toe (zelfs voor commerciele doeleinden) en maakt zo hergebruik van de videos door andere open content projecten zoals bijvoorbeeld wikipedia mogelijk. De huidige selectie is grotendeels gecentreerd rond een aantal thema’s, namelijk: stad, zomer, natuur, water, voeding, sport, onderwijs, religie en arbeid. De onderwerpen van de items zijn heel divers, zoals bijvoorbeeld een item over een caravan die ook als boot dienst doet, maar ook beelden van de Tour de France in Nederland of de eerste bewoners van Almere. Het beeldmateriaal beslaat de periode 1919 t/m 1980 en gaat van stom zwart-wit materiaal tot kleurrijke beelden met het karakteristieke commentaar van Philip Bloemendaal.

Om een indruk te geven van wat er allemaal te vinden is, een kleine greep uit het aanbod. Uit de vroege jaren, toen er nog geen commentaar onder het beeld zat, komen bijvoorbeeld deze beelden van overstromingen in Ridderkerk en Barendrecht in 1928:

Vanaf de jaren dertig komt er steeds vaker geluid bij het beeld. Tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog wordt het Polygoonjournaal voornamelijk aangewend als propagandamiddel voor de Duitsers en de NSB. Zo is er in 1941 een serie items genaamd ‘Nederland voedt zichzelf’ waarin propaganda wordt gemaakt voor het nationaalsocialistische idee dat een land in staat moet zijn in zijn eigen voedsel te voorzien:

Na de Tweede Wereldoorlog worden de beelden voorzien van het commentaar van Philip Bloemendaal. Met zijn karakteristieke stemgeluid is hij onlosmakelijk verbonden met het Polygoonjournaal:

Vanaf de jaren zeventig worden er ook journaals in kleur gemaakt. Een mooi voorbeeld van de meerwaarde die dit geeft is te zien in de kleurenpracht van de vlinderverzameling van de amateurentomoloog Hermans:

Voor 2009 zijn wij met de toevoeging van de hierboven beschreven selectie even klaar met het toevoegen van materiaal aan Open Beelden. Maar volgend maand wordt het mogelijk om ook als gebruiker materiaal aan Open Beelden toe te voegen. Dit kan materiaal zijn dat gemaakt is op basis van Open Beelden, maar ook eigen werk.

Na de jaarwisseling zullen wij het toevoegen van beeldmateriaal uit ons archief aan Open Beelden hervatten. Daarnaast zullen wij actief samenwerking zoeken met ander collectiehouders, om zo het aanbod op Open Beelden verder te vergroten en meer divers en nog interessanter te maken.

Om de voorbeelden van beeldmateriaal in dit bericht te kunnen bekijken raden wij aan om gebruik te maken van Firefox 3.5, of een andere moderne browser die HTML5 <video> technologie ondersteunt. Internet Explorer e.d. zal de voorbeelden niet kunnen weergeven.

[deze post van Evelien Wolda is overgenomen van het open beelden blog]

Creative Commons Lizenzen sind im Bundestag angekommen. Der Wissenschaftliche Dienst des deutschen Bundestages erklärt im “Aktuell Bericht” Creative Commons auf zwei Seiten. Es freut uns sehr, dass den Parlamentariern eine kurze prägnante Zusammenfassung über unsere Lizenzen zur Verfügung gestellt wird

Der Wissenschaftliche Dienst des deutschen Bundestages erklärt im “Aktuellen Begriff” “Creative Commons Lizenzen” auf zwei Seiten.

I am off to Madrid for FICOD09 — a Spanish conference on the digital environment.  It looks ambitious, and I couldn’t help being amused by the announcement below..

III Forum on Digital Content to be held in Madrid from November 17th to 19th

by Mike Linksvayer, November 16th, 2009

Originally posted here: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/19210

The Google Book Settlement is probably the copyright story of the year — it’s complex, contentious, involves big players and big subjects — the future of books, perhaps good and evil — resulting in a vast amount of advocacy, punditry and academic analysis.

It’s also difficult item for Creative Commons to comment on. Both “sides” are clearly mostly correct. Wide access to digital copies of most books ever published would be a tremendous benefit to society — it’s practically an imperative that will happen in some fashion. It’s also the case that any particular arrangement to achieve such access should be judged in terms of how it serves the public interest, which includes consumer privacy, open competition, and indeed, access to books, among many other things. Furthermore, Creative Commons considers both Google and many of the parties submitting objections to the settlement (the Electronic Frontier Foundation is an obvious example) great friends and supporters of the commons.

We hope that a socially beneficial conclusion is reached. However, it’s important to remember why getting there is so contentious. Copyright has not kept up with the digital age — to the contrary, it has fought a rearguard action against the digital age, resulting in zero growth in the public domain, a vast number of inaccessible and often decaying orphan works, and a diminution of fair use. If any or all of these were addressed, Google and any other party would have much greater freedom to scan and make books available to the public — providing access to digital books would be subject to open competition, not arrived at via a complex and contentious settlement with lots of side effects.

Creative Commons was designed to not play the high cost, risk, and stakes game of litigation and lobbying to fix a broken copyright system. Instead, following the example of the free software movement, we offer a voluntary opt-in to a more reasonable copyright that works in the digital age. There are a huge number of examples that this works — voluntary, legal, scalable sharing powers communities as diverse as music remix, scientific publishing, open educational resources, and of course Wikipedia.

It’s also heartening to see that voluntary sharing can be a useful component of even contentious settlements and to see recognition of Creative Commons as the standard for sharing. We see this in Google’s proposed amended settlement, filed last Friday. The amended version (PDF) includes the following:

Alternative License Terms. In lieu of the basic features of Consumer Purchase set forth in Section 4.2(a) (Basic Features of Consumer Purchase), a Rightsholder may direct the Registry to make its Books available at no charge pursuant to one of several standard licenses or similar contractual permissions for use authorized by the Registry under which owners of works make their works available (e.g., Creative Commons Licenses), in which case such Books may be made available without the restrictions of such Section.

This has not been the first mention of Creative Commons licenses in the context of the Google Book Settlement. The settlement FAQ has long included an answer indicating a Creative Commons option would be available. Creative Commons has also been mentioned (and in a positive light) by settlement critics, for example in Pamela Samuelson’s paper on the settlement and in the Free Software Foundation’s provocative objection centering on the tension between the intentions of public copyright licensors and the potential for settlements to result in less freedom than the licensor intended.

Independent of the settlement, we happily noted a few months ago that Google had added Creative Commons licensing options to its Google Book Search partner program. This, like any voluntary sharing, or mechanism to facilitate such, is a positive development.

However you feel about the settlement, you can make a non-contentious contribution to a better future by using works in the commons and adding your own, preventing future gridlock. You can also make a financial contribution to the Creative Commons annual campaign to support the work we do to build infrastructure for sharing.

If you want to follow the Google Book Settlement play-by-play, New York Law School’s James Grimmelmann has the go-to blog. We’re proud to note that James was a Creative Commons legal intern in 2004, but can’t take any credit for his current productivity!

The Google Book Settlement is probably the copyright story of the year — it’s complex, contentious, involves big players and big subjects — the future of books, perhaps good and evil — resulting in a vast amount of advocacy, punditry and academic analysis.

It’s also a difficult item for Creative Commons to comment on. Both “sides” are clearly mostly correct. Wide access to digital copies of most books ever published would be a tremendous benefit to society — it’s practically an imperative that will happen in some fashion. It’s also the case that any particular arrangement to achieve such access should be judged in terms of how it serves the public interest, which includes consumer privacy, open competition, and indeed, access to books, among many other things. Furthermore, Creative Commons considers both Google and many of the parties submitting objections to the settlement (the Electronic Frontier Foundation is an obvious example) great friends and supporters of the commons.

We hope that a socially beneficial conclusion is reached. However, it’s important to remember why getting there is so contentious. Copyright has not kept up with the digital age — to the contrary, it has fought a rearguard action against the digital age, resulting in zero growth in the public domain, a vast number of inaccessible and often decaying orphan works, and a diminution of fair use. If any or all of these were addressed, Google and any other party would have much greater freedom to scan and make books available to the public — providing access to digital books would be subject to open competition, not arrived at via a complex and contentious settlement with lots of side effects.

Creative Commons was designed to not play the high cost, risk, and stakes game of litigation and lobbying to fix a broken copyright system. Instead, following the example of the free software movement, we offer a voluntary opt-in to a more reasonable copyright that works in the digital age. There are a huge number of examples that this works — voluntary, legal, scalable sharing powers communities as diverse as music remix, scientific publishing, open educational resources, and of course Wikipedia.

It’s also heartening to see that voluntary sharing can be a useful component of even contentious settlements and to see recognition of Creative Commons as the standard for sharing. We see this in Google’s proposed amended settlement, filed last Friday. The amended version (PDF) includes the following:

Alternative License Terms. In lieu of the basic features of Consumer Purchase set forth in Section 4.2(a) (Basic Features of Consumer Purchase), a Rightsholder may direct the Registry to make its Books available at no charge pursuant to one of several standard licenses or similar contractual permissions for use authorized by the Registry under which owners of works make their works available (e.g., Creative Commons Licenses), in which case such Books may be made available without the restrictions of such Section.

This has not been the first mention of Creative Commons licenses in the context of the Google Book Settlement. The settlement FAQ has long included an answer indicating a Creative Commons option would be available. Creative Commons has also been mentioned (and in a positive light) by settlement critics, for example in Pamela Samuelson’s paper on the settlement and in the Free Software Foundation’s provocative objection centering on the tension between the intentions of public copyright licensors and the potential for settlements to result in less freedom than the licensor intended.

Independent of the settlement, we happily noted a few months ago that Google had added Creative Commons licensing options to its Google Book Search partner program. This, like any voluntary sharing, or mechanism to facilitate such, is a positive development.

However you feel about the settlement, you can make a non-contentious contribution to a better future by using works in the commons and adding your own, preventing future gridlock. You can also make a financial contribution to the Creative Commons annual campaign to support the work we do to build infrastructure for sharing.

If you want to follow the Google Book Settlement play-by-play, New York Law School’s James Grimmelmann has the go-to blog. We’re proud to note that James was a Creative Commons legal intern in 2004, but can’t take any credit for his current productivity!

On Friday, Creative Commons Japan and iPhone developer Appliya Studio released AudioVisual Mixer for Into Infinity, a free iPhone application specifically developed for the launch of the Into Infinity project in Japan (iTunes link). Into Infinity, which we have discussed numerous times, is a music and art project produced in collaboration between CC and non-profit web radio collective dublab.

When opened, the application connects to a server where the project’s resources are stored, automatically downloading sound loops (”EAR”) that are paired with visual circles (”EYE”). An Into Infinity logo serves as an anchor point to trigger sounds – users can drag and move circles with their finger and when brought into the logo’s orbit the sounds start mixing, creating new derivative works on the fly. Users can then share these mixes instantly by posting to Twitter or sharing via e-mail from within the application.

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. The release also coincides with the addition of 50 “ear” sound loops and 50 “eye” visual circles from Japanese sound and visual artists. If you have an iPhone, download it today!

Molly Kleinman is a long-time friend of CC and has been doing incredible work for all things copyright over at the University of Michigan as Special Assistant to the Dean of Libraries. From Espresso Book Machines to a CC-friendly Scholarly Publishing Office, we continue to be inspired by the University of Michigan’s innovative approach to open content, copyright, and especially open education, an area of focus CC is highly committed to developing through ccLearn. We’re honored to have Molly, a self-proclaimed dedicated advocate of Creative Commons, write the fourth letter in the Commoner Letter series of this year’s fundraising campaign.

Subscribe to receive future Commoner Letters by email.

Photo by Chan Wong CC BY-NC

Hello, Fellow Commoner,

Creative Commons licenses make it easier for me to do my work, and to help my faculty and students do theirs. Today I’d like to return the favor and encourage you to support the Creative Commons 2009 Annual Campaign, and help make sure they continue the wonderful work they’ve been doing.

Why is Creative Commons so helpful and important? Because it provides a balanced, sane alternative to the madly out-of-whack copyright system I deal with every day. I am an academic librarian and copyright specialist who teaches faculty, students, librarians, archivists and others about their rights as creators and their rights as users. Anyone familiar with the state of copyright law knows it’s messy and confusing stuff, and the very notion of users’ rights is contentious in some circles. Big Content has been waging a propaganda campaign to convince the public that all unauthorized, un-paid-for uses are infringing, illegal uses. It’s not true, but the widespread misinformation is bad for educators, bad for students, and bad for all of us who benefit from the fruits of scholarly research. Professors are afraid to share educational material with their students. Parents are afraid to let their kids post homemade videos online. All this fear hinders the ability of scholars, teachers, and students to do the work of research, teaching, and learning that is their job.

As my favorite CC video says, “Enter Creative Commons.” Creative Commons carves out an arena in which people can use and build on new works without fear. It frees us from both the looming threat of lawsuits and the time consuming and expensive demands of clearing permissions. Creative Commons helps people share openly, and the more content that CC helps to open up, whether it’s music or photography or scientific data or educational resources, the more it expands what faculty and students can teach and study freely.

I’d like to call particular attention to the work of one of Creative Commons’ offshoots, ccLearn. ccLearn is striving to realize the full potential of the internet to support open learning and open educational resources, and to minimize legal, technical, and social barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials. I cannot overemphasize the importance of this work. In the United States alone, plummeting budgets and rising costs for both K-12 and higher education are making it harder for students and teachers to access the quality educational resources they need. Until recently, most educational content was locked behind digital paywalls or hidden in print books, and the free stuff you could find online was often unreliable. Now, the pool of high quality open educational resources is growing every day, with open textbooks, open courseware, and other experimental projects popping up all the time. Many of these projects have received support from ccLearn, and nearly all of them are built on the framework of Creative Commons licenses. Every one provides expanded access that is crucial to the future of a quality educational system, both in this country and throughout the world.

This is why it is so important to support Creative Commons, in any number of ways. Though I donate (and you should, too), I believe that one of my greatest contributions has been in helping to build the Creative Commons community from the ground up, one frustrated professor or librarian at a time. Every person I teach about Creative Commons is a person who may eventually contribute to the Commons herself, attaching licenses to her works and sharing them with the world. The bigger the Commons, the better for all of us.

Molly Kleinman
Special Assistant to the Dean of Libraries
University of Michigan Library

由清华大学法学院（北京）与清华大学科技法律研究所（台湾新竹）联合举办的“科技创新之法律应对与法学教育革新”研讨会暨“两岸清华法学论坛”成立大会于2009年11月6日、7日（周五、周六）在北京清华大学法学院模拟法庭举行，知识共享中国大陆项目负责人、中国人民大学法学院知识产权法教研室王春燕副教授应邀参加了该论坛，并在论坛第一场“信息及通讯法专题”中就《知识共享许可协议：数字时代知识创新与传播的现实模式》的论文发表了演讲。这次论坛有来自两岸多所大学、研究院所、网络管理机构、网络公司等方面的代表参加。两天的论坛围绕信息暨通讯法、公共卫生法、科技创新与知识产权法制革新、环境与能源资源法、法学教育革新等主题展开了多领域的交流。

王春燕老师从网络时代信息传播和获取的关系出发，通过“谷歌图书搜索”这一热点中可能带来的私人公司对公共知识资源控制上的隐忧，全球最大的线上百科–维基百科采用CC协议以“增进知识和文化的公共资源”，及“三面向现象”中显现的传播和现行版权制度的悖论等案例分析，探讨了数字时代知识生产与传播的新特点：即协同、混合、分享。作为知识共享中国大陆项目(Creative Commons China Mainland)负责人，王春燕老师在这次论坛上更多的从Creative Commons这场全球性的知识分享运动的背景和理念来谈，CC所倡导的开放版权和共享理念旨在改变信息传播和获取的对立，实现创作与传播的良性互动。最后，王春燕老师提出网络时代对知识信息的控制正在由二元对立向三位一体转化，即从倡导知识商品化的商业经济（Commercial Economy）和将作品视为人类共同财富的分享经济（Sharing Economy）的二元对立，向混合经济（hybrid economy）转化，基于商业目的可以从分享经济中获利，而通过商业行为可以支持分享目标。从而纠正了人们对CC与商业模式的关系上的一些误区，与会的学者和听众对王春燕老师的演讲予以了热烈的回应，与会者随后对网络版权问题进行了深入的讨论。知识共享中国大陆项目的和晓琳也参加了本次论坛。

（文/和晓琳）

I dag lanserades Creative Commons-licenserna i Jordanien. Jordanien blir därmed det första landet i arabvärlden som har översatt och anpassat Creative Commons-licenserna. (Jordanien verkar dock i skrivande stund inte ha kommit in i licensväljaren på creativecommons.org än.)

We’re very excited to announce that Creative Commons will once again be part of Google’s Policy Fellowship for the summer of 2010, and we’re looking forward to filling the big shoes of our 2009 policy fellow, Aurelia Schultz.  Just like last year, the Google Policy Fellow will receive a substantial grant to work at Creative Commons’ San Francisco Office on the following issues (but this is certainly not an exhaustive list of the things we’ll have you thinking about):

• Synthesize statistics garnered from recent studies focusing on international license adoption. Fellow will be expected to generate and investigate diverse theses relating to license choice, adoption, and use.
• Coordinate with counsel to critically analyze the current state of public domain policy in US and abroad. Develop a framework to help Creative Commons’ deploy messaging regarding public domain policy in US and abroad.
• Research and analysis of how the contemporary discourse of copyright, sharing, reuse, and remix has been shaped over the last six years as a result of the Creative Commons project.
• Investigate new opportunities for Creative Commons implementation in ‘uncontacted’ communities, institutions, artists, and mediums.
• Work with Creative Commons’ international community and jurisdiction project leads on projects, research, and outreach.

Check out more details and the application, which is due by December 28th, 2009.

Anita Michels hat beim diesjärigen Netaudio-Festival ihr neues Buch “Netlabels: Soziale Netze On- und Offline” herausgebracht. Ab sofort ist es nicht nur bei Falk Blask im Institut für Europäische Ethnologie (oder auf Bestellung bei der Herausgeberin) gedruckt zu haben, sondern steht dank Lizenzierung unter CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 de auch zum freien Download zur Verfügung.

Aus dem Abstract:

Das Phänomen Netaudio wird erstmals aus ethnologischer Sicht untersucht. Anhand ihres vielfältigen empirischen Materials stellt Antina Michels anschaulich dar, auf welche Art und Weise Netaudio produziert, wofür Netlabels genutzt werden und wie deren Akteure in lokalen und translokalen Szene-Netzwerken kooperieren. Die Studie verdeutlicht an zwei prägnanten Fallbeispielen - den nicht-profitorientierten Netlabeln Pentagonik und Pulsar -, wie alternative Modelle zur konventionellen Musikindustrie entstehen. Musiker, Künstler, Labelbetreiber und Veranstalter schließen sich europa- und zunehmend auch weltweit in sozialen Netzwerken zusammen. Diese Pionierarbeit zeigt auf, wie die Netaudio-Szene das Netzwerk nutzt, um ihre Ideen und Ideale erfolgreich umzusetzen. Durch die zahlreichen in diesem Buch enthaltenen Interviewpassagen, Bilder, Mental Maps  und Beschreibungen bekommt der Leser einen tiefen Einblick in den Alltag der Akteure.

De documentaires die in oktober door de VPRO gratis downloadbaar zijn aangeboden onder een CC licentie zijn een groot succes. Zo is de documentaire Stayin’ alive in Jo’burg ruim 37.000 keer gedownload in 180 landen via de website mininova.org. De documentaire wordt aangeboden onder Creative Commons Licentie, die hergebruik en remixen voor niet-commerciële doeleinden vrij toestaat. VPRO projectleider Bregtje van der Haak:

”Het experiment met gratis downloads als nieuwe vorm van distributie is voor de VPRO geslaagd. We hebben met deze schokkende film over Johannesburg wereldwijd 37.000 mensen bereikt, die we zonder internet nooit bereikt hadden. Ik zou graag zien wat anderen met dit materiaal gaan doen.”

Ter gelegenheid van de opening van T_Visionarium OPEN CITY in de Zuiderkerk in Amsterdam, stelt de VPRO een nieuwe documentaire onder CC licentie beschikbaar stelt op internet: Metropolis: Nieuw in de stad. Deze documentaire, die ook in het Engels wordt aangeboden als Metropolis: Coming to the City is onderdeel van het crossmedia project Eeuw van de Stad, waarin de wereldwijde verstedelijking centraal staat. worden. De documentaire kan via www.eeuwvandestad.nl/downloads (Nederlandse versie) en mininova.org (Engelse versie) gedownload worden.

感谢知识共享菲律宾项目和台湾项目的努力，《知识共享亚太区新闻通讯》第一期已经于日前出版。编辑这一通讯是在今年2月在菲律宾马尼拉举行的知识共享亚太各司法管辖区项目会议上作出的决定，以加强各项目之间的交流和沟通。第一期通讯介绍了马尼拉会议的情况，以及中国大陆、台湾、香港、日本、韩国、菲律宾、澳大利亚等各知识共享项目最近一段时间组织的精彩纷呈的活动。

要了解详细内容，请点击封面图片下载通讯的pdf版本。

Според “Новинар“:

Компаниите “Вирджиния рекърдс” и “Анимато мюзик” с управител Саня Армутлиева дължат към 150 000 лв. отчисления за авторски права, съобщиха от сдружение “Музикаутор”. Общо музикалните ни фирми имат над 300 000 лв. дългове. Другите длъжници са “Ка мюзик”, “Орфей мюзик” и “Виталити мюзик”. От “Музикаутор” изпратили нотариално заверени покани до петте задлъжнели компании. Директорът на организацията Ценко Минкин заяви, че се надява да не се стигне до съд. Дължимите суми били най-вече отчисления за песните, тиражирани на дискове в България.