Andrew Gaskins decided to exercise his right to remix using three tracks from Ottmar’s “One Guitar” album to create “Out of the Blue – Big Blue Room Mix,” “Along This Road – Infinite Sky Mix” and “Letting Go – Isolation Mix.” Ottmar’s blog has the original and remixes in a Last.fm radio player. Enjoy them!

The post One Guitar Remixed appeared first on Creative Commons.

Separating the “generic” from the US license

As part of Version 3.0, we have spun off the “generic” license to be the CC US license and created a new generic license, now known as the “unported” license. For more information about this change, see this more detailed explanation.

Harmonizing the treatment of moral rights & collecting society royalties

In Version 3.0, we are ensuring that all CC jurisdiction licenses and the CC unported license have consistent, express treatment of the issues of moral rights and collecting society royalties (subject to national differences). For more information about these changes, see this explanation of the moral rights harmonization and this explanation of the collecting society harmonization.

No Endorsement Language

That a person may not misuse the attribution requirement of a CC license to improperly assert or imply an association or relationship with the licensor or author, has been implicit in our licenses from the start. We have now decided to make this explicit in both the Legal Code and the Commons Deed to ensure that — as our licenses continue to grow and attract a large number of more prominent artists and companies — there will be no confusion for either the licensor or licensee about this issue. For a more detailed explanation, see here.

BY-SA — Compatibility Structure Now Included

The CC BY-SA 3.0 licenses will now include the ability for derivatives to be relicensed under a “Creative Commons Compatible License,” which will be listed here. This structure realizes CC’s long-held objective of ensuring that there are no legal barriers to people being able to remix creativity in the way that flexible licenses are intended to enable. More information about this is provided here.

Clarifications Negotiated With Debian & MIT

Finally, Version 3.0 of the licenses include minor clarifications to the language of the licenses to take account of the concerns of Debian (more details here) and MIT (more details here).

As part of discussions with Debian, it was proposed to allow the release of CC-licensed works under DRM by licensees on certain conditions — what was known as the “parallel distribution language” but this has not been included as part of Version 3.0 of the CC licenses.

Below is a list of CC blog posts about Version 3.0:

Getting to Version 3.0
Version 3.0 — Public Discussion Launched
Version 3.0 — Revised License Drafts
Version 3.0 — It’s Happening & With BY-SA Compatibility Language Too

The post Version 3.0 Launched appeared first on Creative Commons.

The post CC's Looking for a New GC appeared first on Creative Commons.

The competition invites short video submissions mixing and mashing digital content that are less than 3 minutes in length. You can only use content that you can license to the public under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 license.

Submissions can be made from the 8th of February to the 10th of March. The winners will be notified by the 12th of March. The best entries will be screened at the National Film Theatre on 16 March as part of the Optronica Festival. The winner will also receive Avid Xpress Pro film editing software and have their entry featured by Google Video UK and on the Creative Commons UK site.

The post Britannia Rules/Britianna Sucks — Mix & Mash Your View appeared first on Creative Commons.

The competition invites short video submissions mixing and mashing digital content that are less than 3 minutes in length. You can only use content that you can license to the public under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 license.

Submissions can be made from the 8th of February to the 10th of March. The winners will be notified by the 12th of March. The best entries will be screened at the National Film Theatre on 16 March as part of the Optronica Festival. The winner will also receive Avid Xpress Pro film editing software and have their entry featured by Google Video UK and on the Creative Commons UK site.

The post Britannia Rules/Britianna Sucks — Mix & Mash Your View appeared first on Creative Commons.

As you know, Creative Commons has long been hopeful of enabling interoperability between licenses that guarantee the same frictions. Back in November 2005, Larry described his vision of building an ecology of free licenses.

Although it has not been possible to date to agree with other license stewards on the exact details necessary to make licenses that are equivalent to a specific CC license compatible yet, Creative Commons remains hopeful that it will be possible at a date in the future to secure the necessary agreement with license stewards for equivalent licenses. Because we would have to change our licenses to effect this and because we are reticient to version too often (not just because it requires a lot of work for all concerned but also because it adds complexity to a system designed to be simple), we propose to include the structure of compatibility as part of the Version 3.0 changes.

Given it is the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license that is most likely to be capable of compatibility with other existing flexible licenses, we are proposing to add new language to the “ShareAlike clause” of the BY-SA to establish the structure of compatibility.

An amended version of the draft Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (US) license has been posted to the cc-licenses list. Please post any comments you have to this list.

Because we are anticipating that this will not be controversial or provoke much comment, we are hoping to roll out the Version 3.0 licenses by the end of next week with the BY-SA compatibility language included. So if you have comments or suggestions for improvement, please make them to the cc-licenses (subscription required) list as soon as possible.

The post Version 3.0 — It's Happening & With BY-SA Compatibility Language Too appeared first on Creative Commons.

As you know, Creative Commons has long been hopeful of enabling interoperability between licenses that guarantee the same frictions. Back in November 2005, Larry described his vision of building an ecology of free licenses.

Although it has not been possible to date to agree with other license stewards on the exact details necessary to make licenses that are equivalent to a specific CC license compatible yet, Creative Commons remains hopeful that it will be possible at a date in the future to secure the necessary agreement with license stewards for equivalent licenses. Because we would have to change our licenses to effect this and because we are reticient to version too often (not just because it requires a lot of work for all concerned but also because it adds complexity to a system designed to be simple), we propose to include the structure of compatibility as part of the Version 3.0 changes.

Given it is the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license that is most likely to be capable of compatibility with other existing flexible licenses, we are proposing to add new language to the “ShareAlike clause” of the BY-SA to establish the structure of compatibility.

An amended version of the draft Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 (US) license has been posted to the cc-licenses list. Please post any comments you have to this list.

Because we are anticipating that this will not be controversial or provoke much comment, we are hoping to roll out the Version 3.0 licenses by the end of next week with the BY-SA compatibility language included. So if you have comments or suggestions for improvement, please make them to the cc-licenses (subscription required) list as soon as possible.

The post Version 3.0 — It's Happening & With BY-SA Compatibility Language Too appeared first on Creative Commons.

As explained when the first decision was handed down earlier in 2006, both cases arise from the fact that members of collecting societies in Spain (and in much of the rest of the world) cannot legally apply a CC license to their work (or even release it online) without the consent of their collecting society. This is because the membership terms of a collecting society require an exclusive license and sometimes a transfer of ownership of the rights of public performance/communication (that are essential to the act of making content available online) from the musician to the collecting society.

Both cases turn on evidentiary issues and have less to do with the enforceability of CC licenses — in the first case, the court held that the Spanish collecting society, the Sociedad General de Autores y Editores (“SGAE”) had proven only that music was played in the defendant’s bar; it had not gone the extra step of proving that it represented the musicians whose music was played in the bar. Consequently, the bar owner did not have to pay the SGAE fees.

In this second case, the SGAE put on evidence that satisfied the court that international music, pop music and regular radio broadcasts (that included Gloria Estefan) were being played in the bar. As a result, the bar owner in this second case was ordered to pay the SGAE fees.

The post English Translation of Second Spanish CC Decision Available appeared first on Creative Commons.

Adding Creative Commons India, 35 jurisdictions around the world to date will have localized CC’s “some rights reserved” licenses and adapted this form of licensing system.

The project celebrated its official launch today at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Bombay. The launch is part of Asia’s largest technology festival held in Mumbai – Techfest. Now in its tenth year, the two day festival offers a smattering of workshops, exhibitions and lectures to students to explore advances and opportunities in modern science and technology.

The launch will kick off at 4 p.m. in the IIT Bombay’s auditorium in Mumbai. Outside of this event, there will also be two parallel workshops offered as part of Techfest 2007 on Creative Commons: “Do We Need Remix?” and “Sharing is Creating” on January 26-27.

For more information about this project and its launch, visit CC-India’s website. To learn more about this year’s Techfest, click here.

The post CC Licenses Launch Today in India appeared first on Creative Commons.

Creative Commons copyright licenses are available free of charge from the group’s website. The licenses allow authors and artists to mark their works as free to copy or transform under certain conditions—to declare “some rights reserved,” in contrast to the traditional “all rights reserved”—thereby enabling others to access a growing pool of raw materials without legal friction.

With Creative Commons India joining the effort, Creative Commons is proud to announce that its licenses now are offered in localized versions in a total of 35 jurisdictions around the world.

Staff at Creative Commons’ offices in San Francisco and Berlin worked with project leads Lawrence Liang from the Alternative Law Forum (ALF) in Bangalore and Shishir K.Jha from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT Bombay) to adapt the standardized copyright licenses to Indian law.

Today the Indian versions of the Creative Commons licenses will be launched in the IIT Bombay’s auditorium in Mumbai, at a ceremony held as part of the ‘IIT Techfest’, IIT Bombay’s Annual International Science and Technology festival. The Techfest with its lectures, workshops and exhibitions offers students a platform to explore the realms of science and technology in the 21st Century.

At the launch Joichi Ito, Chairman of Creative Commons, will give the keynote address. Speakers Nandu Pradhan, President and Managing Director of Red Hat India, film director Anurag Kashyap, Professor Deepak Phatak of IIT Bombay, project lead Lawrence Liang as well as Catharina Maracke, Creative Commons International Coordinator, will speak about topics related to culture, law and technology.

Says Project Lead Shishir Jha, “Creative Commons India will seek to inspire everyone to share the subcontinent’s abundant wealth of visions and ideas by standing tall on the shoulders of her intellectual and creative giants.”

About IIT Bombay

IIT Bombay, set up by an Act of Parliament, was established in 1958, at Powai, a northern suburb of Mumbai. Today the Institute is recognised as one of the centers of academic excellence in the country. The institute has 12 departments of engineering, basic sciences and the humanities, 11 research centers, 3 postgraduate degree schools and 5 interdisciplinary programs. IIT Bombay is largely a residential institution with over 4 thousand students and over 400 faculty. It offers undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral degrees. Over the years, there has been dynamic progress at IIT Bombay in all academic and research activities, and a parallel improvement in facilities and infrastructure, to keep it on par with the best institutions in the world.

For more information, visit the IIT Bombay website.

About Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001, that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works—whether owned or in the public domain. Creative Commons licences provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators that build upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach. It is sustained by the generous support of various organizations including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Omidyar Network, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation as well as members of the public.

For general information, visit the Creative Commons’ website.

Contact

Catharina Maracke
International Coordinator
Creative Commons International, Creative Commons
Email
+49.30.280.93.909

Press Kit

The post CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSES LAUNCH IN INDIA appeared first on Creative Commons.