Announcing September’s CC Salon NYC

Fred Benenson, August 20th, 2008

After the success of July’s CC Salon NYC, we’re even more excited about inviting you to September’s!

The Open Planning Project has once again generously allowed us to use their loft space in the West Village for the salon and a reception afterward. 

September’s Salon will feature presentations from Rachel Sterne from GroundReport.com, Michael Galpert from A.viary.com, and a special screening / premier of two new shorts from the Meerkat Arts Media Collective.

Here are the details:

Tuesday, September 30th, from 7-10pm
The Open Planing Project
349 W. 12th St., 1st Floor

We’ll also have free (as in beer) beer for the reception afterward. If you didn’t make it to July’s salon, don’t miss this one, and if you did, you’ll know to come early as space is limited. 

Follow the event via Upcoming.org and RSVP via the Facebook event or e-mailing me - fred [at] creativecommons.org

ccNewsletter #8 - Culture Commons

Melissa Reeder, August 19th, 2008

For all of you interested in what CC is currently doing in the culture space — check out this month’s edition of the ccNewsletter. 

The ccNewsletter comes out every two months and is a great way to get up to speed on current CC news, whether you’re already familiar with CC or new to the scene. I encourage you to check it out and to sign up. 

As always, a big shout-out to CC Philippines for designing the PDF version.

NSF Task Force on Cyberlearning

Jane Park, August 19th, 2008

The National Science Foundation Task Force issued a report late in June on cyberlearning, more specifically on “Fostering Learning in the Networked World: The Cyberlearning Opportunity and Challenge.” It is, in their words, “A 21st Century Agenda for the National Science Foundation” concerning ICT for learning. The report outlines five recommendations for “growth and opportunities for action,” one of which concerns the promotion of open educational resources (OER). According to recommendation #4:

“Materials funded by NSF should be made readily available on the web with permission for unrestricted reuse and recombination. New grant proposals should make their plans clear for both the availability and the sustainability of materials produced by their funded project.”

In the future, ccLearn hopes to see these goals develop into concrete initiatives. The National Science Foundation has an annual federal budget of $6.06 billion and currently funds 20% of all federally supported research by higher education institutions in the United States.

Creative Commons HowTo

Greg Grossmeier, August 16th, 2008

Molly Kleinman, Copyright Specialist and Special Projects Librarian at the University of Michigan, just wrote up a nice howto for people who use Creative Commons licensed material in their work. This will hopefully add to the repository of knowledge for best practices on material integration.

This is an ongoing issue in the community. No matter how straight forward the instructions for providing attribution to a work are, mistakes will always be made. Most times the mistakes are made not in malice but in a lack of guidance. Luckily, Molly is taking up the task on her blog.

Her examples are easy to understand along with providing various methods of accomplishing the same goal. She even has an “Ideal” example and a “Realistic” example.

From Molly:

I’m taking the material I use in my workshops, mixing it up with CC’s extensive documentation, and posting the results here. If anyone has ideas for topics they’d like me to cover, let me know.

Here’s hoping she continues on this project of producing easy to understand examples of how to use Creative Commons licenses effectively and correctly.

Version 3.0 Austria now goes live!

Patricia Escalera, August 15th, 2008

We are very pleased to announce that Creative Commons Austria has successfully completed the versioning of the ported Creative Commons licensing suite in Austria. Following the versioning of Creative Commons Germany in late July 2008, Version 3.0 of the six standard Creative Commons licenses is now legally and linguistically adapted to Austrian law. A special Thank You to the Legal Project Lead for CC Austria, Dr. Florian Philapitsch, LL.M., who has led the process!

For a more detailed explanation, please see the summary of all significant changes (in German).

Congratulations, CC Austria!

Mozilla Concept Series

Cameron Parkins, August 14th, 2008

The Mozilla Concept Series is a recently announced initiative from Mozilla to garner greater participation in creating their newest browser, Aurora. While there are some intriguing inaugural designs, the most engaging part of the project is that Mozilla is pooling the greater web community for submissions in the form of ideas, mockups (textual/visual examples), and prototypes (interactive illustrations). Of note to the CC community is that Mozilla is requiring that all ideas and mockups are submitted under a CC license, making them easily “redistributable and remixable” (prototypes require an accompanying Mozilla Public License). From Mozilla:

We only ask that all concepts and related source materials be freely redistributable and remixable under either a Creative Commons license (for Ideas and Mockups) or the Mozilla Public License (for Prototypes) so that we can all effectively collaborate on the exploration. Again, the intent is not for these concepts to evolve directly into new products but rather to provoke thought, facilitate discussion and provide inspiration.

THE “IP” Court Supports Enforceability of CC Licenses

Brian Rowe, August 13th, 2008

The United States Court of Appeals held that “Open Source” or public license licensors are entitled to copyright infringement relief.

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), the leading IP court in the United States, has upheld a free copyright license, while explicitly pointing to the work of Creative Commons and others. The Court held that free licenses such as the CC licenses set conditions (rather than covenants) on the use of copyrighted work.  As a result, licensors using public licenses are able to seek injunctive relief for alleged copyright infringement, rather than being limited to traditional contract remedies.

Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig explained the theory of all free software, open source, and Creative Commons licenses upheld by the court: “When you violate the condition, the license disappears, meaning you’re simply a copyright infringer. This is the theory of the GPL and all CC licenses. Put precisely, whether or not they are also contracts, they are copyright licenses which expire if you fail to abide by the terms of the license.” Lessig said the ruling provided “important clarity and certainty by a critically important US Court.”

Today’s ruling vacated the district court’s decision and affirmed the availability of remedies based on copyright law for violations of open licenses.  The federal court noted that ignoring attribution requirements contained in the license caused reputation and economic harm to the original licensor. This opinion demonstrates a strong understanding of a basic economic principles of the internet; attribution is a valuable economic right in the information economy.  Read the full opinion.(PDF)

Creative Commons filed a friends of the court brief in this case. Thanks to all the cosponsors Linux Foundation, The Open Source Initiative, Software Freedom Law Center, the Perl Foundation and Wikimedia Foundation.  Significant pro bono work on this brief was provided by Anthony T. Falzone and Christopher K. Ridder of Stanford’s Center for Internet & Society. Read the full brief.

Full Press Release

CC Salon LA (9/3/08): Xeni Jardin and GOOD Magazine

Cameron Parkins, August 13th, 2008

For those who will be missing out on tonight’s amazing CC Salon SF, we have some good news (if you are based in LA) - we are ecstatic to announce that the CC Salon LA continues next month (9/3/08) with an amazing duo of presenters - joining us will be Xeni Jardin, Tech Culture Journalist and co-editor at Boing Boing, and Casey Caplowe, Creative Director of GOOD Magazine.

Both will discuss how CC, and ‘openness’ in general, has been employed in their respective undertakings, touching on the the successes they have had as well as obstacles they have had to overcome, specifically in regards to traditional and non-traditional journalism. Both will be available for Q&A after their presentations. 

The Salon will be taking place at the always wonderful FOUND LA (Google map) between 7:30PM - 9:30PM. Follow the event on Upcoming, mark attending on Facebook, and make sure to come down and hear from two exemplary members of the CC community on their experiences with open licensing. As always, there will be free (as in beer) drinks for the entire night.

San Francisco Salon is Tonight

Greg Grossmeier, August 13th, 2008

Don’t forget to come out to the CC Salon in San Francisco tonight!

The lineup features a screening of a CC-licensed film from Arts Engine, Inc. along with our own Eric Steuer who will discuss the soon to be launched Film Maker’s Toolkit. Rob Sloan from Current TV will be wrapping up the evening.

The Important Information:
Shine
1337 Mission St, San Francisco, CA
Google Map/Directions
http://www.shinesf.com/ (21+)
7-9PM

If you want to put on your own CC Salon in your city the process is really simple. We have some resources and a simple step by step guide available online.

Also, take a look at the list of Salons to see if there is already interest in your area for a Salon and help them out!

Report from Creative Commons’ June 2008 board meeting online

Eric Steuer, August 11th, 2008

We’ve posted a brief report that summarizes the details of Creative Commons’ most recent board meeting, which took place on June 19 and 20, 2008. Going forward, we intend to do this for all of our board meetings (and we’ll try to get the reports online more quickly in the future!).