CC Newsletter
CC News: Welcome CC Kazakhstan and CC Rwanda
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Happy New Year! We head into 2012 with exciting new CC developments from all over the world.
CC Kazakhstan and CC Rwanda
At the end of 2011, we announced two new CC Affiliates from Kazakhstan and Rwanda. Led by Rauan Kenzhekhanuly and including Almas Nurbakytov, Nartay Ashim and Balashov Talgat, the Kazakhstan team is supported by Wikibilim, a non-profit organisation which also operates as the local representative of Wikimedia. The Rwanda team, led by Jacques Murinda and including Fred Byabagabo and Prosper Birama, is working in conjunction with the Open Learning Exchange (OLE), an NGO supported by the Rwandan Ministry of Education, which aims to provide universal access to basic education by 2015. We welcome both these teams to our Affiliate Network, and look forward to working with them as they develop the CC community in their regions. This brings the total number of official CC Affiliates to 72, the highest level since the project launched in 2002. Read more.
Ugandan 3.0 Licenses now open for public discussion
Many of you already know that we have begun working on the next version of licenses, the 4.0 suite. Even while this process has begun, we are finishing a few remaining, important 3.0 ports. One of these is the Uganda 3.0 license suite, which we are pleased to announce is now open for public discussion. This is particularly noteworthy, as the Ugandan license suite is only the second tailored suite from the Sub-Saharan Africa region to reach the public discussion stage (after South Africa). These new licenses will be useful to many Anglophone African countries that share similar copyright laws and legal histories. We welcome all those who are interested to view the Uganda BY-NC-SA draft and contribute their comments this month. Read more.
With the exception of CC0, the Creative Commons licenses are only for granting permissions to use non-software works. The worlds of software and engineering have additional concerns outside of the scope of what is addressed by the CC licenses. 3D printing is a new medium which encompasses both the creative domains of culture and engineering, and often 3D printed works do not fall neatly into either category. The purpose of the following article is to explore the similarities between the community that has grown around 3D printing and that of the commons which CC strives to empower. A later article will explore problems with adopting CC in the 3D printing community. Read the article here.
In other news:
- Our campaign is still going on through January 15. If you haven't donated yet, now's your chance! (Thanks a million to those of you who have. We could not continue to exist without you.)
- The Creative Commons Board of Directors held its year-end annual board meeting on December 9, 2011.
- One week later, CC celebrated the 9th birthday of its license suite.
- We are still protesting SOPA and PIPA. You can, too.
- You can also apply for a 2012 Google Policy Fellowship with us. Deadline to apply is February 3, 2012.
- Or you can apply to be the CC Director of Strategic Partnerships! And be responsible for building and executing a comprehensive fundraising strategy.
- CC’s Russian affiliate Institute of the Information Society (IIS), in collaboration with the UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies, organized an international seminar and expert meeting last month in Moscow.
- Lastly, we'd like to give a shout-out to some recent developments at Mozilla: the release of Mozilla Public License 2.0 and a great publication called, Learning, Freedom & the Web, based on Mozilla’s eponymous festival in Barcelona last year, published under CC BY-SA.
Banner photo: Early morning in Almaty by Irene2005 / CC BY (left) Volcano by johncooke / CC BY (right)
CC News: Public Discussion Launches for Version 4.0 of the CC Licenses
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Public Discussion Launches for Version 4.0 of the CC Licenses
We are pleased to announce the beginning of the public discussion process that we expect to result in version 4.0 of the Creative Commons license suite. The 4.0 discussions held at the 2011 Global Summit confirmed for CC the need to commence the 4.0 discussion process now if we wish to consider issues relevant to important would-be adopters in a timely manner. As explained following legal sessions at the Summit, version 3.0 is working (and will continue to work) really well for many adopters, but the reality is different for others. Read more.
Stop [U.S.] American censorship of the Internet
The SOPA and Protect IP bills threaten every site on Internet, but would especially harm the commons. While standard public licenses like CC have lowered the costs and risks of legal sharing and collaboration, SOPA and Protect IP would drastically increase both the costs and risks of providing platforms for sharing and collaboration. Sites ranging from individual blogs to massive community projects such as Wikipedia to open education repositories to Flickr and YouTube could be in jeopardy if a single possibly infringing item causes an entire domain to be taken down. Read more.
We are thrilled to relay Wired.com’s announcement that from now on all Wired.com staff-produced photos will be released under a CC Attribution-Noncommercial license (CC BY-NC)! Wired.com’s Editor in Chief Evan Hansen says, “Creative Commons turns ten years old next year, and the simple idea of releasing content with “some rights reserved” has revolutionized online sharing and fueled a thriving remix culture. At Wired.com, we’ve benefited from CC-licensed photos for years — thank you sharers! Now we’re going to start sharing ourselves.” Read more.
In other news:
- The Creative Commons Annual Campaign is in its urgent stages. If you haven't already given, donate $50 or more now and receive a limited edition "I Love to Share" t-shirt!
- A Kickstarted project immediately following the nuclear disaster in Japan, Safecast is a global sensor network that has shared more than 1.25 million radiation data points under the CC0 public domain dedication.
- In related data news, Europeana has published its Licensing Framework, which supports re-use of data and content through CC legal tools (CC0, the Public Domain Mark, and CC BY-SA), providing guidelines for their appropriate applications.
- The German UNESCO Commission released a practical guideline to open content licenses, featuring the CC license suite as its primary example.
- A recent study by the Australian National Data Service found that the benefits of free and unrestricted public sector information (PSI) outweighed costs.
- The first Spanish CC movie (in Catalàn) premiered in Spanish cinema. Check out "Interferències" under CC BY-NC-SA.
- Creative Commons was at WIPO, represented by CC Costa Rica at the 8th Session of the Committee on Development and Intellectual Property (CDIP) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).
- Lastly, this is just a friendly reminder that the White House wants your input on Public Access to Data and Publications by January 2, 2012.
Banner photo crop of "Trent Reznor" by Wired Photostream – CC BY-NC.
No Comments »CC News: Our Annual Campaign & CC License Version 4.0
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You Are the Power of Open: 2011 Creative Commons Annual Campaign
Last week we launched our Annual Campaign. Please join us in powering the future of openness! In addition to fueling the activities below, Creative Commons relies on donations to build and constantly improve the technical and legal tools that enable openness to flourish. The future of openness is bright, but ensuring that future requires urgent and sustained effort. CC is continuing to improve the usefulness of our licenses and helping even more artists, institutions and governments share their works. We are reaching a critical mass and need your support now more than ever. Donate now, or read more.
Copyright Experts Discuss CC License Version 4.0 at the Global Summit
The Creative Commons 2011 Global Summit was a remarkable success, bringing together CC affiliates, board, staff, alumni, friends and stakeholders from around the world. Among the ~300 attendees was an impressive array of legal experts. Collectively, these experts brought diversity and depth of legal expertise and experience to every facet of the Summit, including knowledge of copyright policy across the government, education, science, culture, and foundation sectors. We designed the Summit’s legal sessions to leverage this expertise to discuss our core license suite and the 4.0 license versioning process. Read more.
Blackboard, the popular Learning Management System (LMS), has announced that they will build in support for CC licensing, specifically enabling instructors the ability to publish and share their course materials under the CC Attribution (CC BY) license. Cable Green, CC’s Director of Global Learning, notes, “The core part of any OER is an open license, and Blackboard has shown its leadership by empowering instructors to share so others can revise, reuse, remix and redistribute their courses.” Read more.
In other news:
- The Open Course Library released the first 42 high-enrollment courses for Washington State Community Colleges under CC BY.
- UNESCO and the Commonwealth of Learning released Guidelines for Open Educational Resources (OER) in Higher Education, citing that "OER are teaching, learning or research materials that are in the public domain and released with an open license (such as Creative Commons)."
- CC Portugal launched its second localized suite of CC licenses!
- Open Access Week 2011 involved CC affiliates and community from around the world, including Perú, Poland, Croatia, and the U.S.
- You may recall that the Learning Resource Metadata Initiative's Technical Working Group, with the input of the wider community, has been working to create a set of metadata terms to describe learning resources. The public draft specification is open for comment through November 11.
- Musician Christopher Willits has released 121 stems from "Tiger Flower Circle Sun" for a remix project with SoundCloud! Deadline to remix the stems via CC BY-NC-SA is February 1, 2012.
- The Polish version of The Power of Open — stories of creators sharing knowledge, art, & data using Creative Commons — is now available for download. Thanks to the CC Poland team for proofing!
- Lastly, new CC job opportunities are on the horizon; if you have a knack for time management and logistics coordination, see our announcement.
Banner "CC Line" by Shinjirou – CC BY.
No Comments »CC News: Metadata for millions of cultural works will be published under CC0
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Europeana adopts new data exchange agreement, all metadata to be published under CC0
Europeana — Europe’s digital library, museum and archive, and the first major adopter of the Public Domain Mark for works in the worldwide public domain — has adopted a new Data Exchange Agreement. The agreement, which data providers and aggregators will transition to by the end of 2011, authorizes Europeana to release the metadata for millions of cultural works into the public domain using the CC0 public domain dedication. All metadata for cultural works accessible via the Europeana portal, including previously-delivered metadata, will then be available for free and open re-use. Read more.
Thilo Sarrazin am 3. Juli 2009 by Nina Gerlach
CC BY-SA
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license enforced in Germany
The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-SA) has been enforced by a judicial injunction in Germany. Legal analysis will be added to our case law database in the coming days. Till Jaeger reported the case at ifrOSS. The photo at right was used without providing attribution to the photographer and without providing notice of the license used, both core requirements of all CC licenses. This is an exciting ruling for CC, as the attribution and notice requirements are very clearly stated and upheld. Read more.
Many of you may be familiar with Brian, who has been the legal lead of CC Australia since 2004 and has made an outstanding contribution to the CC and broader open access communities. Brian’s appointment is a product of the first Affiliate Recommendation Process for Board Candidates, which petitioned members of its Affiliate network to recommend new members of the Board of Directors. Having supervised law students from over 30 different countries in his role as director of the Intellectual Property and Technology Law Clinic at Queensland University of Technology and beyond, Brian brings to the Board not only his own formidable expertise but also that of a significant international network. Read more.
In other news:
- The Creative Commons Global Summit was a huge success! Read highlights from the event here.
- Freesound, a collaborative database of nearly 120,000 sounds, launches a complete rewrite of its site, implementing a long-awaited license migration. CC takes this opportunity to retire the Sampling+ licenses. Read more.
- $500 million is awarded to first round grantees of the U.S. Department of Labor's community college career training program. New learning materials resulting from these funds are required to be licensed under CC BY. Read more.
- Video creators can now find CC-licensed tracks for their videos via the newly launched Vimeo music store with CC-licensed music curated and provided by the Free Music Archive.
- The 11th annual Media That Matters Film Festival is premiering on October 27 in New York City. Films from the festival will be made available online after the event under CC BY-NC-ND. Learn more.
- The winners of the Free! Music! Contest 2011 were announced last month, and published into a 19-track album available for free under CC BY-SA and also for purchase as a CD. Check it out here.
- Flickr, the ever popular photo-sharing site, reaches the 200 million mark for CC-licensed photos!
- Lastly, CC announced opportunities last month for two full-time positions: Senior Project Manager and Senior Project Analyst. Applications close this Friday, October 7.
Banner photo is a film still from Europeana Remix by Europeana – CC BY-SA.
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CC News: Open Government Policy Developments
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While we gear up for the CC Global Summit that is just a week away, governments around the world continue to open up their data and adopt policies for maximum transparency and citizen engagement.
Open government developments in Austria, New Zealand, and Australia
In Austria, the City of Vienna, along with the Chancellor’s Office and the Austrian cities of Linz, Salzburg and Graz, coordinated their activities to establish the Cooperation OGD (Open Government Data) Austria. In its first session, the group agreed to eight key points, the first of which was, "All public administration will be free under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), meaning it can be reused and shared for any purpose, with only attribution necessary.” Read more.
In New Zealand, the Ministers of Finance and Internal Affairs adopted a statement detailing a new Declaration on Open and Transparent Government that directs, encourages, and invites various departments, state services agencies, and state sector agencies to commit to releasing high value public data actively for re-use, in accordance with the Declaration and Principles, and in accordance with the NZGOAL Review and Release process. Read more.
In Australia, AusGOAL, the nationally endorsed Australian Governments Open Access and Licensing Framework, recommends the suite of CC licenses for copyrighted material and the CC Public Domain Mark for non-copyrighted material. Read more. CC Korea also recently translated the excellent Australia Gov 2.0 Taskforce Report to further open government in their own region.
CC Global Summit Updates
The Global Summit Poster Competition was a huge success with 38 entries from around the world; winning designs have been added to the Global Summit wiki and will be printed and featured prominently at the lovely Primates Palace in Warsaw. We also invite you to collaborate on music for the CC Salon at the Summit by remixing tracks from two of the main Polish acts under CC BY-NC-SA. For those of you attending the summit, and for those of you who just want to follow along, we will be using the #ccsummit2011 tag on social media and across media platforms for blogs, photos, and videos. Please see the Global Summit wiki for more on this, and a preview of the program and cultural events!
In other news:
- $20,000 is available via the Open Textbook Challenge by the Saylor Foundation. If a textbook is submitted and accepted for use with Saylor.org's course materials, then the copyright holders receive $20,000 while the referrer receives $250.
- Our affiliates in Europe have published a new dossier on the EU sound recording copyright extension.
- We also filed brief comments for the EC consultation on scientific information in the digital age.
- In response to the Moore Foundation's call for community feedback, we developed this idea on Data Governance. We hope you participate and vote, and not just on our idea — participation in processes like this is a great way to increase their usage by foundations in making funding choices that can benefit the commons.
- The Technical Working Group is underway for the Learning Metadata Resource Initiative (LRMI). EdTechMag recently covered LRMI in this great article. To learn more, sign up for the first in a series of webinars on LRMI.
- We documented the present state of CC licensing options in a summary on CC Labs.
- And we updated our Kickstarter page with a couple new CC licensed projects seeking sustenance. Check it out, and let us know if you are using CC for a project with an upcoming deadline.
Banner photo by brewbooks (cropped) – CC BY-SA 2.0.
CC News: Announcing the Creative Commons Global Summit!
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Announcing the 2011 Creative Commons Global Summit!
We are thrilled to announce the 2011 Creative Commons Global Summit, now open for registration! The Creative Commons Global Summit will take place over three full days from September 16-18, and is generously hosted by our affiliates at CC Poland. The summit will bring together the CC community in Warsaw, Poland, to engage strategically on the future of our shared commons, to renew and further build CC’s vital community, to collaborate on mutual projects and initiatives, and to celebrate our successes as we head towards the end of our first decade together. For more information, and to register, head on over to the Global Summit wiki.
New Creative Commons Regional Managers
Instrumental in planning for the Global Summit are our new Regional Managers. New hires Jonas Öberg (Europe), Carolina Botero and Claudio Ruiz (Co-Managers, Latin America) will join existing CC staffers Chiaki Hayashi (Asia and the Pacific), Donatella della Ratta (Arab World), Aurelia J. Schultz (Africa), and our new Network Affiliate Coordinator, Jessica Coates, to form a new team dedicated to supporting our Affiliate Network worldwide. Adding staff support for our affiliates is part of a broader strategy CC is currently implementing to enhance the role and profile of the Affiliate Network. The Regional Managers will be dedicated to supporting and working with these local affiliates, while also working together to inform and shape CC’s ongoing development and policy making. Read more.
Design the winning poster for the Global Summit!
Some of our CC affiliates in Asia are hosting a poster design competition for the summit, based on the theme, “Powering an Open Future.” The winning designs (judged by an international panel and by popular vote) will be introduced at the Global Summit with people in attendance from all over the world, featured prominently at the venue and also as part of a CC visual arts exhibit. The designer will receive a gift of the printed poster from a professional publishing company in Warsaw. The deadline is August 22, Japan time, and in less than two weeks! For the complete submission rules and to enter, visit the competition site.
In other news:
- Support for Creative Commons is growing in Russia.
- Support for Creative Commons is growing everywhere! The Power of Open launched with seven successful events in Tokyo, Washington DC, Brussels, Rio de Janeiro, London, Paris, and Madrid.
- The 3rd Creative Commons Arab regional meeting in Tunis also proved to be extraordinary.
- We participated at the yearly SERCI (Society for Economic Research on Copyright Issues) Congress.
- We talked to Sir John Daniel from the Commonwealth of Learning. COL recently adopted CC BY-SA as part of its new OER policy.
- We added support for the Learning Resources Metadata Initiative (LRMI) with Greg Grossmeier as our new Education Technology & Policy Coordinator.
- And lastly, we are in the process of recruiting our next Chief Technology Officer, so do recommend colleagues and friends who seem well suited to be the next CC CTO!
CC News: The Power of Open
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The Power of Open: Stories of creators sharing knowledge, art, & data using Creative Commons
Released a couple weeks ago, The Power of Open demonstrates the impact of Creative Commons through stories of successful use of our tools by artists, educators, scientists, and institutions of all types. The Power of Open is available for free download at http://thepowerofopen.org under CC BY. It is available in several languages, with more translated versions to come, and you can also order hard copies from Lulu. We hope that it inspires you to examine and embrace the practice of open licensing so that your contributions to the global intellectual commons can provide their greatest benefit to all people. The Power of Open was made possible by our supporters, to whom we are deeply grateful, and the numerous creators featured, initially as part of our Case Studies project. Read more.
Over 400 million CC-licensed works, with increasing freedom
The book also features two pages sketching the socio-economic value and numerical adoption of CC tools. “How has adoption of Creative Commons grown?” is a difficult question given the decentralized nature of the web, but not as difficult as measuring economic value. Since Creative Commons’ first year, we have tracked the number of web links to Creative Commons licenses reported by search engine queries and the number of works licensed at major repositories. Derived from these a very conservative estimate of the approximate minimum number of licensed works at the end of each year is plotted at right – from under 1 million works after the first year, to over 400 million at the end of 2010. Read more.
Global Launch Events for The Power of Open
The Power of Open launched with events from around the world. The official launch occurred June 29 at The New America Foundation in Washington D.C., featuring Global Voices Online and IntraHealth, with CC CEO Cathy Casserly representing for staff. Additional launch events took place from June 16 in Tokyo, Japan, with the last event happening tomorrow, July 8, in Madrid, Spain. For the full list of events that took place in Brussels, Rio de Janeiro, London, and Paris, head on over to http://thepowerofopen.org/events. We will be reporting on outcomes from these events, so be sure to keep up-to-date by subscribing to our blog and using the tag #powerofopen on social media.
In other news:
- We have interns this summer! Casey is researching how Creative Commons has changed the discourse around copyright law. Jorge is researching stuff too, as well as coordinating with our international Affiliate Network. Read more.
- We held our 3rd Arab Regional Meeting in Tunis. We also held a rocking concert and are going to make a CD out of it under CC BY-NC!
- An example of the trend toward use of more open licenses noted above is Free! Music! Contest 2011 which this year is promoting CC BY and BY-SA licensed music. Bands can register through July 31.
- We presented at this year’s Open Knowledge Conference with the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKF) on Open Data Licensing. The OKF is also hosting Open Government Data Camp in October.
- Speaking of open data, participants of the Linked Open Data in Libraries Museums and Archives Summit (LOD-LAM) drafted an Open Ranking System for Library, Archive, and Museum Collection Metadata.
- Speaking of open government, License or Public Domain for Public Sector Information (PSI)?
- In policy news: the Commonwealth of Learning adopted CC BY-SA as part of its new open educational resources (OER) policy, the Open Society Foundations started encouraging its grantees to use CC licenses as part of its new copyright policy, and Brazil introduced OER into federal legislation in addition to adopting it as part of a local government policy.
- The Albanian translation of the CC license suite is open for review.
- Lastly, we are working with the Association of Educational Publishers to establish a common learning resources framework to help unleash the tremendous potential of OER and online learning.
CC News: YouTube Launches Creative Commons Support
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What better gift for your dad on Father's Day but a remix of his favorite videos?
YouTube launches support for CC BY and a CC library featuring 10,000 videos
You heard the great news last week—YouTube added the Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY) as a licensing option for users! Now when users upload video, they can choose to license it under CC BY or to remain with the default “Standard YouTube License.” Users may also change the license on existing videos by editing each video individually.
In conjunction with the implementation, YouTube also launched a Creative Commons video library containing 10,000 initial videos under CC BY from organizations such as C-SPAN, PublicResource.org, Voice of America, and Al Jazeera. The library serves as a base catalog of videos for users to access, edit, and incorporate into their own video projects. The YouTube Video Editor now contains a CC tab that allows users to search the Creative Commons video library and select videos to edit and remix. Users may remix videos directly on the editor platform, and any video that is created using CC BY-licensed content will automatically display the linked titles of the source videos underneath the player. Since CC BY is enabled as a licensing option, the library will grow as more users choose to license their work under CC BY. Already, in less than a week, the number of CC BY-licensed videos on YouTube has grown to more than 60,000. Read more about the development on our blog.
In other news:
- Creative Commons Qatar launched last week at a reception at the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha that featured the work of more than 20 local artists.
- We improved the CC legal interface on our license deeds. Check out the changes and give us feedback!
- We talked with Pete Forsyth and the Wikimedia Public Policy Initiative about open education and policy. Pete will also be on the panel for CC Salon SF next week (see below).
- After 1,200 screenings of his CC-licensed documentary, "An Island," director Vincent Moon launched his new label, petites planètes, under CC BY-NC.
- The Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) adopted a university-wide open educational resources (OER) policy with CC BY as the default license for university material.
- Speaking of OER, come to our next salon on June 13! CC Salon SF will feature a panel discussion exploring the ways we can facilitate the desire to improve learning. Including CC CEO Cathy Casserly, the panel will consist of members from the Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy Initiative, Libresoft, Wiki Strategies, and the Urban School. For those who can’t make it, the event will be livestreamed.
CC News: Creative Commons Global Meeting 2011
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Creative Commons Global Meeting 2011
Since the last global meeting of the Creative Commons community in Sapporo, we’ve seen the launch of CC0 and the Public Domain Mark, and a half-dozen more CC affiliate jurisdictions with many more in the works. To celebrate this and many other CC milestones, we are holding our next global meeting on the 16-18th of September this year in Warsaw, Poland. Co-hosted by our CC Poland team led by Alek Tarkowski, the event will bring together affiliates from more than 70 jurisdictions, CC staff, and a number of CC Board members. In addition to gathering requirements for version 4.0 of the CC license suite, the meeting will consist of workshops and forums on CC community building and adoption efforts in key sectors such as education, public sector information, and data. Learn more.
CC Attribution required in government policy
We are excited to announce that Creative Commons has been awarded a grant from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to provide support to successful applicants of the U.S. government’s Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program. All grantee outputs will be released under the CC Attribution (CC BY) license. To assist grantees, Creative Commons, along with several partnering organizations, will provide expertise in open licensing, adoption and use, and more. Our technical services will offer a competitive advantage for organizations seeking TAACCCT grant funds and ensure that the open educational resources created with these federal funds are of the highest quality. Learn more.
More exciting developments in government and foundation policy
In addition to requiring CC BY for TAACCCT grantee outputs, the U.S. Department of Labor has also required CC BY for outputs of the Career Pathways Innovation Fund. The fund makes available up to $122 million to "continue DOL’s support for community colleges, with a particular focus on career pathway programs implemented by community colleges in partnership with other organizations in the community."
CC BY is also the chosen license for non-software outputs of the Next Generation Learning Challenges grantees, a multi-year program dedicated to improving college readiness and completion in the United States. You can see the full list of the Wave I winners here.
In other news:
- The MIT Media Lab has named Creative Commons Chairman and former CEO Joi Ito as its new executive director.
- The Free Software Foundation recommends CC0 if you want to release software into the public domain.
- We now offer plaintext versions of CC licenses and the CC0 public domain dedication.
- SimpleGeo and ChEMBL have jumped on the open data bandwagon.
- The latest in CC music includes the bittersweet end of Learning Music Monthly (36 albums) and Nighty Night by 8in8, an all-star collaboration between Ben Folds, Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman, and Damien Kulash from OK Go.
- CC Salon Palo Alto on Open Services Innovation featuring Henry Chesbrough is now up for viewing. Keep an eye out for the next CC salon in June!
- Lastly, you can still vote for Stormy Mondays' "Sunrise Number 1" (licensed CC BY-NC-ND) to be the first CC song played in outerspace on NASA's Endeavour mission!
Banner photo by x-oph – CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
1 Comment »CC News: Creative Commons for Japan Relief
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March may be over, but the madness isn't! CC is helping to shape Japan relief efforts, moving offices, and playing an important role in open government.
Japan relief efforts use Creative Commons
Regardless of CC related efforts, we want you to do what you can to help Japan. But we also think it's pretty amazing that a number of great relief efforts are using Creative Commons licenses, and you can contribute to them. OLIVE is a Wikipedia-like site that provides much-needed information for quake survivors in various languages. With thousands of people displaced from their homes in Japan, many are surviving in make-shift homes and shelters, with scant resources. OLIVE provides practical and creative ways on how to best utilize available resources, such as how to stay warm in a cardboard house. You can help by contributing, editing, or translating articles on OLIVE – all available for reuse under CC BY. Read more about other CC relief efforts.
CC headquarters moves to Mountain View, California!
New CC Office by Creative Commons / CC BY
Spring is a time for change, as evidenced by our office move. We're not leaving our hearts in San Francisco, however; we're taking them plus our innovative spirits with us to Mountain View, California. As of April 1, the CC headquarters will be located in downtown Mountain View to be closer to all the activity brewing in Silicon Valley. Read more.
State of Play: Public Sector Information in the United States
As part of our blog series for the European Public Sector Information Platform (ePSIplatform) on the role of Creative Commons in supporting the re-use of public sector information, we have researched and published the State of Play: Public Sector Information in the United States. Beth Noveck, former United States deputy CTO of open government and now a Professor of Law at New York Law School, provides a great overview, noting that it is “an excellent report on open data in the United States” and “provides a concise and accurate primer (with footnotes) on the legal and policy framework for open government data in the US.” Read more.
In other news:
- Have an idea for a CC project? Learn how to develop a proposal and apply for funding at the P2PU "Getting your CC project funded" course! Deadline to apply is April 13.
- The annual Open Education Conference is calling for research proposals by May 13.
- Safe Creative, a Spain-based global intellectual property registry that allows users to publicly assert and identify their rights over a work, now enables creators to donate a portion of their sales to Creative Commons.
- CC talked with BCcampus on open educaton and policy. BCcampus is the institution that provides educational technology and online learning support to British Columbia’s 25 public colleges and universities.
- CC CEO Cathy Casserly receives the President's Award for OpenCourseWare Excellence.
- Firefox 4 was officially released by our awesome friends at Mozilla.
- NYTimes best-selling author Cory Doctorow talked up CC in a recent feature by the BBC: "How free translates to business survival."
- Lastly, we are hosting a CC Salon Palo Alto on Open Services Innovation. The April 25 event is free and open to all, but advance RSVP is required, so reserve your spot now!
Banner based on illustration by Jennifer Chong – CC BY 2.0.
