Open Media Review

Happy Public Domain Day!

Mike at the Creative Commons offers a bevy of links celebrating a day dedicated to the most open of open media, works in the public domain. He points out a couple of blog posts considering the importance of the public domain, many projects contributing to or building on it, and James Boyle’s recent book released on the very subject.

It must be an even sweeter celebration for CC given that they succeeded at reaching their very ambition fund raising goal for 2008. They could not have done so without individual donations in addition to the corporate contributions and grants they receive. If you haven’t already contributed think about adding the Creative Commons to your charitable giving in the coming year. Better yet, consider setting up a modest, ongoing monthly donation; that’s what I do.

Regardless, take some time today to enjoy open and public creative works.

Posted in Consume, Open News | No Comments »

Massive Media Donation to Wikipedia from German Federal Archive

Wikipedia just announced a massive contribution to their Commons.

Starting on Thursday Dec 4, 2008, Wikimedia Commons will witness a massive upload of new images. We are anticipating about 100,000 files from a donation from the German Federal Archive. These images are mostly related to the history of Germany (including the German Democratic Republic) and are part of a cooperation between Wikimedia Germany and the Federal Archive.

The Federal Archive is making the photos available under a CC BY-NV-SA 3.0 Germany license and has apparently cleared its rights to do so. The photos are not of the highest resolution, about 800 pixels on the longest side. Regardless, this is an enormous addition to the commons. Flickr’s collaborations with US museums was on the order of a few thousand, maybe it is up to ten thousand or so. The Federal Archive submission is an order of magnitude or two beyond that.

I think this gives greater cause for the Wikimedia Foundation to exercise the GNU FDL window granted them in a recent updated by the Free Software Foundation to move their content to a Creative Commons license. I have to imagine that the CC license on these photos at a minimum bypasses some of the reuse issues for images in wikis presented by the particular conditions of the GNU FDL.

Posted in Favorites, Open News | No Comments »

Creative Commons Questionnaire on the Meaning of Non-Commercial

The Creative Commons opened a survey a few weeks back to help them investigate how people understand the non-commercial condition of their licenses. This aspect has been one of the more difficult to define and explain. Attribution, no derivatives and share alike are relatively easy to follow by comparison.

I’ve already taken the survey and encourage you to do the same if you are a creator or consumer of works using a non-commercial license. They’ve extended the deadline to December 14th so you still have about a week to participate. The questionnaire does take some time and thought. The questions are not simple by any stretch. Many require you to express a judgement of how much you agree with some non-trivial statements and scenarios.

I very much look forward to the findings. The more folks that participate, the better the analysis. Regardless, I am very pleased to see the Creative Commons tackle this question to help better define, explain and document the non-commercial license choice.

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New Site Offering Open Case Law

Kevin sent in a link to Open Jurist, a site offering court opinions free of charge. The site itself is licensed under an attribution only CC license though I also found a traditional copyright notice. I am also not sure what the limitations on the original source material would be and whether the re-licensing under a CC license or exclusive copyright is correct in this case. So far the offering is limited by both browsable and searchable. It is also unclear what their plan is to expand their data, or even how they acquired and processed what they already have. They have an RSS feed which I suppose is for notices of additions to their database.

I have not fully investigated this site but the premise is awesome. So far they have opinions from the Supreme Court and the U.S. Courts of Appeals and they are asking for volunteers to help expand their database. And it’s released under a Creative Commons license.

While the court opinions have always belonged to the public domain, being authored by a branch of the government, copyrights on the published opinions have been held by the companies who publish and distribute the opinions because of the publishers pagination and summary system. Courts and lawyers are totally dependent on the pagination for citing their caselaw so the court can reliably find them. And that made the bound reporters valuable and too expensive for your average person to access. I love the idea of having solid case law posted for free on the web and available to the public.

Now, excuse me while I test it.

Open Case Law Access - Thanks Kevin

Posted in Law | No Comments »

James Boyles’ Latest Book is Out

I’ve heard or seen my own role models point to James Boyle and his research and writing. Professor Lawrence Lessig posted about Boyles’s new book this morning, mentioning that Boyle’s first book served as a strong initial inspiration for Lessig’s own copyright work.

“The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind” explores the role of the public domain in culture and is erosion as intellectual property encroaches on it. I have added the book to my own lengthy to read list. The legality and theory behind the public domain are only treated glancingly in other books I’ve read on copyright and copyright reform. I look forward to a more considered treatment. Like much about copyright, I’ve encountered myths and misinformation around the public domain and value a resource that can shed light and dispel misunderstanding.

Not surprisingly, you can download the book under the terms of a Creative Commons license (BY-NC-SA). You can, of course, also purchase the book which I strongly recommend to support and encourage more work from the author.

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Digital Tipping Point Documentary Project Releases Footage for Sharing, Remixing

Digital Tipping Point is a collaborative documentary built using open source principles and methods and covering the free software and open source phenomena and how these are expanding to culture more generally. The project is attempting to use video submitted to the Internet Archive to build the film. They’ve just released over 80 hours of digitized video on their archive.org page. The material is available under a CC BY-SA license.

Check out the project’s web site. You can view video streaming in from their collection point on the Internet Archive. They also host a wiki, forums, a calendar, and project milestones much like a collaborative software effort.

Posted in Favorites, Open News, Open Source | No Comments »

Help with Creative Commons Fund Raising

The Creative Commons just recently launched their annual fund raising campaign. The organization is not for profit and relies on these donations to help share information and build tools to foster a thriving and vibrant commons online.

They just successfully met a matching grant but still have a ways to go before the end of the year. Follow the link and check out the different ways you can help them reach their goal.

Posted in Consume, Open News | 1 Comment »

Lessig’s Last “Copyright Book” Released

Remix is Professor Lawrence Lessig’s self described last book on the subject of copyright. The announcement of its release is up on his blog. There is also a dedicated site with links to all the various and sundry resources that you would expect to attend a book from Lessig. The reviews look impressive, no less than we’ve come to expect. It seems like a fitting cap stone to the research and hard work that he has put in on the issues with copyright and how best to effect a balance through reform.

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Librivox Hits 365 Days of Audio

Librivox is a collaborative project to record audio for public domain books and release it on the note. Their goal is to provide a free audio book for every title in the public domain. Ambitious to say the least and I know a few podcasters pitching in.

They hit a pretty interesting milestone recently. They have recorded and released enough audio for 365 days of continuous listening. Given that most folks listen to audio of this sort for maybe a couple of hours a day, that is considerably more than a years worth of free audio.

Posted in Audio, Open Fiction | No Comments »

Jesse Dylan Film on Creative Commons

I saw this short film on Professor Lawrence Lessig’s blog. It looks like it was produced to help kick of the Creative Commons annual campaign, though their support site is not open as of this writing.

It is an amazingly well produced short featuring comments from many luminaries juxtaposed with examples of the kinds of creative remixing that the Creative Commons licenses have enabled and supported.

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