Open Media Review

Flickr User CC Licensing Survey

Alek Tarkowski from CC Poland is conducting a survey on how CC licenses are understood and used through the Flickr photo sharing service. Identify information is purely optional, so you can take the survey completely anonymously. Alex is using the data to develop a report and the Creative Commons folks are looking to add it to their ongoing case study.

I hope that it can also be used as a basis to help clarify Flickr’s support of CC licenses.

In the last year or so, there have been a couple of cases I have found distressing with CC at their core. CC was ultimately dismissed from the Virgin suit but the remarks of the plaintiff made it clear there is still quite a bit of confusion over licensing options at Flickr in general and the obligations of CC in particular for both licensers and licensees. Recently we’ve also had the Myxer suit which exposes some of the same issues as well as simply touching on concerns the CC folks have been working on for some time, like identifying works and uses in a more machine friendly fashion.

As the most popular license for open media, we are big fans of Creative Commons. Personally, I know there is much more work to be done on education folks on how best to use these licenses and what the effects their choice of license will have on practical situations involving their covered works. This survey seems like an excellent way to help share those concerns alongside some useful data on a service that does a brisk traffic in CC licensed material.

Posted in Consume, Open News | No Comments »

New Suggest a Link Form

Got a story you think Open Media Review should be covering? Use the new suggest a link form to submit specific links for consideration. Your name and particulars are optional but if you choose to share them, we promise to only use them to give you credit for the submission.

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Twitter Stream

Open Media Review now has a dedicated Twitter stream. Posts here will also go out via Twitter, instantly.

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Tor Authors on Results of Free Electronic Books

Bloggasm has a nice piece summing up the results of Tor’s free ebook giveaway so far. I like that the poster spoke with participating authors directly. The worst case saw the giveaway have no effect one way or another on the author’s sales. One of the authors interviewed was John Scalzi who as usual has some pretty articulate thoughts on the subject.

“‘Scientifically’?” he wrote to me in an email. “Probably not, unless you somehow managed to control (or at least account for and factor in) every incident of someone discussing your work and or going down a decision path to acquire the work, which is probably more work than it’s worth. But I don’t think that ’scientifically’ is the standard required here; I think ‘heuristically’ is probably better. If you consistently see a rise in sales of an author’s work after the release of a free e-book, then heuristically you have a good idea it’s beneficial.”

I think there’s a key implication, here, to which the article did not speak. Anything that increases visibility of a work is generally going to help the author. If a free ebook doesn’t directly lead to a sale, it may yield benefits in other ways. In particular, an ebook could simply fuel word of mouth buzz, especially in blogs and podcasts where the availability of the work makes it attractive for review and discussion.

The Tor giveaway is more of a cross subsidy, as it is tied to their newsletter. In return for helping them t build a readership for the newsletter and the forthcoming site, you get free ebooks. I think direct release is more effective, especially since most of the time I have seen authors do so, it has been part of a larger marketing push which improves the author’s identity as a brand.

Unfortunately, the giveaway looks like it will be wrapping up with the launch of Tor’s new site. Several of the authors expressed an interest in giving away their works beyond that. Since Tor has published several of Cory Doctorow’s books, perhaps if those authors were to approach the publisher about using CC or similar licenses for future works, they’d be agreeable.

Technorati Tags: ebooks, traditional publishing

Posted in Open Fiction, Open News | No Comments »

Site Relaunched

Mur and I have completed moving this site to a new host, one I administrate, as she has stepped down as editor-in-chief and in lieu of shuttering the site offered me the job. I accepted figuring I’d give it a go, in terms of trying to meet a more regular posting schedule as well as re-invigorating the team of contributors, existing and new.

As part of the re-launch, I am soliciting fresh contributors. Please send me a brief CV if you are interested. I am looking for strong overlap in the editorial focus of this site as well as a track record of regular submission. You can reach me at cmdln at thecommandline dot net.

The site right now is a straight port of the old data, so all the old posts and comments are here, with a new theme and an upgraded installation of WordPress. If you have any questions, concerns, or technical problems with the site, let me know.

Stay tuned for more updates as the re-launched site moves forward.

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|\| | |/| - Trent Reznor to fans: “Thank you”

clipped from dl.nin.com 999,999 1,000,000 letting you discipline echoplex head down lights in the sky corona radiata the four of us are dying demon seed length: 43:45 streaming audio available at iLike. the slip is licensed under a creative commons attribution non-commercial share alike license. we encourage you to remix it share it with your friends, post it on your blog, play it on your podcast, give it to strangers, etc. ©2008 NIN www.nin.com as a thank you to our fans for your continued support, we are giving away the new nine inch nails album one hundred percent free, exclusively via nin.com. the music is available in a variety of formats including high-quality MP3, FLAC or M4A lossless at CD quality and even higher-than-CD quality 24/96 WAVE. your link will include all options - all free. all downloads include a PDF with artwork and credits.

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D(iscover) the R(eal) M(eaning) of ‘free’

clipped from opsound.org opsound Opsound is a gift economy in action, an experiment in applying the model of free software to music. Musicians and sound artists are invited to add their work to the Opsound pool using a copyleft license developed by Creative Commons. Listeners are invited to download, share, remix, and reimagine. Anyone is encouraged to contribute sound files to the Opsound’s open sound pool. All material for the sound pool will be released under a Creative Commons license (the “Attribution-ShareAlike license“), a copyleft license in the spirit of open source software license which allows for all kinds of copying, remixing, use, and reuse while retaining an attribution to the original artist. [more info] Opsound: Free Love, Free Music.

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Links and status

Hello faithful readers!

We here at the Open Media Review want to let you know that we are discussing many things behind the scenes (and some of us are even going to get together IN PERSON soon to talk), and we’re focusing on the purpose behind this site, where we want it to go, and how we’re going to get it there. So hopefully soon we’ll be back on a more regular schedule with more regular postings - because there’s lots of cool stuff going on! Thanks for your patience.

In the meantime:

• An update to Thomas’ Little Brother post - the audiobook is also available at eMusic, which has DRM-free music and audiobooks (you need the subscription option that gives you two book credits per month, not one). You can also get excerpts in a handful of podcasts including I Should Be Writing (and The Command Line soon, too, right?).
• From Natalie Metzger: From the Read, Write, Web Blog. They discuss the recent decision by Del Ray to release Star Wars “Legacy of the Force” Book 1, Betrayal as a free download in conjunction with the May 13 release of the final book in the series. In addition to it being freely  apparently they are encouraging users to share this freebie with others. RWW goes on to discuss how this move is an emulation of the recent free releases from popular music artists. Interestingly enough, there is no mention in the post about how this move might be following suit with recent free book releases from other book publishers. Here’s the link. Thanks, Natalie!
• From Kevin Crosby: came across a podcast in my feeds today that I thought would interest you for the Open Media Review.  It’s not completely on point, but I found some of the comments interesting.  The podcast deals with efforts to collect free and open legal case law on the web instead of leaving it almost completely in the corporate hands of Thomson-West and Lexis-Nexis.  Basically those two companies have had a lock on access to legal research ever since they first started to collect and publish court decisions.  While the actual court decisions are public domain, the companies (particularly West) own the volume and page numbering system that is the backbone of legal research and citation. The podcast is Lawyer 2 Lawyer which is part of Law.com’s LegalTalk Network and the episode is called Free Case Law.

Posted in Audio, Law, Open Fiction | 1 Comment »

Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother

Cory Doctorow has launched his latest novel, Little Brother, this past weekend. This is Doctorow’s first young adult offering and one I had the good fortune to read in manuscript form. It is yet another example of how sophisticated the young adult market is today. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

The short synopsis is that several teens are snagged in a Homeland Security net after a tragic catastrophe in San Francisco and the novel details their dedicated efforts to take back the Bill of Rights through technology and hacking techniques that exist today. Cory deals well with these hefty issues of civil liberties and technology hacking in the interest of activism. The print version of the book includes how-tos with each chapter giving more information in a hands-on fashion about the technology and skills demonstrated throughout.

As with his other novels, this book is available as a free download in a variety of electronic book formats, including plain text, HTML and PDF as well as ones for specific readers. The ebook is available under a very liberal CC license: attribution, non-commercial, share alike.

If you are looking for the book in your local book store, where you should be able to find it, keep in mind that it may shelved under young adult or fantasy/science fiction or both. Also up until May 22nd you can order a signed copy from Borderlands. There may be some limitations on shipping, check the site for details.

Cory is also trying something new for him, a commercial audio book offering. At his insistence, the audio will only be available without DRM. Unfortunately, this means for the moment it will not be available through the largest online reseller, Audible. iTunes audio books are all provided by Audible, as well. You can order the audiobook through the book’s site and there is also an embeddable flash widget if you’d like to help sell the book through your own site. There is also a plain text link if you are unable to support flash on your site.

The audiobook comes with a liberal license, a little bit different in that the remix/redistribution is limited to a thirty minute excerpt. That’s roughly a full chapter of the book.

Cory has included a novel feature on the book’s site. Many readers have approached him after consuming one of his free electronic editions who are not inclined to purchase a dead tree version but are willing to send him money to support a particular book. His response in the past has been that he prefers the book sale to the cash as he has a very positive working relationship with his publisher. Plus only a book sale registers in terms of how well a particular book is doing.

For Little Brother, there is a donate link on the site. What this allows you to do is support the book in Cory’s preferred fashion and he will connect your donation with a school or library who has registered a desire for a copy or copies of the book.

Visit the site and check out all of the distribution options and activities around this wonderful book.

Posted in Audio, Favorites, Open Fiction | 5 Comments »

No Starch Experiments with BitTorrent, DRM-free Release

No Starch is a fun, smaller, technology oriented publisher. As such, it is hardly surprising they would be willing to experiment with direct distribution through BitTorrent. They are releasing two titles, both by Leander Kahney noted Wired.com columnist; Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod. The books are being made available in DRM-free PDF format.

The candid thoughts of the publisher are encouraging that they understand the larger issues at stake.

But there’s a political issue here as well. I think that publishers (music and book) are spending too much time circling the wagons and not enough time thinking of ways that they can use technology to advantage. Certainly, our move here is a bit unusual, but someone has to take the plunge. May as well be us. After all, we were the first publishers in the United States to come out publicly against the DMCA. Time to put our money where our mouth is, as they say.

Using technology to advantage resonates well with the the NRKbeta doctrine, a coinage deriving from an interview with folks at the Norwegian broadcaster, NRK, after their own experimentation with BitTorrent and DRM-free downloads.

The only way to control your content is to be the best provider of it.

Like other publishers they are taking a wait and see approach to the experiment. While they are optimistic that the torrents will have a positive effect on sales, they will condition future such releases on the success of this effort.

Posted in Open News, Tech | No Comments »