Category Archives: creative commons

For any KALW (91.7), listeners, tune in Sunday at 2pm for The Creative Remix. More about it here. Continue reading →

There will be few nights in this boy’s life as cool as the Wired/CC Concert. Here are some pictures. Continue reading →

Tickets going fast. Continue reading →

The full text of Dan Gillmor’s book “We the Media,” about blogs and other things, is now online. (Thanks to fellow alper Cory Doctorow)…. Continue reading →

Creative Commons is hosting a party to celebrate Dan Gillmor’s new book, We The Media, Friday, July 30, at our new home, 543 Howard Street, San Francisco. The party starts at 7pm. You should must RSVP to get in (limited space). Send an email to francesca at creative commons dot org. Continue reading →

CC’s got a great new newsletter that you can subscribe to here. Continue reading →

Creative Commons has won a Prix Ars Electronica Award.

Continue reading →

There’s a nice piece in the Wall Street Journal’s E-Commerce Special “E-Commerce” Report about Creative Commons. The report describes three futures for copyright, with CC among the three. (The WSJ charges $350 for the privilege of linking to a web version of an article about your company, so rather than link, I’ll just describe the article (Does this really making you better off, WSJ?)).

The coolest part of the story is the first announcement of Creative Commons’ Sampling Licenses which will be launched in Brazil by Brazil’s culture minister, and cult figure, Gilberto Gil this December.

The Sampling Licenses say “sample my work if you want, even for commercial purposes, just don’t copy and sell my work without my permission.” It’s aim is to make explicit what whole genres of music presume — at least until you become famous. The idea was brought to us by Negativland and People Like Us.

Stay tuned for more about the release. Continue reading →

There is a great deal of very exciting stuff that has already happened at Creative Commons, and that is about to happen too. We’ve got some exciting announcements coming soon, and the take-up rate on the licenses has surpassed our wildest hopes.

But there are the moments of disappointment. And this exchange with “legal” at mp3.com is one of the most disappointing.

The story begins when our assistant director, Neeru, sent an email to mp3.com to try to open up a line of communication about Creative Commons and its mission. As she wrote,

>> Hello MP3.com,
>>
>> Creative Commons provides free copyright licenses to musicians who want
>> to distribute their content online, but wish to reserve some copyright
>> protection. In fact, one you your artists, the Phoenix Trap, has
>> incorporated a Creative Commons license into their MP3.com home page.
>> We would love to help you offer Creative Commons license to your users
>> — it’s free, and a great way to make clear the rights and
>> restrictions artists would like to offer their fans.
>>
>> http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/15/the_phoenix_trap.html
>>
>> Please feel free to contact me.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Neeru
>>

Harmless enough, I thought, and it was encouraging to see mp3.com artists begin to use CC licenses.

Monday, “legal” responded as follows:

>> From: [email protected]
>> Date: Mon Aug 4, 2003 11:05:33 AM US/Pacific
>> To: [email protected]
>> Subject: RE:Creative Commons and MP3 [#1316347]
>>
>>
>> Nothing replaces the legal protections provided by registering a
>> copyright with the US Copyright Office–most certainly not your “free
>> license.”
>>
>> This email is formal notice for you to cease and desist from further
>> contacting our artists through our web site to solicit for your
>> product/services, which are not sanctioned by us.
>>
>> Legal Department
>> Music & Media
>> Vivendi Universal Net USA, Inc.
>>

I can’t describe how depressing this sort of stuff is. There are many in the content community who understood right away the benefits and virtues of Creative Commons licenses. Indeed, at our announcement in December, we had a video endorsement from not only John Perry Barlow but also Jack Valenti.

But we’ve obviously not yet made the mission clear enough — at least if this is the sort of response we get from a company like mp3.com. Mp3.com was, in its birth at least, one of the most innovative digital music companies out there. Artists were free to sign with mp3.com without promising exclusivity. The company did a great deal to enable a wide and diverse base of creators, who could produce new music and sell it on the site. Tied with the fantastic eMusic.com site (which enables unlimited downloads of real mp3s for a flat monthly fee), the potential for this group of companies to help build a revolution in the creation and distribution of content is unlimited.

Except, perhaps, by old debates and even older thinking. So when “legal” writes:

>> Nothing replaces the legal protections provided by registering a
>> copyright with the US Copyright Office–most certainly not your “free
>> license.”

I want say: Of course, and nothing in CC’s mission would limit or discourage an artist from registering copyrights with the US Copyright office. Indeed, we are working on systems to make that registration much easier.

And of course, our “free license” is not meant to replace a copyright registration or copyright protection for that matter. Indeed, without copyright protection, our licenses are useless.

But I don’t get just why artists would not benefit from a “free license,” “legal” at mp3.com? Artists in general don’t make a great deal of money. You’d think eliminating the cost of lawyers would be a great help to them, wouldn’t you? Indeed, if you count the number of “free licenses” that we’ve given away, and you calculate their value the way the RIAA calculates the cost of music piracy, Creative Commons has given more than $100 billion to the creative community. That can’t hurt artists, can it?

>>
>> This email is formal notice for you to cease and desist from further
>> contacting our artists through our web site to solicit for your
>> product/services, which are not sanctioned by us.

[Sigh] again. Again, the greatest thing about mp3.com was that the artists were not owned by mp3.com, or anyone else. They were free. Yet here we are being ordered not to contact “our artists” “through our web site.” I’m not sure just what that would mean, but the tone is very sad. Mp3.com artists are among the most creative artistically and commercially. Shouldn’t they be free to decide how best to sell their songs? Wasn’t that what mp3.com was all about?

>>
>> Legal Department
>> Music & Media
>> Vivendi Universal Net USA, Inc.

Maybe the signature captures it all. The promise of something different at mp3.com — despite great technology and really innovative business ideas — must always compete with “legal.” Innovation must compete with tradition.

Is it impossible to imagine the lawyers ever on the side of innovation?

The bottom line is this: We’ve done lots of work at Creative Commons to change how people think about these issues. I think we’ve done great work. But we’ve obviously not done enough to crack through, even in places like mp3.com. So help us. Enter our contest. Blog better ideas. And tell me how we might get the lawyers to see. A year ago, I was quite confident I knew how. It has been a year of shaking that confidence. Continue reading →

Creative Commons has announced a contest to help us spread the message better. The idea is to build a 2-minute moving image that says what Get Creative says better. Cool prizes, amazing judges, lots of new creative content. Continue reading →