Stanley the Whale

Cameron Parkins, May 20th, 2008

Stanley The Whale is a CC-powered e-zine that is “dedicated to bringing forth amateur talent from all corners in as many different mediums of art as can be fit within” a particular online space. Focusing on the work of amateur photographers, writers, artists, and game-designers who are hoping to expand their fan base, all submissions are released under a CC BY-NC license, enabling the content to be reused broadly as long as it attributes the creator and remains noncommercial in intent. If you are a a content creator looking for a place to be seen and heard who also chooses to CC license your work, peruse what STW has to offer - it looks poised to be a positive place for up-and-coming creators looking to get their feet wet in the world of online publication.

Publius Project Explores the Rules of Cyberspace

Jane Park, May 20th, 2008

Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society launched a new project last week: Publius. The Publius Project is a Web 2.0 version of the Federalist Papers, a collection of passionate essays written in support of the U.S. Constitution–mostly signed “Publius”. 

The Publius Project “brings together a distinguished collection of Internet observers, scholars, innovators, entrepreneurs, activists, technologists, and still other experts to write short essays, foster a public dialogue, and create a durable record of how the rules of cyberspace are being formed — with a view to affecting their future incarnations.”

The most recent essay, posted today, is titled “Muddling Through Internet Governance”. All essays are signed by their authors and licensed CC BY.

Rifflet

Cameron Parkins, May 20th, 2008

Rifflet, described by Gizmodo as “Twitter for Music”, is a new website that pushes musicians to post their unfinished song - a unique melody, bass line, guitar riff, drum beat, etc. - for the rest of the Rifflet community to hear, build upon, and recontextualize. From Rifflet:

A rifflet is a piece of a song–a bass line, a guitar riff, a drum beat or something else entirely. Share your rifflets and combine them with others, or even upload a finished song. Here’s the catch: every rifflet must be less than 60 seconds. The idea is to only upload a part of a song, or an idea for a song, or just a couple of guitar chords you think are cool. Then, you can download parts of other people songs (like a drumbeat) that you can combine with your ideas. If you’re a dj, you can use all these great pieces of proto-songs for remixes without worrying about royalties or copyright restrictions, because these sounds are all on this site for the purpose of being remixed.

Rifflet has CC licensing options built into its UI to facilitate this method of online collaboration, allowing users to embrace the spectrum of CC licenses in publishing their work(s). This integration is exactly what CC is meant for in that it easily facilitates the conscious sharing and reuse of works in a manner that remains legally sound without becoming overbearing for non-legal minds.

With this said, Rifflet’s implementation could improve in two main ares. Firstly, it would be helpful for these licences to be more prominent on Rifflet’s home page (license choice is only visible after you click on a track) . Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, Rifflet should look towards CC Mixter’s “Uses Samples From” widget (see the right side of this page) in providing attribution for rifflets that are turned into full songs.

These are minor, albeit important, changes that would greatly increase Rifflet’s functionality for its users. Thankfully, these changes are more technical than conceptual - the core idea behind Rifflet remains true to the goals of the CC community in providing a fluid and open place online for people to share, reuse, and build upon other people’ works.

Malaysian Artistes for Unity

Michelle Thorne, May 20th, 2008

pete was juggling tomatoes. bored. so he telephoned a few friends instead. “how about getting together to make an anti-racism song and music video?” all said yes without hesitation. not because pete threatened them with a rusty knife. only because they love malaysia.

And so began Malaysian Artistes For Unity, a collaboration which has since swelled to over 150 active members working with creative, non-partisan projects to build awareness and tolerance in Malaysia.

The group, in close partnership with Creative Commons Malaysia, has released a lovely video to share their cause. Shot in Kuala Lumpur and co-directed by Yasmin Ahmad, the video features a colorful cast of well-known Malaysian artists singing “Here In My Home,” a song written and co-produced by Pete Teo from CC Malaysia’s board of directors. The text is in four languages and speaks to the diversity and vibrancy of Malaysia’s cultural communities.

The video and audio files are available to download under CC BY-NC-ND and CC BY-NC-SA. Furthermore, Unleash Creativity for UNITY, a spin-off project by Muid Latif and Digital Malaya, has been developed to encourage CC-licensed remixes of the video and other works to share and spread art in Malaysia.

Creative Commons 1979

Mike Linksvayer, May 18th, 2008

Denver Gingerich writes about a 1979 feature article about copyright that appeared in the University of Waterloo’s Gazette:

I found it especially neat that the Gazette includes this note: “Editorial material may be reprinted freely; credit would be appreciated.” This seems similar in intent to the Creative Commons Attribution license (possibly with a No Derivative Works clause). From what I’ve seen of recent newspapers, a license that allows free
redistribution is seldom used anymore. I wonder why that is.

Denver put the whole feature on his website.

Previously: Creative Commons 868 and 1967.