This is a very worrying development for Creative Commons. CISAC, the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (which brings together 207 authors’ societies from 109 countries); has published an article heavily criticising Creative Commons. They are quoting Emma Pike’s article against CC, and pretty much using the same Read more…
(thanks to Lilian Edwards for the link). The BBC is now opening its RSS content for syndication. Web designers can now syndicate BBC content on their own websites with much less restrictions than before. If you wanted to add one of the many BBC feeds to your blog or website, Read more…
Star Wars fandom has always been sophisticated. Does anybody remember Troops? Then there are other great ones, such as Jedi Hunter (Crikey!) and many, many others. Now there is a new and sophisticated kid on the block, Star Wars Revelations, a fan movie produced with $20,000 telling the story of Read more…
It was meant to happen sooner or later. Creative Commons is now a target of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD). The Register has this interesting comment on a panel debate discussing CC licences. According to the report, the ex-chairman of the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), Fran Nevrkla, described CC licences Read more…
The Creative Archive Licence(CAL) is now online. This is an open licence from the BBC, the BFI, the Open University and Channel 4, and it covers a large amount of works owned by those four institutions which are offered for the purpose of reuse and adaptation, in other words, they Read more…
Professor Lessig gave a lecture yesterday as part of a panel organised by the AHRB Centre for the Edinburgh Science Festival. Yours Truly had the pleasure of participating in the panel, well, actually I just sat there and gazed at the brilliant, entertaining and slick presentation. Lessig has created his Read more…
Yahoo is now offering a search engine that looks for content bearing Creative Commons licences. This is a great source of reuseable content, and it is nice to see search engines embracing Creative Commons ideals, although it must be said that this may just be part of Yahoo’s fight against Read more…
The Washington Post has an article about Creative Commons, featuring interviews with Lessig and Cory Doctorow. This seems to be the watershed that demonstrates that the movement has become mainstream. The article emphasises the many commercial uses of the movement. Does this mean that Creative Commons is not cool any Read more…
Lessig has claimed that he will never again publish in a journal that is not published through some sort of open access licence, preferably a CC BY-NC licence (Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial. This raises an interesting point. Why should we academics give away our copyright when publishing in “traditional” paper journals? Read more…
There is an interesting argument between the BBC’s Bill Thompson and Lessig. Thompson recently wrote a thoughtful paper about the great copyright debate, which amongst other things, criticised the lack of thought that Creative Commons has had regarding moral rights. Lessig has replied that moral rights are really important, but Read more…