OpenLife

Here’s a very interesting article from the Jul 31st 2008 edition of Economist about why it still pays to study medieval English landholding and Sahelian nomadism. Required reading for everybody interested in the creative commons, spectrum policy and so on.

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anticommons, biobazaar, creativecommons, economist, freeculture

Unfortunately, I wasn’t at this years iSummit in Sapporo, in particular now that I read that free beer was flowing

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freebeer, freeculture

Check out Videolectures.net. It has a wealth of videos with speeches, lectures and presentation on lots of interesting topics. Refreshingly, there is a lot of European stuff and the service is thus not so america-centric as most similar services. And all content is released under a creative commons licens.

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videolectures.net

Here’s a very informative video that seeks to explain what ccLearn is all about

ccLearn is a division of Creative Commons which is dedicated to realizing the full potential of the Internet to support open learning and open educational resources (OER). Our mission is to minimize barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials — legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers.

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creativecommons, cclearn

Yet another seemingly interesting book on open source:

Hacking Capitalism: The Free and Open Source Software Movement by Johan Söderberg.

The Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement demonstrates how labour can self-organise production, and, as is shown by the free operating system GNU/Linux, even compete with some of the worlds largest firms. The book examines the hopes of such thinkers as Friedrich Schiller, Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse and Antonio Negri, in the light of the recent achievements of the hacker movement. This book is the first to examine a different kind of political activism that consists in the development of technology from below.

I would love to read it, if only I had the time. I would also be able to pay the GBP 60 to get a copy of the book. But GBP 60 for a book on open source!!!

I find it extremely sad that all these books enthusiastically embracing the concept of open source are all - except a few - published under a old school totally “all rights reserved” license. Very few of the authors or publishers make their texts avalaible under an open content license such as creative commons.

What striking irony! It reminds me that a lot of artists that I met that were very much in favour of more openness and access to content but were more zealously protective of their own art than the most hard core IFPI or MPAA lawyers.

It is a little like the experience that you get when you deal with well-meaning left-leaning politicians: It is very easy to do good deeds with other people’s money

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creativecommons, hackingcapitalism, johansoderberg

I think that Cory Doctorow in his latest piece printed in Guardian has a good point. Copyright law has to start distinguishing between commercial and cultural uses. But this is not at all a simple distinction. It needs to be discussed, analyzed, tried out and revised constantly. It is just as difficult a distinction as that between commercial and private use. But I think that we have to go this way. And I feel there is some appreciation of this among the old cold warriors of the copyright fights. See for instance the Danish collecting society KODAs pilot with Creative Commons that allows artist to release their music under a non-commercial license and reserving the right to collect license fee for commercial use to KODA.

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creativecommons, koda, corydoctorow

Important press release as a follow up on these earlier news:

DANISH COLLECTING SOCIETY KODA TEAMS UP WITH CC DENMARK

Copenhagen, Denmark — January 30 2008

Creative Commons Denmark is pleased to announce that KODA is now offering noncommercial Creative Commons licensing to its members - making it the second country worldwide to do so. A similar pilot project was initiated in 2007 by Buma/Stemra in the Netherlands. Both show that collective rights management and Creative Commons licenses can be combined to the benefit of creators: “Creators can rely on the strength of collective rights management for commercial uses of their works, while taking noncommercial online distribution into their own hands by using Creative Commons licenses”, says Paul Keller of Creative Commons Netherlands.

“This important development highlights two of Creative Commons’ most significant strengths: worldwide presence through local projects, in this case CC Denmark, and the ability to bridge divides in the copyright debate with pragmatic and voluntary tools,” adds Mike Linksvayer, Vice President of Creative Commons.

More flexibility and freedom for musicians

KODA’s adoption of Creative Commons licensing marks a breakthrough for Danish composers and lyricists wanting to explore new ways of making their work available online while at the same time collecting commercial royalties through KODA.

“KODA is an important part of the music infrastructure, and we feel obliged to let artists decide how they want their rights administered. KODA must be a tolerant organization, and allow for experimentation and new ways of doing things”, says Assistant Managing Director at KODA, Martin Gormsen.

“In the past, allowing your fans to share your music meant waving goodbye to an important revenue stream for the artist. We are happy to be able to offer the best of both worlds now” says Christian Villum of Urlyd, a new Danish label that encourages fans to copy and share their music.

Facts about the KODA / Creative Commons pilot

KODA members must sign an agreement with KODA in which they indicate which works they wish to license. Not all Creative Commons licenses can be implemented for this pilot; since KODA manages all commercial rights for their members, only Creative Commons licenses with the “noncommercial” condition can be used.

Creative Commons Denmark has issued a set of guidelines to clarify what constitutes “noncommercial use”.

The most important provisions are:
• The use is only noncommercial if used by a private individual or certain non-profit associations / institutions.
• The music cannot endorse, sponsor, advertise or in other ways promote third party products or services. • No money or similar value can be exchanged as remuneration for the music.

Read more at http://creativecommons.dk/koda/ (in Danish).

About KODA

KODA (Danish Authors’ Society) is a non-profit rights management society with approximately 32,000 members: composers, songwriters, lyricists and music publishers. A collaboration with similar societies across the world ensures that an agreement on music usage with KODA gives the user access to the entire world repertoire. In 2006, administrative fees constituted just 11.1 percent.
For more information, please visit http://www.koda.dk.

About Creative Commons Denmark

Creative Commons Danmark is a collaboration between the law department at Copenhagen Business School and a network of volunteers. Creative Commons Denmark is part of Creative Commons, a not-for-profit organization founded in 2001 that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works. Through its copyright licenses, Creative Commons offers authors, artists, scientists, and educators the choice of a flexible range of protections and freedoms that build upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to enable a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach. For more information about Creative Commons Denmark, please visit http://creativecommons.dk, and for Creative Commons, visit http://creativecommons.org.

Contact

Public project lead: Henrik Moltke, moltke@creativecommons.dk (Press and non-legal inquiries)

Legal project lead: Thomas Riis

Creative Commons Danmark c/o Copenhagen Business School
Juridisk Institut
Howitzvej 13, 3. sal
2000 Frederiksberg
info@creativecommons.dk

Press Kit

http://creativecommons.org/presskit

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koda, creativecommons, collectingsocieties

Check out this press release regarding the first release of a new music album under a CC license backed by a collecting society.

Read more at Henrik Moltke’s blog.

PRESS RELEASE for immediate release
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16 2008

DANISH LABEL: PLEASE COPY OUR RECORDS FOR ALL YOUR FRIENDS!

Danish label Urlyd announces the release of the world’s first Creative Commons-licensed physical music album, backed by Danish copyright collecting agency KODA.

Consumers are free to copy and redistribute the album legally – and are encouraged to do so by the record label. “In the past allowing your fans to share your music meant waving goodbye to an important revenue stream for the artist. URLYD is the first label to offer the artist and fan the best of both worlds” say the founders.

We’re all familiar with the classic “All Rights Reserved” notice in books, music and film recordings stating that copying is prohibited. Yet today, sharing a musical work is easier than making a phone call. Illegal filesharing of copyrighted works has been a major concern for record labels and publishers since the advent of Napster. “Music wants to be free”, computer-savvy teenagers argue.

Now an alternative path that is both legal and free is emerging – from the music industry itself - in the shape of a small Danish independent record label, Urlyd which uses the Creative Commons licensing system.

On Monday, January 21, 2008, the labels’ first release, Small Arm of Sea by female indietronica singer, songwriter and producer Tone, will be available for purchase in Danish record stores. With her abstracts beats, unique voice and hypnotizing lyrics, Tone makes her debut after little more than a year spent lurking in Denmark’s musical underground and on MySpace.

Printed on the CDs and vinyls are the words “Copy this album for your friends, please!”. We really mean this. On the same day the album will be available for download – freely, at no charge and without Digital Rights Management (DRM) – at the record label’s website, urlyd.com . Anyone can download it for free or pick up the album in-store.

“Music connects directly with feelings, things you experience. We believe music in best when shared and this perfectly natural behavior should be encouraged, not criminalized”, say the founders of Urlyd, Christian Villum and Sune Petersen. “We cannot tell music lovers how or whether to support the artist, so we give them the choice between donating online, going to a live performance or purchasing the album in-store where it is sold as a limited edition. We believe this positive approach will benefit both artists and consumers”.

Innovative audiovisual album format
Urlyd launches a new audiovisual format combining traditional CD/LP with the DVD format – at regular CD price. In collaboration with Danish VJ and video artist Kristian Ravn-Ellestad, Tone (Sofie Nielsen) unites music and video intro a mesmerizing audiovisual experience – an important element of Tone’s live performances.

Creative Commons and KODA
Until recently the use of Creative Commons licenses was incompatible with services provided by collecting societies such as KODA (KODA administers Danish and international copyrights for composers, songwriters and music publishers when their musical works are performed in public).

If a singer, musician, publisher, or producer wanted to distribute her work for free online under a Creative Commons license, she was forced to give up the right to receive compensation through royalties collected by the collecting agency. As a consequence, mostly bands without a recording contract and outside of the collective rights management have used the Creative Commons model.

“The novelty here is that our artists can collect commercial royalties through the traditional model while fully using the potential of the internet - giving fans the freedom to do what they ultimately do best.”

For more information, contact URLYD
Christian Villum - villum@urlyd.com - (+45) 2087 7153 or Skype: christianvillum

(Christian Villum is currently in New York City, available for interviews)

urlyd.com - press photos in high resolution available on urlyd.com/press

For more information about Creative Commons, see http://creativecommons.org

I am now officially together with Henrik Moltke public project lead of the Danish Creative Commons chapter.

At the risk of offsetting the rest of the splendid Danish team I think that I can claim to be the first Danish Creative commoner. I corresponded with Larry Lessig already back in 2002-3 about a Danish version of the CC licenses, but in truth the project didn’t move before Henrik Moltke and the good people at the Law Department of Copenhagen Business School got involved.

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creativecommonsdk

Lawrence Lessig comments on the attempts by Ascap to educate (to put it diplomatically) its members on the caveats of creative commons licensing:

http://lessig.org/blog/2007/12/commons_misunderstandings_asca.html

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creativecommons, larrylessig, ascap