Creative Commons/Open Licenses – Page 5

Wikimedia Commons Gets 250,000 Creative Commons Licensed Images from Saxony-State and University Library Dresden

The Land Library of Saxony-State and University Library Dresden has agreed to make 250,000 image files available on the Wikimedia Commons under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

As the first German library, the Land Library of Saxony-State and University Library Dresden (SLUB) has concluded a cooperation agreement with Wikimedia Germany e.V. In a first step, the German Photo Collection of the SLUB makes available ca. 250,000 image files from its repository for free use to Wikimedia Commons, a sister project of Wikipedia.

The photos, the corresponding captions and further meta data will be uploaded to Commons during the coming months by voluntary helpers of Wikimedia, then connected step-by-step with personal identification data and the relevant Wikipedia articles. Apart from that, the metadata supplied by the German Photo Collection can be enriched, commented on and supplied with geographical detail by Wikipedia users. All results of this work are flowing back to the database of the German Photo Collection. In this way, the SLUB too directly profits from the new collaboration.

No rights of third parties concerning the image material supplied are standing in the way of using it under the free license "Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0". The cooperation will, in the words of Dr Jens Bove, the director of the German Photo Collection, "enhance the publicity and reach of the photographic treasures of the German Photo Collection". At the same time, the SLUB is a clear testament to the support of the international Open Access Initiative, which seeks open access to scientific information.

Over 100 Million Creative Commons Licensed Images on Flickr

There are now over 100 million Creative Commons licensed images on Flickr.

The post "Analysis of 100M CC-Licensed Images on Flickr" examines what types of licenses are used for those images. Here's a brief breakdown:

Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works: 33%
Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike: 29%
Attribution Non-Commercial: 14%
Attribution: 12%
Attribution-Share Alike: 8%
Attribution-No Derivatives: 4%

In light of these results, the author states:

Thus it would seem that the bulk of photos are licensed rather restrictively. That basically means authors rarely tend to release their works with creative and commercial freedoms. 76% of all photos bar commercial use. At the same time, it means that 24%, or 24 million photos, do allow for commercial use with minimal restrictions. For example, over 12 millions photos are completely free to use, as long as the author of the image is attributed.

DCC Overview of the Science Commons

The Digital Curation Centre has released an overview of the Science Commons as part of its Legal Watch Papers series.

Here's an excerpt:

Science Commons is a branch of Creative Commons that aims to make the Web work for science the way that it currently works for culture. It is a non-profit organisation aimed at accelerating the research cycle which they define as "the continuous production and reuse of knowledge that is at the heart of the scientific method." Science Commons describes itself as having three interlocking initiatives: making scientific research 'reuseful'; enabling 'one-click' access to research materials; and integrating fragmented information sources

The New Creative Commons License: CC0 1.0 Universal Lets Rights Holders Waive Their Rights

The Creative Commons has released CC0 1.0 Universal, the "no rights reserved" license.

Here's an excerpt from the CC0 FAQ:

Are CC0 and CC's Public Domain Dedication and Certification ("PDDC") the same?

No. PDDC was intended to serve two purposes—to allow copyright holders to "dedicate" a work to the public domain, and to allow people to "certify" a work as being in the public domain. Our experience with PDDC shows that having a single tool performing both of these functions can be confusing.

CC0 is a single purpose tool, designed to take on the dedication function PDDC has been performing, but in a more complete and legally robust way. CC0 is universal in its applicability, intended for use world-wide by anyone anywhere holding copyright or database interests in a work. PDDC is based on U.S. law, and the enforceability of its dedication function outside of the U.S. is not certain.

Creative Commons Interview with Molly Kleinman, University of Michigan Library Copyright Specialist

In "University of Michigan Library," Cameron Parkins of the Creative Commons interviews Molly Kleinman, University of Michigan Library Copyright Specialist.

Rufus Pollock on Open Data and Licensing

In "Open Data Openness and Licensing," Rufus Pollock, a Cambridge University economist, tackles the question of whether open research data should be licensed.

Here's an excerpt:

Over the last couple of years there has been substantial discussion about the licensing (or not) of (open) data and what "open" should mean. In this debate there two distinct, but related, strands:

Some people have argued that licensing is inappropriate (or unnecessary) for data.

Disagreement about what "open" should mean. Specifically: does openness allow for attribution and share-alike "requirements" or should "open" data mean "public domain" data?

These points are related because arguments for the inappropriateness of licensing data usually go along the lines: data equates to facts over which no monopoly IP rights can or should be granted; as such all data is automatically in the public domain and hence there is nothing to license (and worse "licensing" amounts to an attempt to "enclose" the public domain).

However, even those who think that open data can/should only be public domain data still agree that it is reasonable and/or necessary to have some set of community "rules" or "norms" governing usage of data. Therefore, the question of what requirements should be allowed for "open" data is a common one, whatever one"s stance on the PD question.

Podcast Interview with John Wilbanks of the Science Commons Project

Gerry Bayne of EDUCAUSE has released "CNI Podcast: The Science Commons Project—An Interview with John Wilbanks."

Here's an excerpt from the abstract:

Science Commons, a project of Creative Commons, has three interlocking initiatives designed to accelerate the research cycle. These include making scientific research “re-useful”, enabling “one-click” access to research materials, and integrating fragmented information sources. Together, these initiatives form the building blocks of a new collaborative infrastructure to make scientific discovery easier by design. Wilbanks discusses the copyright and technical challenges of contemplating a true knowledge browser.

New Press to Publish Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own

The New Press will publish David Bollier's Viral Spiral: How the Commoners Built a Digital Republic of Their Own.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Reporting from the heart of this "free culture" movement, journalist and activist David Bollier provides the first comprehensive history of the attempt by a global brigade of techies, lawyers, artists, musicians, scientists, businesspeople, innovators, and geeks of all stripes to create a digital republic committed to freedom and innovation. Viral Spiral —the term Bollier coins to describe the almost-magical process by which Internet users can come together to build online commons and tools—brilliantly interweaves the disparate strands of this eclectic movement. The story describes major technological developments and pivotal legal struggles, as well as fascinating profiles of hacker Richard Stallman, copyright scholar Lawrence Lessig, and other colorful figures.

Draft Creative Commons Licences—Briefing Paper Available

Naomi Korn and Professor Charles Oppenheim have written a draft Creative Commons Licences—Briefing Paper for inclusion in the upcoming Strategic Content Alliance IPR Toolkit, a collection of documents about intellectual property rights (JISC funds the SCA). The document explains Creative Commons Licenses, and it examines their pros and cons.

The document, as well as other IPR Toolkit drafts, are now available.

Copyright Clearance Center Launches Ozmo, a Commercial License Service, as Beta

The Copyright Clearance Center has launched Ozmo, a web-based commercial license service that supports the Creative Commons CC+ protocol, in beta mode.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Ozmo puts artists and writers in control. They select their license terms and set the price for the use of their content. Then, CCC puts its three decades of licensing expertise to work. CCC handles the entire licensing process and all payments go through Amazon’s Flexible Payment Service when a license is purchased. With Ozmo, buyers know instantly that they have the right to use the content and sellers know how their content is being used.

There are no set-up fees with Ozmo and content creators can license as much content as they want. Payment is collected from the buyer when the rights are purchased. Ozmo even helps sellers track and manage sales and buying trends. Ozmo supports the Creative Commons CC+ protocol for bridging the gap between commercial and non-commercial licensing. Content creators can apply the Creative Commons link for non-commercial use, and the Ozmo link for commercial use. . . .

How Ozmo works

To get started, users need only create a free Ozmo profile. Then, the content creator selects his or her license terms and pricing, and registers the work with Ozmo. Sellers can add an image, banner or bio that will be displayed with their work. Profile information can even be pulled over directly from Facebook. Using Ozmo is easy because it works with content where ever it resides online. Content creators never have to re-enter their work; Ozmo simply links back to the original host location.

Buyers, such as design firms, publishers, bloggers and other journalists, who want to tap in to the fresh content available through Ozmo, can do so by searching the Ozmo website or clicking on the Ozmo link wherever they find it online. CCC handles the billing, the buyer receives the license by email and the content creator gets paid. It’s that simple.

Read more about it at "Ozmo Launches with CC+ Protocol Support."

New GNU Free Document License Will Allow Wikipedia to Use Creative Commons License

At the request of the Wikimedia Foundation, the Free Software Foundation has modified the GNU Free Document License so that, in the newly released version 1.3 of that license, the Wikipedia, which uses the GNU FDL License, can use the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license.

In "Enormously Important News from the Free Software Foundation," Lawrence Lessig discusses the significance of this change.

Here's an excerpt:

It would be hard to overstate the importance of this change to the Free Culture community. A fundamental flaw in the Free Culture Movement to date is that its most important element—Wikipedia—is licensed in a way that makes it incompatible with an enormous range of other content in the Free Culture Movement. One solution to this, of course, would be for everything to move to the FDL. But that license was crafted initially for manuals, and there were a number of technical reasons why it would not work well (and in some cases, at all) for certain important kinds of culture.

This change would now permit interoperability among Free Culture projects, just as the dominance of the GNU GPL enables interoperability among Free Software projects. It thus eliminates an unnecessary and unproductive hinderance to the spread and growth of Free Culture.

Author's Rights, Tout de Suite

Author's Rights, Tout de Suite, the latest Digital Scholarship publication, is designed to give journal article authors a quick introduction to key aspects of author's rights and to foster further exploration of this topic through liberal use of relevant references to online documents and links to pertinent Web sites.

It is under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License, and it can be freely used for any noncommercial purpose, including derivative works, in accordance with the license.

The prior publication in the Tout de Suite series, Institutional Repositories, Tout de Suite, is also available.

University of Michigan Library Will Use Creative Commons Licenses for Its Works

The University of Michigan Library has announced that it will use Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial licenses for works that it creates for which the Regents of the University of Michigan hold the copyrights.

Here's an except from the press release:

University Librarian Paul Courant said, "Using Creative Commons licenses is another way the University Library can act on its commitment to the public good. By marking our copyrighted content as available for reuse, we offer the University community and the public a rich set of educational resources free from traditional permissions barriers." . . .

All original copyrighted material that is created by Library staff and in which the copyright belongs to the Regents of the University of Michigan will be available under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial license. This includes bibliographies, research guides, lesson plans, and other resources. For some samples of the kinds of excellent resources that will now be available for adaptation and re-use, see our many Library Research Guides http://www.lib.umich.edu/guides/, the Usability Studies produced by the Library's Usability Working Group http://www.lib.umich.edu/usability/projects/projects.html, or the tutorials for using spatial and numeric data http://www.lib.umich.edu/nsds/spatial_tutorials/.

The Library has begun attaching Creative Commons licenses to content throughout its website, but some pages do not include the license code yet. The licenses will be fully integrated into the Library's new website design, scheduled for release in Fall 2008.

Legal Victory for Open Licenses: Jacobsen v. Katzer and Kamind Associates

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has upheld the validity of an open source license, the Artistic License, in Jacobsen v. Katzer and Kamind Associates.

Digital Curation Centre Releases "Creative Commons Licensing"

The Digital Curation Centre has released "Creative Commons Licensing" as part of its Legal Watch Papers series.

Here's an excerpt:

CC is of great relevance to digital curation in the way it simplifies and increases third party access to and usage of copyright works. Curation is dependant on a range of strategies that require the making of copies and modifications. Unhindered, copyright could impinge on digital curation considerably. However use of these licences may ameliorate the difficulties.

Microsoft’s Free Digital Tools for Scholars

At the ninth annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, Tony Hey, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s External Research Division, discussed a variety of digital tools for scholars.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

Add-ins. The Article Authoring Add-in for Word 2007 enables metadata to be captured at the authoring stage to preserve document structure and semantic information throughout the publishing process, which is essential for enabling search, discovery and analysis in subsequent stages of the life cycle. The Creative Commons Add-in for Office 2007 allows authors to embed Creative Commons licenses directly into an Office document (Word, Excel or PowerPoint) by linking to the Creative Commons site via a Web service.

The Microsoft e-Journal Service. This offering provides a hosted, full-service solution that facilitates easy self-publishing of online-only journals to facilitate the availability of conference proceedings and small and medium-sized journals.

Research Output Repository Platform. This platform helps capture and leverage semantic relationships among academic objects—such as papers, lectures, presentations and video—to greatly facilitate access to these items in exciting new ways.

The Research Information Centre. In close partnership with the British Library, this collaborative workspace will be hosted via Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and will allow researchers to collaborate throughout the entire research project workflow, from seeking research funding to searching and collecting information, as well as managing data, papers and other research objects throughout the research process.

Here's a list that indicates availability.

Article Authoring Add-in version 1.0 for Microsoft Office Word 2007 (download)
Creative Commons Add-in version 1.0 for Microsoft Office (download)
Microsoft Math Add-in for Microsoft Office Word 2007 (download)
Microsoft eJournal Service (alpha preview)
Research Output Repository Platform ("Currently in a limited alpha release, an open beta version will be available later in 2008.")
Research Information Centre ("This service is currently in beta testing. Microsoft intends to share the code widely by the end of the year.")

ETC-Press Launches at Carnegie Mellon University Publishing Works Under Creative Commons Licenses

The Entertainment Technology Center at Carnegie Mellon University has launched ETC-Press, which will publish books and other works under either the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivativeWorks-NonCommercial or the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License.

Here's an excerpt from the About ETC Press page:

We publish books, but we’re also interested in the participatory future of content creation across multiple media. We are an academic, open source, multimedia, publishing imprint affiliated with the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and in partnership with Lulu.com. ETC Press has an affiliation with the Institute for the Future of the Book, sharing in the exploration of the evolution of discourse. ETC Press also has an agreement with the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to place ETC Press publications in the ACM Digital Library. . . .

We are looking to develop a range of texts and media that are innovative and insightful. We are interested in creating projects with Sophie, and we will accept submissions and publish work in a variety of media (textual, electronic, digital, etc.).

New ACRL Publications Agreements FAQ

ALA's Association College & Research Libraries has made available a new ACRL Publications Agreements FAQ, which covers serials, book chapters, book editors, and podcasts.

The FAQ's statement about Creative Commons licenses and serials is of special interest:

We didn’t want to require our authors to publish their works using a Creative Commons license, but you are welcome to attach the CC license of your choosing to your work after it is published by ACRL. Visit the Creative Commons website (http://creativecommons.org/) to learn more about their licensing options.

This is welcome news, and ACRL is to be applauded for supporting the use of Creative Commons licenses.

It is very helpful to have a concise and clear explanation of ACRL's copyright and other publication policies regarding serials, and the information about book chapters, book editors, and podcasts is very helpful as well. It would be highly desirable for other ALA divisions to follow ACRL's lead in this matter.

Note that ACRL's copyright forms are on the ACRL Forms page.

Code4Lib Journal Adopts Creative Commons Attribution License

Starting with its just released third issue, the Code4Lib Journal is using the Creative Commons Attribution License for its articles, making this freely available journal an open access journal under the strictest definition of that term (sometimes called "full open access").

Here's an excerpt from the editorial that discusses this change:

In order to facilitate the ability of our readers to build upon the ideas presented in the Journal, beginning with Issue 3 all articles are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license. The CC-BY license lets you reuse, share, and build upon the work presented in the article, as long as you credit the author for the original creation. This licensing is required for inclusion in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and to receive a SPARC Europe Seal. Code snippets included in the text are included under the CC-BY license. For other code included with an article, we recommend, but don’t require, an open source license. We are contacting all authors with articles published in previous issues to request they license their previously published Code4Lib Journal articles under the CC-BY license.

JorumOpen, UK Repository for Creative Commons Licensed Educational Materials, Announced

JISC has announced JorumOpen, a national repository of open access educational materials under Creative Commons licenses.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

It was announced today that Jorum, the UK national repository for learning and teaching materials funded by JISC, is to offer open educational resources. This will make it easier for lecturers and teaching staff to share and re-use each other's teaching resources. JorumOpen—as it will be called—will also provide a showcase for UK universities and colleges on the international stage. . . .

Jorum is managed jointly by EDINA and Mimas, the two National Academic Data Centres funded by JISC at the Universities of Edinburgh and Manchester. During the first phase of Jorum's development, the focus has been on building a system that safeguards investment in digital learning resources and offers controlled access to licensed materials. The result is a service that supports access to over 2,500 learning resources for download for direct use in the classroom and within virtual learning environments (VLEs).

Through the development of JorumOpen, lecturers and teachers will be able to share materials under the Creative Commons licence framework: this makes sharing easier, granting users greater rights for use and re-use of online content and easier to understand. Importantly, it does not require prior registration. As a result availability is global as well as across UK universities and colleges. JorumOpen will run alongside a 'members only' facility, JorumEducationUK, that will support sharing of material just within the UK educational sector; this will be available only to registered users and contributors, as is currently the case.

Creative Commons Statement of Intent for Attribution-ShareAlike Licenses Made Official

The draft designation for the Creative Commons Statement of Intent for Attribution-ShareAlike Licenses has been removed, and the document is now the official explanation of the goals of this group of licenses.

Creative Commons Gets New Leader and $4 Million Grant

Joi Ito, an entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and free culture advocate, has been named CEO of the Creative Commons, replacing Lawrence Lessig. Lessig is leading a new effort, Change Congress. He will serve as a Creative Commons board member.

The organization has received a $4 million grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation ($2.5 million of general funding for five years and $1.5 million to support ccLearn).

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

"Although I have changed my focus, I’m still very much committed to Creative Commons and the Free Culture cause," Lessig said. "The work I intend to do with Change Congress is in many ways complementary to the work of Creative Commons. Both projects are about putting people in power and enabling them to build a better system. I could not be more pleased to hand off the leadership of Creative Commons to the extraordinarily passionate and qualified Joi Ito."

"Under Larry’s management, Creative Commons has grown from an inspirational idea to an essential part of the technical, social, and legal landscape involving organizations and people in 80 countries," said Ito. "With it, the organization has grown in size and complexity, and I am excited to increase the level of my participation to help manage this amazing group of people. The Hewlett Foundation has been a major supporter of ours from the beginning and we could not be more grateful for their support going forward into the future."

Founding board member and Duke law professor James Boyle will become chair of the board, replacing Ito, who remains on the board. "Jamie has demonstrated his commitment to Creative Commons from its founding," said Lessig. "He led the formation of Science Commons and ccLearn, our divisions focused on scientific research and education respectively. There is no person better suited to lead the Creative Commons board."

Boyle is optimistic about Creative Commons' future. "If one looks at all the amazing material that has been placed under our licenses—from MIT’s Open Courseware and the Public Library of Science to great music, from countless photographs and blogs to open textbooks—one realizes that, under Larry's leadership, the organization has actually helped build a global 'creative commons' in which millions of people around the world participate, either as creators or users. My job will be to use the skills of the remarkable people on our board—including a guy called Larry Lessig, who has promised me he isn’t going away any time soon to make sure that mission continues and expands."

The Hewlett Foundation grant consists of $2.5 million to provide general support to Creative Commons over five years and $1.5 million to support ccLearn, the division of Creative Commons that is focused on open educational resources. "The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has been a strong supporter of openness and open educational resources in particular," said Catherine Casserly, the Director of the Open Educational Resources Initiative at Hewlett. "Creative Commons licenses are a critical part of the infrastructure of openness on which those efforts depend." The Hewlett grant was a vital part of a five-year funding plan which also saw promises of support from Omidyar Network, Google, Mozilla, Red Hat, and the Creative Commons board.

Creative Commons also announces two other senior staff changes. Diane Peters joins the organization as General Counsel. Peters arrives from the Mozilla Corporation, serves on the board of the Software Freedom Law Center, and was previously General Counsel for Open Source Development Labs and the Linux Foundation. She has extensive experience collaborating with and advising nonprofit organizations, development communities, and high-tech companies on a variety of matters.

Vice President and General Counsel Virginia Rutledge, who joined Creative Commons last year from Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, will take on a new role as Vice President and Special Counsel. In her new role, Rutledge will focus on development and external relations, while continuing to lead special legal projects.

Acta Crystallographica Section E Adopts Author-Pays OA Model and Creative Commons License

The International Union of Crystallography has adopted a very modest publication fee ($150) to support open access to Acta Crystallographica Section E: Structure Reports Online. It has also put the journal under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Read more about it at "Acta Crystallographica E is Open Access."

Creative Commons License Option for ETDs at the University of Auckland

The University of Auckland now gives students submitting an electronic theses or dissertation the option of putting it under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 New Zealand License.

Commons-Research Mailing List Launched

Giorgos Cheliotis has launched the Commons-Research mailing list.

Here's an excerpt from the list's home page that describes it:

Discussion among researchers studying the commons, for example the use and impact of peer production methods and communities and open licensing. We welcome researchers studying the commons in a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, economics, law, media studies, sociology. . .