Kentucky folksinger Paul K. has released his entire catalog online under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. [more inside]
posted by ford and the prefects on Jul 9, 2009 - 11 comments

Today 10,000 Pages: A Colouring Book of Abstract Line Art reached the 10% mark. Click on an image for a hi-res version for printing. All drawings are released under a Creative Commons Licence. [more inside]
posted by Rinku on Apr 4, 2009 - 10 comments

Academic Earth collects lectures on a wide variety of subjects from UC Berkely, Harvard, MIT, Princeton, Stanford and Yale that the universities have released under Creative Commons. The site is still in beta so it doesn't quite have the thousands of lectures its frontpage promises. It has many full courses, for example Benjamin Polak teaching game theory, Amy Hungerford on the American novel since 1945, Charles Bailyn's introduction to astrophysics, John Merriman on the history of France since 1871, Shelly Kagan on death and Oussama Khatib's introduction to robotics.
posted by Kattullus on Feb 4, 2009 - 10 comments

Freesouls.cc - 296 Portraits of luminaries from the free culture movement. [more inside]
posted by Pinback on Dec 31, 2008 - 27 comments

He collects Spider-Man comics. He video chats on his MacBook. He name-drops Jor-El of Krypton. He gave the Vulcan salute to Spock and jokes about "lithium crystals" (surely a misquote). He's got his own high-definition vlog on YouTube. Now, the Geek-in-Chief and his Team of Nerds are using their powers for good. Change.gov has been under a Creative Commons license for a while now, but yesterday, they took transparency a step further by announcing that "all policy documents from official meetings with outside organizations will be publicly available for review and discussion." What's next: revision control?
posted by designbot on Dec 6, 2008 - 48 comments

Like others before him Benjamin Rosenbaum is making his debut short story collection, The Ant King And Other Stories, available from his publishers, Small Beer, as a free download. More than this though, he is holding a competition to find the best derivative work inspired by it. These include "translations, plays, movies, radio plays, audiobooks, flashmob happenings, horticultural installations, visual artworks, slash fanfic epics, robot operas, sequels, webcomics, ASCII art, text adventure games, roleplaying campaigns, knitting projects, handmade shoes, or anything else you feel like." [more inside]
posted by ninebelow on Sep 19, 2008 - 19 comments

What could be less important to the blue than a news item involving model railroading and Java? Yet in an important decision, a U.S. Appeals court has ruled that that the terms of the Artistic License are enforceable copyright conditions. "For non-lawgeeks, this won't seem important but this is huge," said Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig. [more inside]
posted by Artful Codger on Aug 15, 2008 - 41 comments

Copyright, copywrong, copyleft, copyWHAT?! Peter Hirtle is no stranger to the questions surrounding copyright and the use of public domain materials. He has been thoroughl in researching and referencing other's work in this area. Peter's handy little chart could not have been more timely; it was really long overdue. But it really just gets overwhelming sometimes ... I blame it all on that d*m**d mouse! [more inside]
posted by aldus_manutius on Jul 16, 2008 - 16 comments

Big Buck Bunny - a fantastic animation. It's also on YouTube, but the download is so much better.
posted by tellurian on Jun 3, 2008 - 23 comments

Idle nostalgia led me to check on the mp3 page for Bulb Records (early home of Quintron and Andrew WK).

That all reminded me of space/noise rockers Gravitar, whose drummer Ben Cook has put up a fair amount their music (and other music he's made) for free. Oh, and he has a (rarely updated) music blog, which mentioned the Weird Sound Generator and Noizehole. [more inside]
posted by klangklangston on Mar 25, 2008 - 10 comments

Steven Karl Zoltan Brust, one of my two or three favorite authors of all time, has written a Firefly novel, called "My Own Kind of Freedom." As Joss Wheedon has decided that he does not want novels to be written based on the series. So instead of selling it as he had hoped, SKZB has declared it to be a fanfic, and released it to the general public under a Creative Commons license.
posted by Aversion Therapy on Feb 5, 2008 - 49 comments

CASH is the Coalition of Artists & Stake Holders, a project conceived and initiated by musician Kristin Hersh. CASH is "read-write" — more than consumption; a collaborative online effort — helping make music ownership more of an interactive affair facilitated through Creative Commons licensing.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Jan 5, 2008 - 9 comments

Abuse of creative commons. So Virgin has followed in the footsteps of Viacom by stealing a photo from a Creative Commons directory, and using it without proper attribution. Unfortunately the victim is suing Creative Commons instead of Virgin, claiming the license was deceptive.
posted by gandledorf on Sep 27, 2007 - 76 comments

"The [textbook] industry charges outrageous prices for new textbooks while simultaneously doing everything it can to make older versions unusable or obsolete. There is simply no reason that a new calulus textbook should cost $157. The study of calculus, at least the type of calculus that most of us need to study in high school or undergraduate programs, has not changed significantly in decades." - Textbook Revolution.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Jul 24, 2007 - 77 comments

Lawrence Lessig moves on Lessig has spent the last 10 years fighting for IP reform and open culture, He's decided to focus on fighting what he calls "corruption" (with quotes)... the pernicious effect that moneyed interests have in crafting and controlling public policy.

_{Finally, I am not (as one friend wrote) "leaving the movement." "The movement" has my loyalty as much today as ever. But I have come to believe that until a more fundamental problem is fixed, "the movement" can't succeed either. Compare: Imagine someone devoted to free culture coming to believe that until free software supports free culture, free culture can't succeed. So he devotes himself to building software. I am someone who believes that a free society -- free of the "corruption" that defines our current society -- is necessary for free culture, and much more. For that reason, I turn my energy elsewhere for now.}

posted by delmoi on Jun 22, 2007 - 61 comments

The inaugural edition of Open Medicine, a peer-reviewed, independent, open-access medical journal is now available online. The online medical journal launched in the aftermath of a rift last year between some editors and the publisher of the Canadian Medical Association Journal. Among the first interesting articles? a review of studies which suggests that health outcomes may be superior in patients cared for in Canada versus the United States (but differences are not consistent), even though spending is higher south of the border.
posted by furtive on Apr 18, 2007 - 6 comments

Don't Buy this Book! Seth Godin, author and marketing guru, has his book, Everyone is an Expert, for purchase on Amazon. The problem? He wrote it as an ebook in 2005, and it is downloadable for free. And it isn't even illegal, as it was licensed under a Creative Commons license that allows for for profit reproduction.
posted by zabuni on Feb 10, 2007 - 39 comments

Owl Multimedia Use your music to find new (Creative Commons licensed) music. OWL analyzes MP3s you feed it, from the specific part of the song you want to match, and will give you similar music to listen to. Requires a painless registration.
posted by livii on Nov 17, 2006 - 4 comments

A Swarm of Angels is about making a £1 million movie and giving it away to one million people in one year. By using the Internet to gather together 50,000 people willing to pay £25 to join an exclusive global online community – The Swarm – the project’s ambition is to make the world’s first Internet-funded, crewed and distributed feature film. (more inside)
posted by slimepuppy on May 12, 2006 - 31 comments

Brian Eno and David Byrne released My Life in the Bush of Ghosts in 1981. It's a great album--and now it's available with a Creative Commons License. "This is the first time complete and total access to original tracks with remix and sampling possibilities have been officially offered on line."
posted by dobbs on Mar 30, 2006 - 44 comments

Can I get an amen? An installation featuring an acetate pressing of a well worded spoken piece about copyright law, creative commons, culture and even advertising from the perspective of the history of the now ubiquitous Amen Break featuring audio samples of songs and artists from the well known to the unusual. Please feel free to use this archive.org mirror of the video indicated on the project description page with the entirety of the audio of the acetate at archive.org. (34MB MP4/Quicktime, majority of video portion consists of various views of the turntable, but the audio is quite good.)
posted by loquacious on Feb 23, 2006 - 13 comments

The Oyez Project has placed online mp3s for all of the arguments from the 2004 term of the United States Supreme Court. The 2004 terms spans all cases argued between October 4, 2004, and April 27, 2005, including United States v. Booker and United States v. FanFan, Roper v. Simmons , Raich v. Gonzales, Kelo v. City of New London, McCreary County v. ACLU, and Van Orden v. Perry. [slightly more inside]
posted by monju_bosatsu on Feb 7, 2006 - 25 comments

Free, good science fiction for download, some you might have seen, some new, all are worth the time. If you have only a few minutes, Michael Swanick's Science Fiction Table of the Elements features 108 short short stories. If you have a little more time, Kelly Link, called by Neil Gaiman "the best short story writer currently out there" has released her much-praised collection Stranger Things Happen. For longer reads, Charlie Stross has made available his cyberpunk novel Accelerando and his Lovecraftish Colder War. The creepier Peter Watts has posted the New York Times Notable Book Starfish, and its sequels as well [previously]. If you haven't had enough, you should check out the Baen Free Library, with books by everyone from Andre Norton to Larry Niven, as well as a large amount of right-of-center combat-oriented stuff by David Weber and friends. Also, the Science Fiction Channel has made available many well-known classic short stories as well as a lot of contemporary Hugo and World Fantasy Award winners [previously]. Finally, you probably already know that Cory Doctorow has four novels available under creative commons. Happy reading!
posted by blahblahblah on Sep 19, 2005 - 59 comments

"Legal Torrents" is a collection of Creative Commons-licensed, legally downloadable, freely distributable creator-approved files, from electronic/indie music to movies and books, which we have made available via BitTorrent."
posted by mcsweetie on Aug 9, 2005 - 20 comments

NerdTV. “Beginning Sept. 6, PBS will make available – exclusively over the Internet [and under a Creative Commons License] – broadcast television’s first entirely downloadable series, featuring PBS technology columnist and industry insider Robert X. Cringely’s interviews with personalities from the ever-changing world of technology.” [Via]
posted by NotMyselfRightNow on Jul 13, 2005 - 13 comments

Free Beer! ...but free as in "Open Source Beer", mind you. Students from Copenhagen's IT-University have produced and released a powerful beer recipe under a Creative Commons license. Microbrewers, start your machines...
posted by betobeto on Jul 12, 2005 - 31 comments

Creative Commons decides to partner with BzzAgent. Some aren't too happy. Maybe Matt can comment?
posted by monju_bosatsu on May 1, 2005 - 61 comments

Creative archive licence group at The Beeb. Today sees the launch of the Creative Archive Licence Group, a joint venture between the BBC, the Open University, Channel 4 and the BFI to provide legal content to the (initially UK only) public under a series of licences that are quite similar to those by Creative Commons. Although at present only a trial, the project timetable looks as though some good material will be made available.
posted by TheDonF on Apr 13, 2005 - 6 comments

Yahoo Releases a beta tool that searches for Creative Commons content. It even allows you to specify the type of license you're interested in (derivitive works, commercial use). Lawrence Lessig obviously has something to say about it. If nothing else, it will increase awareness of the cause.
posted by o2b on Mar 24, 2005 - 8 comments

The very cool Prickly Paradigm Press is starting to release its back catalog under the Creative Commons license. [via]
posted by kenko on Oct 25, 2004 - 4 comments

A free, blogger-read version of Lawrence Lessig's new book, Free Culture is being produced. The book is released under a Creative Commons license which allows non-commercial derivative works to be created from it. (Some chapters are already available.) This is great - I think it would be a fine thing if more people produced audio versions of open-licensed or public domain works in this manner. (From boingboing)
posted by majcher on Mar 27, 2004 - 5 comments

Creative Commons: now for movies.
posted by Vidiot on Mar 17, 2004 - 7 comments

Telltale Weekly launched today. It's public domain meets Creative Commons meets Ogg Vorbis. Their mission is to build a free audiobook library of public domain texts. Four are available now, but Twain, Chekov Doctorow (Corry, not E.L.) and more are on the way.
posted by turbodog on Feb 27, 2004 - 7 comments

Psst! Wanna download some mp3s? Now you can do so without looking over your shoulder to see who is watching. Creative Commons has compiled a selection of tracks utilising their licensing system for free download. The ability to create derivative works and share them around has resulting in some interesting remixes of one of the original tracks, also. via A Whole Lotta Nothing
posted by dg on Oct 22, 2003 - 10 comments

Creative Commons license: could it force you to suffer for your users' sins? Dan Bricklin says the liability clauses could do just that. MonkeyX says the benefits outweigh the risks. The Commoners respond. Ming the Mechanic and others prefer an alternative scheme: Primarily Public Domain, in which all content is donated to the public domain by default unless otherwise specified. And then there's plain old-fashioned copyright, like MeFi. How do you limit the incorporation of your cyberself?
posted by hairyeyeball on May 22, 2003 - 18 comments

With his book of short stories entitled Solarcon-6, Wiley Wiggins has become the newest member of a growing community of writers offering their work for free download and distribution under a Creative Commons license. For those unfamiliar with Mr. Wiggins, he is most recognizable as a lead actor in Richard Linklater's films Dazed and Confused and Waking Life.
posted by cachilders on May 14, 2003 - 2 comments

Cory Doctorow's first novel, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom" has been published. Although a first novel by a science-fiction writer coming out is always cool, this one is not only published in dead-tree format by a major publisher, it's available for free online under the Creative Commons license. Much whuffie to Cory.
posted by GriffX on Jan 10, 2003 - 10 comments

Open Source Copyright. As a follow-up to this thread, Creative Commons has now officially launched. I'm quite interested to see the various content creators who take these licenses and run with them - amateur filmmakers, independent musicians, authors, writers, and technologists .....should have groups like the MPAA and RIAA quaking in their boots.
posted by bkdelong on Dec 16, 2002 - 17 comments