The OER Commons exists to help educators "find free-to-use teaching and learning content from around the world." Thousands of primary, secondary and post-secondary activities, labs, lecture notes, assignments and other educational materials are available by searching or browsing the OER site.
posted by cog_nate on Oct 16, 2009 - 7 comments

The Commons' Photostream from the National Library of New Zealand is a collection of late 19th and early 20th century photography. Includes a selection of stereographs from the collections of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington-based photographer William Hall Raine, and panoramas of New Zealand from Robert Percy Moore. There is lots, lots more, and the NLNZ is continuing to update regularly. [more inside]
posted by netbros on Sep 8, 2009 - 6 comments

Markets and Morals -- "without quite realising it, without ever deciding to do so, we drifted from having a market economy to being a market society" -- is the first of the 2009 Reith Lectures delivered by Michael Sandel. (previously) cf. Yglesias on free markets... [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Jun 14, 2009 - 77 comments

In a landmark defeat for the UK Government, the House of Commons has voted to allow all former and existing Ghurkas the right to live in the UK. [more inside]
posted by Happy Dave on Apr 29, 2009 - 70 comments

It's the commons, our right of birth
And to you who would own everything all around the Earth
Our future is your downfall, when we cut this ball and chain
You who'd sacrifice the public good for your private gain

posted by finite on Oct 3, 2008 - 11 comments

Serein v3
posted by hama7 on Nov 9, 2007 - 50 comments

HOMOPHONI
posted by hama7 on Oct 7, 2007 - 37 comments

Commercial exploitationTube? Creative Commies-Tube? Plagiarism® ? "…you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube's (and its successor's) business, including without limitation for promoting and redistributing part or all of the YouTube Website (and derivative works thereof) in any media formats and through any media channels…" moc.ebutuoy

whata circlejerk... Now where's my aeroflot and reversed copyright Tee-Shirt! and Negativland, Tape-beatles, EEC records. I'm ready for a copyfight !
posted by Unregistered User on Jul 21, 2006 - 27 comments

Today might be a good day to look at the bright side of 'teh internet' life. Lawrence Lessig (author of Free Culture), Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia), various advocates of the Free Culture network organisation and others are all meeting at the iCommons Summit in Rio to discuss Creative Commons, open networks, non-restrictives licenses, global Digital Commons and the fact that maybe, in 2006, 'Sharing is Daring'. A similar summit has been taking place earlier this month in Thailand, under the name of Asia Commons. I for one thinks it's extremely exciting to see all kind of artists, collectives and record labels using the CC licenses for the work they publish. After all, we now all live in a 'Remixed Culture', since everything we ever use was once part of something else, wasn't it? openDemocracy has been publishing a solid set of articles & a debate about the topic.
posted by Sijeka on Jun 23, 2006 - 13 comments

Ourmedia needs volunteer moderators. Ourmedia, which provides "free storage and free bandwidth for your videos, audio files, photos, text or software" is doing well. Too well. The current volunteer moderator team of 40 is faced with the overwhelming task of reviewing the submitted content of 40,000 users for copyright and other policy violations, on which their open submission policy depends. If you'd like to get involved, now would be the time.
posted by Caviar on Aug 24, 2005 - 6 comments

Sci-fi writer and Marine Biologist Peter Watts puts his first two novels, Starfish and Maelstrom online under Creative Commons license. Behemoth to follow shortly. The most original and starkly vivid account of a dystopian future that I have read for years, made all the more enthralling by Watt's scientific background and knowledge. You will find some of his short stories at the link as well. Via BoingBoing
posted by lucien on Jul 25, 2005 - 29 comments

CommonTunes.org, a community directory of freely distributable music. With tags. Also see CommonFlix & CommonBits. Oddly enough, the site itself is "All Rights Reserved". Pity about the color scheme.
posted by signal on Jul 14, 2005 - 6 comments

Charlie Stross releases his new book Accelerando as a Creative Commons e-book, thereby buying in to the open source idea that offering up one's intellectual property (under certain circumstances) will result in greater sales of the physical object, not fewer (see: Cory Doctorow). In a time where promotional opportunities for new and "mid-list" authors seem to be continually shrinking, is offering up a complete work the current equivalent of the author interview or newspaper puff piece? Or is it simply a recognition that here in the 21st century anything can be pirated -- better to offer up your work in good will (and in a form where you have some control), and hope some of the kids will realize that behind the free content is a guy who needs to eat? And what happens if/when all books become digital books?
posted by jscalzi on Jun 16, 2005 - 24 comments

The Freesound Project - a collaborative database of Creative Commons licensed sounds.
posted by signal on Apr 13, 2005 - 8 comments

BIOS-Biological Innovation for Open Society is an open source biotechnology initiative based in Australia. Along with its parent organization CAMBIA, it aims to foster a "protected commons" for scientific information and technology. Tools and techniques are shared, and can be improved and repackaged, just like in open source software.
posted by OmieWise on Mar 4, 2005 - 2 comments

Reviving the Commons. The commons are the range of resources that the American public collectively owns, but which are often mismanaged by government or privatized ("enclosed") by corporations. An excellent report on "The State of the Commons 2003/04" (PDF) was prepared for the Friends of the Commons by the Tomales Bay Institute. The principle of the commons in Western common law was first codified in the Magna Carta, and was previously discussed on MeFi here. [Via I-Merge.]
posted by homunculus on Jun 20, 2004 - 3 comments

The Secret History of the Magna Carta. This is a fascinating article on the Magna Carta and the lesser known Charter of the Forest, and the early establishment of the rights of commons.
posted by homunculus on Oct 29, 2003 - 7 comments

Reclaiming the Commons "One of the great questions of contemporary American political economy is, who shall control the commons? "The commons" refers to that vast range of resources that the American people collectively own, but which are rapidly being enclosed: privatized, traded in the market, and abused." This is a fairly long, but incredibly well researched article about the "silent theft of our shared assets and civic inheritance".
posted by dejah420 on Aug 4, 2002 - 23 comments

A five-year-old kid from Minnesota has patented a way of swinging on a child's swing. More proof, if anyone needs it, that the government is veering from an institution of reason to an institution of control. At what point is a sufficient degree of absurdity reached that legitimacy is widely recognized to have been abandoned?
posted by rushmc on Apr 19, 2002 - 21 comments

UK Parliament now offering live webcasts of debates. Fascinating. Don't miss Prime Minister's Questions every Wednesday at 3pm GMT, it's always good for a few laughs. Would give some of the slower debates a miss though. Via The Register.
posted by mokey on Jan 14, 2002 - 8 comments