MetaFilter posts tagged with creativecommons

"My cup runneth over with bloody water" -- Paul K.

ford and the prefects — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 10:02:31 -0800

Kentucky folksinger Paul K. has released his entire catalog online under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. (Scroll down through the absurdly large text and lengthy lacunae on K's site to get to the links!) From the fellers at Trouser Press:

Paul K is one of the post-punk generation's first bona fide bluesmen, a guy whose tales from the darkside are drawn from his own experiences as a reformed junkie and small-time criminal with the jailhouse record to prove it. Throughout the mid-'80s, the Louisville, Kentucky native (né Kopasz) released dozens of home-recorded cassette albums, but the onetime winner of a debating scholarship hamstrung his own progress by living a lifestyle sufficiently shadowy that he ended up a New York squatter pulling small-time stickups to make ends meet.

I'd particularly recommend The Big Nowhere, with its "Washington Square"-inspired slinker "Flood the Market," and last year's astounding Maintain Radio Silence.

Break out the Crayons

Rinku — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 09:19:21 -0800

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. The artist, Pixo, has quite a few other art-related blogs.

Videos of university courses

Kattullus — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:59:36 -0800

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.

"A celebration of all the people who are willing to share"

Pinback — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 23:44:14 -0800

Freesouls.cc - 296 Portraits of luminaries from the free culture movement. By Joi Ito, amateur photographer, blogger, and CEO of Creative Commons. Odd inclusions. Notable exclusions . Controversy.

Nerd-In-Chief

designbot — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 09:41:39 -0800

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?

Rosenbaum, The Plausible-Fabulist

ninebelow — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 07:13:41 -0800

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." Benjamin Rosenbaum is not a character from The Scarlett Pimpernel, a poet or a writer of children's books as 'Biographical Notes to 'A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes', by Benjamin Rosenbaum' makes clear.

The Open-Source Train Moves Forward

Artful Codger — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 20:04:42 -0800

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. The Java Model Railroad Interface is an open-source project of software in Java for use in controlling model railroads. For the past few years, according to the JMRI website, the project and its leader have been under legal attack by a commercial competitor, who has allegedly used project code in a commercial product in violation of the license terms, has received a patent without proper disclosure of prior art, and has engaged in litigation against the JMRI project and its chief maintainer. Is this an important victory? Lawrence Lessig seems to think so.

Just when you thought you had it all sussed out

aldus_manutius — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 03:42:20 -0800

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! DISCLAIMER: I've actually met Peter. Professionally. More than once, even. Heck of nice guy.

The story of a giant rabbit

tellurian — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:14:50 -0800

Big Buck Bunny - a fantastic animation. It's also on YouTube, but the download is so much better.

Freedom's just another word for never getting paid

klangklangston — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:01:50 -0800

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. All told, about three hours of free music.

My Own Private Ariel

Aversion Therapy — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:15:45 -0800

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.

Cash rules everything around me

Blazecock Pileon — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 00:29:49 -0800

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.

More abuse of open source for profit

gandledorf — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:45:51 -0800

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.

The revolution will be hard-bound and highlighted

Blazecock Pileon — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 20:00:48 -0800

"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.

Lessig moves on.

delmoi — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 08:23:12 -0800

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.}

Open Medicine Journal

furtive — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 09:22:26 -0800

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.

Not everybody is an expert on everything

zabuni — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 13:54:34 -0800

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.

nifty music-matching application

livii — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 10:39:25 -0800

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.

A Swarm of Angels - A Wikifilm

slimepuppy — Fri, 12 May 2006 02:37:21 -0800

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)

My Life in the Bush of Ghosts released with CC license.

dobbs — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 13:36:01 -0800

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."

break it down like this

loquacious — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 00:48:17 -0800

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.)

Supreme Court Oral Argument MP3s.

monju_bosatsu — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 11:38:50 -0800

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]

Free good science fiction

blahblahblah — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 21:34:46 -0800

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!

legal torrents

mcsweetie — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 21:37:53 -0800

"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."

NerdTV

NotMyselfRightNow — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 13:27:30 -0800

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]