Creative Commons - Credit: creativecommons.org

The Wikimedia Foundation has approved the licensing switch to Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike after a 75% vote.

Earlier today we blogged that results of the Wikipedia community vote on adding the CC BY-SA license. Over 75% of votes were cast in approval of the change, but as has been pointed out by Wikimedia Foundation Deputy Director Erik Moeller and board member Kat Walsh, this number understates the level of support for the change. 14% voted “no opinion”, while only 10% opposed.

In any case we are deeply gratified that such an overwhelming majority (88% of those who voted with an opinion) approved this change worked on over several years by the Free Software Foundation, Wikimedia Foundation, and Creative Commons, are proud to stand with such trusted organizations, and will live up to that trust!

The addition of the CC BY-SA license to Wikimedia sites should occur over the next month. Now is a good time to start thinking about whether your works and projects ought to interoperate with Wikipedia. If you’re using (or switch to) CC BY-SA, content can flow in both directions (your work could be incorporated into Wikipedia, and you can incorporate Wikipedia content into your work). If you use CC BY or CC0, your work could be incorporated into Wikipedia, but not vice versa. If your work isn’t licensed, or is under a CC license with a non-commercial or no derivatives (NC or ND) term, nothing can flow in either direction, except by fair use or other copyright exception or limitation.

Does 75% strike you as a little low?  Why was it even that controversial?

• Creative Commons

Floppy Disks - Credit: matsuyuki or Flickr (CC BY-SA)

Data.gov, a website hosting US federal government data has launched.

Data.gov, an OA warehouse of datasets created by the U.S. federal government, launched yesterday. See, e.g., coverage by the Washington Post.

Also yesterday, the Sunlight Foundation launched a new contest for best re-use of data from Data.gov, Apps for America 2. First prize is $10,000.

OK, so a cool app idea: make charts on the names of different congressmen. Did they use to begin with more vowels? But seriously, someone should come up with some good ideas.

• Open Access News

Shaking Hands - Credit: Aidan Jones on Flickr (CC BY-SA)

The FSF has settled its suit against Cisco.   Cisco will have to appoint a Free Software Director, fix their issues, and give the FSF some unspecified amount of money.

Cisco has agreed to appoint a Free Software Director for Linksys, a subsidiary of Cisco, to supervise Linksys’ compliance with the requirements of free software licenses such as the GPL (the GNU General Public License). The Free Software Director will report periodically to the FSF regarding Linksys’ compliance efforts. Cisco has further agreed to take certain steps to notify previous recipients of Linksys products containing FSF programs of their rights under the GPL and other applicable licenses, to publish a licensing notice on the Linksys website, and to provide additional notices in a separate publication. In addition, Cisco will continue to make the complete and corresponding source code for versions of FSF programs used with current Linksys products freely available on its website. Cisco will also make a monetary contribution to the FSF.

The parties recognize Cisco’s ongoing obligations under the GPL and other free software licenses. The FSF will continue to independently monitor Linksys’ compliance with these licenses, and work with Linksys to resolve any new issues that may arise.

“We are glad that Cisco has affirmed its commitment to the free software community by implementing additional measures within its compliance program and dedicating appropriate resources to them, further reassuring the users’ freedoms under the GPL,” said Peter Brown, Executive Director of the FSF. “Our agreement results in making all of the relevant source code available in the fastest way possible.”

That’s good.

• FSF
• Slashdot

Little Case - Credit: Banalities on Flickr (CC BY)

The motion to withdraw has become a motion for substitution in the Jammie Thomas case.

In Capitol Records v. Thomas, Jammie Thomas will not have to go it alone, after all.

Her attorney’s previous motion to withdraw has been amended to become a motion for substitution.

Houston, Texas, law firm Camara & Sibley, and St. Paul, Minnesota, firm Reinhardt, Wendorf & Blanchfield, will be taking over as Ms. Thomas’s attorneys.

The motion for substitution is not opposed by the RIAA.

The trial is scheduled for June 15th.

Wait, could she have really just been lawyerless?  That’s crazy.

• Recording Industry vs. The People

Money...What Money - Credit: stuartpilbrow on Flickr (CC BY-SA)

Due to $130,000 in bills, Jammie Thomas’ lawyer has withdrawn.

Toder had tried withdrawing before the first trial, but Judge Michael Davis refused to allow it. With Thomas-Rasset telling the court in a separate filing that she has no objection to Toder’s withdrawal and waiving a hearing on the matter, it’s more likely that Judge Raymond Erickson will allow Toder to shake the dust off his sandals and walk away from the case.

The withdrawal comes just a couple of days after a court-mandated settlement conference between the RIAA and Thomas failed to bear fruit. The parties haggled for a couple hours in a Minneapolis courtroom before Judge Erickson ended the hearing, clearing the way for a June 15 retrial.

Hmmm…EFF?

• Ars Technica

TMW 0.0.29 - Credit: elpirate on TMW

The Mana World 0.0.29 has been released.

This release clearly is our largest ever. First, many improvements and new features were merged in from the Aethyra project. Then, we spend a month merging our own two grown apart clients, one that supported the eAthena server and one that supported the tmwserv server (support for this server is currently a compile-time option). Finally, we spent two months fixing, improving and generally cleaning things up in order to prepare for this release.

The list of changes is way too long to go through, but I’ll mention a few of my favourites. The client now supports more eAthena features, among them is the ability to form a party, which allows you to see who else is online and to share experience and pickups in combat. Also, direction changes are now propagated properly, support for NPC storage was added and you can now specify the initial attributes of a new character. Then, there is the new tabbed chat window, which makes it much easier to keep track of private conversations. Finally, archers will enjoy seeing their arrows fly through the air.

So I’ve decided that for video games I’m going to start posting things that aren’t that major of an update, because videogames are fun to hear about.  BTW, I’m “conley” on TMW.

• The Mana World

Monster: M-80 - Credit: The Master Shake Signal on Flickr (CC BY-SA)

Hansen Beverage Company has sent a takedown notice to Desktop Nexus.  However, it is concerning trademark, not copyright.

They are asserting a trademark claim? They also said very clearly this was not a copyright claim. I suddenly regretted deleting those wallpapers, because I have a feeling what they’re doing is illegal. I did a little research on Continental Enterprises and turned up a number of horror stories involving their operation. To quote tabberone.com:

In our opinion, Continental Enterprises qualifies as the personification of a Trademark Extortionist. This Indianapolis-based company has taken trademark extortion to a new level.

They even went as far as filing a trademark infringement lawsuit against Tippman Sports a few days ago.

Desktop Nexus has over 600 new wallpapers being uploaded every day, making it impractical for us to manually moderate all the uploads. For this reason, sites like ours are protected under DMCA law, which requires us to take down content that violates copyrights in the event the copyright holder (or authorized agent) contacts us and makes a formal request. No problem. This however, is not a copyright issue. Continental Enterprises clearly stated they were not making a copyright claim. So I ask, does DMCA cover trademark issues as well, or are they trying to bully a smaller company into yielding to their whims? Did they have legal grounds to request we remove the wallpapers, and if so, did they approach it in a proper, legal way? Do we have any recourse in a situation like this? I want to remain legal in all of our actions of course, however I also feel large companies who abuse the legal system should be called out and have their ways exposed.

So I’d like to see these wallpapers.  I’m not sure how much it would affect the case here, but I wonder if they are actually portraying the drink.

• Desktop Nexus

last book i've read - Credit: Ranoush on Flickr (CC BY-SA)

A BYU graduate study conducted a study that suggests that releasing gratis ebooks increases sales.

On March 4 of this year, Random House announced that it would release five books for free through its science fiction portal, all of which came in downloadable PDF files (among other formats). Hilton recorded the before and after book sales and found that “one of the five books has had zero sales in 2009. So no sales before or after the free version. But the other four books all saw significant sales increases after the free versions were released. In total, combined sales of the five books were up 11%. Together they sold 4,633 copies the 8 weeks prior to being released free and 5,155 copies the eight weeks after being released.”

If you read the article, you will notice that it is very good at pointing out the flaws in a study like this.  The real problem is that this is a promotion of sorts.  If you were to release all the books for free, would you see an increase in physical book sales?  I’d like to think so, but maybe we’ll never know.

• Bloggasm
• Boing Boing

Obama - Credit: The Official White House Photostream on Flickr (PD)

White House photos on Flickr are now labeled as “United States Government Work” on Flickr.

Someone must have been listening, because sometime over the weekend, the licenses changed, and now the photos are labeled “United States Government Work” and link to an explanation on copyright.gov. The White House, however, continues to use the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license for all third-party content published on the www.whitehouse.gov site.

The change marks a first for Flickr, which to date has not had a license for government works, other than a “No Known Copyright Restriction” license that is used on photos from its Commons project, which includes photos from some of the world’s greatest museums and libraries. Those photos include ones from the Library of Congress, for instance, that never were copyright since they were made or paid for by the federal government

I don’t understand why they didn’t just add a “public domain” or CC 0 option.  That would have made more sense to me.

• Wired

Textbooks. Source: "The reason I don't sleep at night..." by Amanda Munoz on Flickr. License: CC-BY 2.0.

Ars Technica reports that the state of California has started a project to write free digital textbooks for the state’s public schools. The project is focusing on high school math and science courses.

Schwarzenegger has tasked California Secretary of Education Glen Thomas with making sure that the new textbooks are ready for deployment in fall 2009. Thomas will be collaborating with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction and the president of the State Board of Education.

Public education is costly in California and accounts for roughly 40 percent of the state government’s annual budget. The state’s current financial woes have forced Schwarzenegger to search for ways to cut some of the fat out of school spending.

“As California’s budget crisis continues we must find such innovative ways to save money and improve services,” said Governor Schwarzenegger in a statement. “California was built on innovation and I’m proud of our state’s continued leadership in developing education technology. This first-in-the-nation initiative will reduce education costs, help encourage collaboration among school districts and help ensure every California student has access to a world-class education.”

This is great news, however it is worth noting that the article points out a number of roadblocks in California’s school system with regard to textbooks. Hopefully these can be overcome, although that will be a huge battle. Even so, education, whether K-12 or higher, desperately needs free (libre) resources, and it’s good to hear that California is stepping up and starting this initiative.

• Ars Technica
• Slashdot