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

Creative Commons NonCommercial Icon. Source: Creative Commons and Wikimedia Commons. License: CC-BY 3.0

Creative Commons is starting up a second survey on the NonCommercial provision of their licenses, this one aiming at non-authors.

During the first phase of the study, which took place last fall, we focused on talking with and surveying creators, using a questionnaire that was fielded to a sample of US-based content creators, and also made available (in an expanded version) to anyone interested. See 1, 2, 3.

Now we want to hear about noncommercial use from the user’s perspective — recognizing of course that the creator/user distinction is itself worthy of study! Whether you consider yourself a member of the Creative Commons community, or are interested more generally in copyright, we hope you will respond. While answering all the questions can take a while, particularly if you have a lot to say, many people who participated last time found it an interesting and useful experience.

Even though the provision is still not a free one, I hope this will clarify a few things about it. Note that the survey takes a while to complete, so set aside some time before starting.

• Creative Commons
• NonCommercial Survey

Creative Commons - Credit: creativecommons.org

CC0, the tool for waiving as many rights as possible, has reached 1.0.

Using CC0, you can waive all copyrights and related or neighboring rights that you have over your work, such as your moral rights (to the extent waivable), your publicity or privacy rights, rights you have protecting against unfair competition, and database rights and rights protecting the extraction, dissemination and reuse of data.

You can only do this if you are the owner of the rights to the work or you have authority from the person who owns those rights.

I kind of feel like this is just confusing. .  I guess it’s a good thing though.

• Creative Commons
• Plagiarism Today

Old Movie Camera - Credit: thomasclaveirole on Flickr (CC BY-SA)

YouTube is testing out allowing users to CC their videos, and offering a download option as well.

Many video creators on YouTube want their work to be seen far and wide. They don’t mind sharing their work, provided that they get the proper credit. Using Creative Commons licenses, we’re giving our partners and community more choices to make that happen. Creative Commons licenses permit people to reuse downloaded content under certain conditions.

We’re also testing an option that gives video owners the ability to permit downloading of their videos from YouTube. Partners could choose to offer their video downloads for free or for a small fee paid through Google Checkout. Partners can set prices and decide which license they want to attach to the downloaded video files (for more info on the types of licenses, take a look here).

I kind of feel like YouTube is always a year late on things.  Like seriously, how long did it take them to do high-def? Do they even have stereo sound yet?

• YouTube
• Creative Commons

CC Al Jazeera - Credit: Al Jazeera (CC BY)

Al Jazeera has launched a large, CC-BY repository of high quality media.

Al Jazeera is releasing 12 broadcast quality videos today shot in Gaza under Creative Commons’ least restrictive Attribution license. Each professionally recorded video has a detailed information page and is hosted on blip.tv allowing for easy downloads of the original files and integration into Miro. The value of this footage is best described by an International Herald Tribune/New York Times article describing the release:

In a conflict where the Western news media have been largely prevented from reporting from Gaza because of restrictions imposed by the Israeli military, Al Jazeera has had a distinct advantage. It was already there.

More importantly, the permissive CC-BY license means that the footage can be used by anyone including, rival broadcasters, documentary makers, and bloggers, so long as Al Jazeera is credited.

Wow…this is pretty big news.  I wonder which big US media organization will follow.

• Creative Commons
• International Herald Tribune
• Al Jazeera
• Joi Ito
• Freedom for IP

Creative Commons - Credit: creativecommons.org

The Creative Commons NonCommercial survey deadline has been extended to December 14.

Creative Commons is conducting a study on the meaning of “NonCommercial” and you can weigh in by answering a detailed questionnaire on the subject. We’ve extended the deadline for participation to December 14 (originally December 7) as we’re still getting healthy response via all those who blogged about the questionnaire this week.

Full disclosure: taking the questionnaire requires a significant investment of time — 15 to 25 minutes, and it isn’t an “easy” questionnaire — you’ll have to think. Unfortunately the meaning of “NonCommercial”, or at least people’s understanding of the term, is a nuanced issue (we’ll see what the results actually say about that, after analysis), requiring nuanced, even difficult questions to tease out the sub-issues. So a huge thanks to those who have participated, and thanks in advance to those who will. If you’re ready, go on and take the questionnaire.

As I said before, it’s a pretty in depth survey, but I think that the future of NonCommercial is really important to the future of free culture (see reasons to not use NC).

• Creative Commons

Georgi Parvanov - Credit: president.bg

Georgi Parvanov, the president of Bulgaria is now using CC BY-ND.

The official website of the Bulgarian President Georgi Parvanov is now available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 2.5 Bulgarian license. Bulgaria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been releasing its material under the same license since 2006, but ordinarily, these websites would be under full copyright, explains CC Bulgaria Project Lead Veni Markovski.

“Bulgaria has taken a step in the right direction to complete its image as a country where the politicians are aware of the most advanced technologies and use them for the good of the society,” Veni adds.

The ND is unnecessary, but it’s a good thing that free licensing is going global.

• Creative Commons
• president.bg

Creative Commons - Credit: creativecommons.org

CC has published a questionare on what “NonCommercial” means.  This has been the subject of much debate.

As previously announced, we’re running a questionnaire on understanding “NonCommercial” use. The questionnaire runs through December 7. It takes 15-25 minutes to complete.

Click here to start the questionnaire.

Check out why non-commercial may not be the best idea and fill out the survey.

• Creative Commons

TorrentFreak reports that Quote Unquote Records has had their site pulled because their ISP demanded copyright registration forms for their music.

Around a week ago, the label was notified by its webhost that it had some copyright music files on its server, which was no surprise to them since they were tracks by Arrogant Sons of Bitches, one of the label’s bands. The tracks the webhost referred to were actually written by Jeff himself. Jeff spoke with someone at the host on the telephone, explained that they were his own tracks and was informed this wasn’t a problem.

Three days later the labels site went down completely, due to Jeff hosting his own copyright files on his own site – a claimed violation of the hosting company’s Terms of Service. In order to solve the problem, Jeff would have to send his copyright registration forms to the host by mail, to prove he held the copyright, a problem in itself, explains Jeff:

“I called the company to explain that a lot of this material was NOT in fact registered with the US copyright office, instead we did the ol’ poor man’s copyright. The music that was copyrighted was done so under a Creative Commons License, which is a digital copyright that cannot be viewed if the website where the files are posted is down.”

I can imagine their ISP potentially losing their immunity in copyright lawsuits for preemptive strikes like this,.  I’m pretty sure the DMCA says that ISPs are to act only when notified of infringements on their services, not before.

• TorrentFreak
• Slashdot

Lessig - Credit: lessig.org

Lessig’s keynote at the Students for Free Culture conference mentioned that there is supposed to be a big announcement on the 15th (he seemed not totally certain of the date) that would usher in a new era of CC integration.