commons

Trigge Happy Free

Steven Poole’s book Trigger Happy is a pioneering work in the history and aesthetics of computer games. As an experiment (triggered by Amazon Kindle & DRM discussions) Steven is giving away his book for free, with no DRM attached under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license.

Trigger Happy is a book about the aesthetics of videogames — what they share with cinema, the history of painting, or literature; and what makes them different, in terms of form, psychology and semiotics. It was first published in 2000; this is the revised edition with the Afterword written in 2004 2001. (Update: as requested in comments, the 2004 Afterword can now be read here.)

The book will be available online for “a limited period only” and therefore his (and my) advice is to grab it while its hot!

Hopefully we shall also be able to find out more about the results of the experiment. Whether or not it increases or decreases sales, generates interest or has any interesting unexpected consequences. Stay tuned to Steven’s blog.

Posted on by mklang

Talk, talk, talk, talk

Its been a long week. It isn’t over yet but tomorrow is the last day and I must say that I am glad. The reason for the “thank god it’s Friday” attitude is because this week I have managed to become tired of my own voice.

Most students see the work of a university lecturer as being comprised of standing in class lecturing. Few people (or students – even though students are people too) realize that the main part of the lecturers work is not actually giving lectures. This is actually a good thing too. Giving lectures is an intense activity. Preparation is a heavy part but the thing that really does it is the delivery. Being able to deliver a lecture is all about personality, attitude and presence. But giving good lectures also takes a lot of energy. Expending this energy affects the ability to carry out mental work – especially after the lecture.

This week has been especially heavy. On Monday I gave three lectures in Stockholm: Basic Copyright, Digital Copyright and Creative Commons. Basic copyright was supposed to be done by someone else but he called in sick at the last moment. Leaving me to step up. Tuesday was regulation of technology in Lund. Wednesday – No lectures, phew! Today was Copyright in Lund. Finally tomorrow is Digital Copyright in Göteborg. Different audiences and audience types every time.

Right now I am resting for tomorrows gig. In reality I am tired of my own voice. I want to be inspired and inspiring tomorrow. Even though I have heard myself too many times this week it is all news to the audience.

Posted on by mklang

Open Office addition

Creative Commons released an Add-in for OpenOffice.org which allows users to select and embed a Creative Commons license in documents. Based on work completed as part of the Google Summer of Code by Cassio Melo, the add-in supports Writer (word processing documents), Calc (spreadsheets) and Impress (presentations).

The Add-in is available without charge, and is licensed under the GNU General Public License. Download information and links to source code.

Posted on by mklang

CC 5 years old

Creative Commons is going to celebrate its fifth birthday in December and it’s adoption and spread is nothing short of amazing.

cc_world_sept07.jpg

The green/grey countries have adopted CC, the yellow or on the verge of adopting and the red have not begun to work on the licenses. Seen as a bottom-up movement the spread of Creative Commons shows its amazing success.

In the five years since our launch, we have grown up fast. In 2004, we incubated an international movement supporting the ideals of the Internet and cultural freedom (iCommons). This year we spun that organization out as an independent UK-based charity. In 2005, we launched a project to support a commons within science (Science Commons). This year Science Commons launched the Neurocommons, an e-research project built exclusively on open scientific literature and databases, and the Materials Transfer Project, an extension of the ideas of the commons to physical tools such as gene plasmids and cell lines. And just two months ago, we announced a significant grant that has enabled us to launch a project focused on learning and education (ccLearn). There is now a staff of over 30 in four offices around the world, supporting thousands of volunteers in more than 70 local jurisdiction projects around the world, who, in turn, support the millions of objects that have been marked with the freedoms that CC licenses enable.

Posted on by mklang

Congratulations Luxembourg

 Luxembourg is the 40th Jurisdiction to adopt the Creative Commons licensing suite worldwide.

An event to commemorate the launch will be held on October 15th at the Public Research Center Henri Tudor (CRP) in Luxembourg, featuring speeches by John Buckman, founder and CEO of Magnatune.com and Board Member of Creative Commons; Paul Keller, Project Lead for Creative Commons Netherlands; Laurent Kratz, founder Luxembourg’s Jamendo, one of the largest music portals offering Creative Commons-licensed works; and Lionel Maurel, scientific coordinator from the National Library of France. (via the Creative Commons blog)

Congratulations Luxembourg!

Posted on by mklang

7 Ways To Ruin A Technological Revolution

Here is an online talk by one of the most interesting of tech-lawyers, the intellectual James Boyle talk is on YouTube and the subject is 7 Ways To Ruin A Technological Revolution. From the abstract:

If you wanted to undermine the technological revolution of the last 30 years, using the law, how would you do it? How would you undercut the virtuous cycle that results from access to an open network, force technological innovation into stagnation, diminish competition, create monopolies over the basic building blocks of knowledge? How many of those things are we doing now?

Boyle has been an impressive figure since his book Shamans, Software and Spleens: Law and the Construction of the Information Society came out in 1997 since then his writings include Papers on the Public Domain (James Boyle ed. 2003) and Bound by Law – A ‘Graphic Novel’ (a.k.a. comic book) on Fair Use.

He has also been central in the launching of Creative Commons and Duke Center for the Study of the Public Domain.

(via DigitalKoans)

Posted on by mklang

Creative Commons in Kalmar

Right now I am in Kalmar to present Creative Commons tomorrow. Kalmar is a very pretty old town in Sweden with both a castle and an walled old town. It also has a very impressive cathedral. The wikipedia page about Kalmar is rather good.

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Kalmar Castle

Most of the street art was political notices pushing the anti-fascists but I also came across this stencil in the old town – it is really very brutal.

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The text reads “This is your fault”

Stenciled on one of the shopping streets in Kalmar – it really makes you think about more than buying stuff…

 

Posted on by mklang

Dutch Innovation

The Dutch collecting societies support CC – this is a great leap forward, I cannot help but wonder what the Swedish societies will do now? Probably try to continue to ignore technology, innovation, the commons, and reality…

From Paul Keller – CC Netherlands Project Lead:

On August 23, 2007, Dutch collecting societies Buma and Stemra and Creative Commons Netherlands launched a pilot project that seeks to provide Dutch musicians with more opportunities to promote their own repertoire. This project enables members of Buma/Stemra to use the 3 non-commercial CC licenses for non-commercial distribution of their works. It also allows Dutch composers and lyricists who already use the CC NonCommercial license to join Buma/Stemra and have them collect their royalties for commercial use of their works.

Before now Dutch authors have not been able to make their work available online under the CC NC license while at the same time having Buma/Stemra collect their royalties for commercial use of those works. The Netherlands is the first country to bring such a collaboration between a music copyright organization and Creative Commons, a move applauded by Lawrence Lessig, the founder and chairman of Creative Commons International, as “the first step towards more freedom of choice in the field of exploiting music works in the digital world.”

The press release by Creative Commons Netherlands and Buma Stemra can be found here. And for more information about what’s going on in the Netherlands check out CC Netherlands website.

Posted on by mklang

The Revolution is Now

The current edition of CTWatch Quarterly (August 2007) is themed The Coming Revolution in Scholarly Communications & Cyberinfrastructure.

My only problem is when does a revolution stop being coming, approaching and imminent and actually appear to be here. The Open Access movement should not be discribed as a coming event. It is here and it is spreading. But never mind my splitting of terminological hairs just read the journal. Its table of contents includes an interesting array of articles and authors. It’s available both in html and in pdf.

 

The Shape of the Scientific Article in The Developing Cyberinfrastructure Clifford Lynch, Coalition for Networked Information (CNI)
Next-Generation Implications of Open Access Paul Ginsparg, Cornell University
Web 2.0 in Science Timo Hannay, Nature Publishing
Reinventing Scholarly Communication for the Electronic Age J. Lynn Fink, University of California, San Diego
Philip E. Bourne, University of California, San Diego
Interoperability for the Discovery, Use, and Re-Use of Units of Scholarly Communication Herbert Van de Sompel, Los Alamos National Laboratory Carl Lagoze, Cornell University
Incentivizing the Open Access Research Web Tim Brody, University of Southampton, UK Les Carr, University of Southampton, UK Yves Gingras, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) Chawki Hajjem, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) Stevan Harnad, University of Southampton, UK; Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) Alma Swan, University of Southampton, UK; Key Perspectives
The Law as Cyberinfrastructure Brian Fitzgerald, Queensland University of Technology, Australia Kylie Pappalardo, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Cyberinfrastructure For Knowledge Sharing John Wilbanks, Scientific Commons
Trends Favoring Open Access Peter Suber, Earlham College

Posted on by mklang

Wellcome Images under CC

The Wellcome Trust has released its image collection under a collection named 2000 years of human culture. Launched 20 June, Wellcome Images is the world’s leading source of images on the history of medicine, modern biomedical science and clinical medicine. All content has been made available under a Creative Commons Licence, which allows users to copy, distribute and display the image, provided the source is fully attributed and it is used for non-commercial purposes. (read press release)

Mosquito, Anopheles stephensi in flight by Hugh Sturrock (2005)

(via Boing Boing)

Posted on by mklang