Tag: creative commons
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The Tragedy of the Creative Commons
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Andrew Orlowski
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The Creative Commons initiative fulfilled a major ambition last week – but it’s taken only days for the dream to turn to crap.
Google granted the wish by integrating the ability to search images based on rights licences into Google Image Search. Yahoo! Image Search has had a separate image search facility for years, but Google integrated the feature into its main index.
The idea of making the licences machine-readable was a long-standing desire of the project, and lauded as … Read More
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Ursula le Guin dings surly Boing Boing
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Andrew Orlowski
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Science Fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin has given the anti-copyright fanatics at the Boing Boing weblog a quick refresher in authors’ rights.
The blog posted a short piece by Le Guin, erroneously slapping a Creative Commons license on it.
“This is incorrect,” wrote her representative. “Ms. Le Guin has not placed this work under such a license and retains these rights. Ms. Le Guin has not given blanket permission for everyone to copy or create derivatives (which can include … Read More
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Creative Commons sued for deception
by
Andrew Orlowski
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A Texan family has been handed a harsh lesson in what the Creative Commons “movement” really means for creatives who use its licences.
Filmmaker Damon Chang uploaded a family photograph of his young niece Alison to Flickr, only to discover weeks later that it was being used by Virgin Mobile in an expensive advertising campaign. Neither Alison Chang nor her youth counsellor Justin Wong, who took the photograph, have received compensation for the use of the image – having handed … Read More
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One-Click™ colonialism
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Andrew Orlowski
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The music industry has a long and shameful history of robbing black artists of their rights. Now along comes some new software that will help speed up the job. Think of it as a sort of 1-Click “non-payment” system.
Liblicense is a project that Creative Commons hopes to integrate with MIT Media Lab’s OLPC, or One Laptop Per Child initiative. That’s the rubbishy sub-notebook designed for developing countries, that developing countries don’t seem to want very much. (Shockingly, the ungrateful … Read More
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“People misunderstand me from all directions” – Lessig at CISAC
by
Andrew Orlowski
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Professor Lawrence Lessig is used to hostile audiences – but he faced the most prickly and feisty gathering of 500 he’ll ever address yesterday in Brussels.
CISAC is the body that represents the collectives who gather up the royalties on behalf of authors, composers and songwriters – and this week it’s holding its first ever Copyright Summit.
A lot of money passes through these collectives’ hands – they distributed €4.3bn back to authors in 2004 in Europe alone. But these … Read More
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Doonesbury savages Pepperland’s copyright utopians
by
Andrew Orlowski
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As anyone involved with the original Apple Newton project knows only too well, when Garry Trudeau’s satirical eye engages a target, there’s only one winner. The Doonesbury cartoonist has a gift for holding up a mirror to bad ideas so they collapse under the weight of their own absurdities. This week[*] Trudeau has turned his attention to the “Creative Commons” project.
Beginning with Monday’s comic, radio interviewer Mark questions aging rock star Jim Thudpucker about “free music”. Thudpucker … Read More