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Links for May 6th 2008
Interesting links for May 5th 2008 through May 6th 2008:
- Little Brother » Download for Free – Cory Doctorow’s new young adult novel “Little Brother” is out and is also available, in its entirety, as a free download. The novel explores issues of privacy and surveillance (among others) as they related to young people (with culture jamming ideas to boot).
- Apple iTunes To Sell Films On Day Of DVD Release [InformationWeek] – Apple’s iTunes store is to start selling feature film downloads on the same day that they are released on DVD.
- Internet serves up 30 years of spam [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – “Today marks the 30th anniversary of the computer phenomenon – spam email. Now a nuisance for tens of millions of computer users worldwide, three decades ago someone sent what is considered to be the very first spam email.”
Mayer and Bettle are back!
Anyone who has ever tried to explain the importance of Creative Commons licenses to a new audience has probably played them the wonderful CC Mayer and Bettle Animation which was created back in 2005 by Pete Foley and others gathered together by CC Australia. The video features two animated characters whose adventures in downloading, copyright and content creation lead them to explore the utility of CC licenses for creators and for audiences. It’s also quite funny (featuring “the best song in the world!!”).
The great news is that the two central characters, Mayer and Bettle are back, joined this time by a new player in the game – Flick – in a new animated tale. This one looks at CC licenses in more depth, with a focus on making money off content creation while still using CC licensing. You really need to watch the original animation first for this sequel to make sense, but it’s another fine effort from CCau, making CC licenses understandable and accessible to a general (non-lawyerish) audience!
Update: For more info and a higher quality download, check out the official CCau blog. [Via Elliot’s CC Blog]
Links for March 30th 2008
Interesting links for March 30th 2008:
- Getting Started [Photoshop Express] – Great set of simple explanations (in video) for making the most of Photoshop Express.
- Adobe Photoshop Express – Adobe’s push into online applications continues, this time with a (very) scaled-down version of Photoshop as an online tool. Adobe are clearly getting into the web 2.0 side of things, too, with online galleries and a few basic community-building tools.
- An Example of Creative Commons Not Working [Aaron Landry] – An interesting post by Aaron Landry who was disappointed to see Cory Doctorow inadvertently violate a CC license. The issue has since been resolved, but the post raises some important issues about CC, fair use and understandings of ‘non-commercial’.
- Jobs to go in ABC production shake-up [ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)] – Looks like Aunty is centralising in the Eastern states even more, and shrinking infrastructure under the guise of use new technologies and “maximising creativity” while minimizing costs. (Why does this sound so ominous for our national broadcaster?)
- Legal battle over Warcraft ‘bot’ [BBC NEWS | Technology] – Blizzard, the company behind World of Warcraft, is suing Michael Donnelly, the creator of Glider bot which can ‘play’ Warcraft, on the grounds of a very technical copyright breach.
- Cyber vigilantes foil gadget thief [The Age] – Feel-good crowdsourcing/collective intelligence story about Jesse McPherson whose X-Box was stolen, the police couldn’t help much, so he turned the clues he had over to Digg and mobilised a smart mob who found the theif and his lost goods!
- Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On [New York Times] – “According to interviews and recent surveys, younger voters tend to be not just consumers of news and current events but conduits as well ? sending out e-mailed links and videos to friends and their social networks.”
CC+
One of the big announcements at the celebrations of Creative Commons’ fifth birthday was the release of the CC+ (CCPlus) licensing arrangement which combines existing CC licenses with ability to also explicitly point to additional licensing (for example, terms for commercial use on an NC CC license). From the CC blog:
CC+ is a protocol to enable a simple way for users to get rights beyond the rights granted by a CC license. For example, a Creative Commons license might offer noncommercial rights. With CC+, the license can also provide a link to enter into transactions beyond access to noncommercial rights — most obviously commercial rights, but also services of use such as warranty and ability to use without attribution, or even access to physical media.
“Imagine you have all of your photos on Flickr, offered to the world under the CC Attribution-NonCommercial license,” said Lawrence Lessig, CEO of Creative Commons. “CC+ will enable you to continue offering your work to the public for noncommercial use, but will also give you an easy way to sell commercial licensing rights to those who want to use your work for profit.”
While CC+ isn’t exactly new – it was always possible legally – the simplification of this arrangement is sure to see a lot more people explicating the terms under which they’d released material commercially and, hopefully, this encourage commercial producers to use material in this form.
In case you prefer you explanations to be more engaging, here’s a video explaining CC+:
If the video is a little hard to watch at this size, head to the full-size version on blip.tv or download a QuickTime movie version (56Mb). Alternatively, you can check the CC+ page or download the explanatory PDF.
One of the reasons I really like CC+ is that I can really see its value for media produced by students; CC licenses really encourage others to view and share, but having commercial uses spelt out means that if what students create is good enough, they could also see it making money for them!
Cultural Capital a winner for Creative Commons!
As I’m sure you’re aware, the Creative Commons organisation is in the midst of their annual fundraising efforts. CC are also concurrently holding their second annual CC Swag Photo Contest on Flickr. I’ve entered a couple of photos thus far (and hope to get time to try a few more), and I was delighted to hear today that my ‘Cultural Capital’ shot was this week’s winner (there are 6 weekly winners, then two of those win overall). For those interested, my picture:
The basic idea is a simple one: the ethos and practice of sharing at the heart of the Creative Commons is building the cultural capital of the future (unlike many uses of full copyright which are being used, at times, to lock out creativity and thus diminish culture per se).
The Creative Commons folk are aiming to have at least 100 photos for the CC Swag Photo contest this year, so I’m looking forward to seeing the photos others come up with in the next month.
And don’t forget, if you’ve not already, please donate and support the Creative Commons! 🙂
Special Journal Issue on "Social Network Sites"
The latest edition of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication is live, and contains an outstanding special section on “social network sites” edited by danah boyd and Nicole Ellison. I’ve not had a chance to read all the articles, yet, but I can say with certainty that danah boyd and Nicole Ellison’s “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship” is definitely going to be one of those oft-cited and even more often read papers in university courses! Here’s the announcement from danah’s blog:
JCMC Special Theme Issue on “Social Network Sites”
Guest Editors: danah boyd and Nicole Ellison
http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/[X] “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship” by danah boyd and Nicole Ellison
[X]“Signals in Social Supernets” by Judith Donath
[X]“Social Network Profiles as Taste Performances” by Hugo Liu
[X]“Whose Space? Differences Among Users and Non-Users of Social Network Sites” by Eszter Hargittai
[X]“Cying for Me, Cying for Us: Relational Dialectics in a Korean Social Network Site” by Kyung-Hee Kim and Haejin Yun
[X]“Public Discourse, Community Concerns, and Civic Engagement: Exploring Black Social Networking Traditions on BlackPlanet.com” by Dara Byrne
[X]“Mobile Social Networks and Social Practice: A Case Study of Dodgeball” by Lee Humphreys
[X]“Publicly Private and Privately Public: Social Networking on YouTube” by Patricia Lange
While not getting quite as much blog attention, it’s also worth noting that there are a number of other great papers in this issue of JCMC, too. In particular, I found these two very engaging:
[X] The Creative Commons and Copyright Protection in the Digital Era: Uses of Creative Commons Licenses by Minjeong Kim; and
[X] Every Blog Has Its Day: Politically Interested Internet Users’ Perceptions of Blog Credibility by Thomas J. Johnson, Barbara K. Kaye, Shannon L. Bichard, and W. Joann Wong
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