Slashdot Mirror

Whew, you're quick! It took me about 10 seconds to see that Creative Commons offers not one, but two software licenses. Namely, the GNU GPL and the GNU LGPL. The only thing that Creative Commons adds is a "human-readable summary of the Legal Code".

Here's a link to a page on the GPL that you might understand http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/ and this http://creativecommons.org/license/ will help you choose a license. Look at the lower left of the page for easily read non-CC licenses.

Here's a link to a page on the GPL that you might understand http://creativecommons.org/licenses/GPL/2.0/ and this http://creativecommons.org/license/ will help you choose a license. Look at the lower left of the page for easily read non-CC licenses.

Actually, there are some reasons you shouldn't just use Creative Commons for software. From the FAQ:

Can I use a creative commons license for software?

Creative Commons licenses are not intended to apply to software. They should not be used for software. We strongly encourage you to use one of the very good software licenses available today. The licenses made available by the Free Software Foundation or listed at the Open Source Initiative should be considered by you if you are licensing software or software documentation. Unlike our licenses -- which do not make mention of source or object code -- these existing licenses were designed specifically for use with software.

Perhaps Pixar needs something like a modified CC/GPL for movies. Some sort of legal thing that says it gives up its copyright after 26 years.

Creative Commons has a program called Founders' Copyright to do almost exactly what you suggest up to this point.

Last I checked, it is still illegal here to make a copy of the music on a CD you own, for any reason at all - personal uses of any type included, even for an MP3 player. We have no fair-use provision in our copyright laws, nor (AFAIK) are we getting any as a result of the Free Trade deal with the USA (though copyright terms are being drastically lengthened to match the US). We own the media, but have no "license to the music".

There are already a few online music stores in Australia, but to my knowledge they only sell songs in WMA format, not much good for iPod owners. iTMS will be the first useful site.

I can imagine that all of our iPods would be desperately looking forward to playing something other than crappy bootlegged highschool bands, home-recorded birdsong & the occasional scroungings from Creative Commons.

So, Creative Commons? Not GPL or BSD? http://creativecommons.org/

All the icons available in the Tango Project are licenced under Creative Commons Share-Alike license. A short summary that describes this licence is available at:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

It says: "You are free to make commercial use of the work"

This excellent news! The icons are beautiful.

The license is "Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial 1.0 Finland" And non-commercial copy is indeed allowed (provided you keep the authors names). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0/f i/

CC-licenses are valid and legal in the countries they have been accepted in. The list of countries can be found here:
http://creativecommons.org/worldwide/

Umm...interesting. But if you think apes using tools is crazy, how about apes using licenses?

The first is their Open Books project which includes out-dated, out-of-print, or community produced texts.

The second is their embracing of the Founder's copyright, under which they will release hundreds of books in decades to come, in collaboration with their authors.

It would be great if those books were released earlier, but at least they have taken a stance on releasing them earlier than necessary.

The first is their Open Books project which includes out-dated, out-of-print, or community produced texts.

The second is their embracing of the Founder's copyright, under which they will release hundreds of books in decades to come, in collaboration with their authors.

It would be great if those books were released earlier, but at least they have taken a stance on releasing them earlier than necessary.

Project Gutenberg

Did anybody notice that Project Gutenberg does do audio and video files?

The wikipedia suggestions are good, also check out Creative Commons; not quite the same, but useful.

The first tyme it was tried was through the FCC. The FCC issued rules requiring it, however the courts found the FCC had exceded it's authority. It didn't say congress can't do it though. So the MPAA/RIAA pay some congress critters to add it to a reconciliation bill. If it makes to a bill that Dubya signs then more than likely it'd end in court again.

When the MPAA/RIAA isn't able to get it's one way then it buldozes way another way. Because they're trying to be so heavy handed I've decided when I can I'll support groups like Creative Commons, Opsound, and Magnatune amoung others.

This way, if someone tries to share HL2 under a Creative Commons license, all Valve have to do is request that the website hosting the unauthorized license is taken down.

Consider the impact this can have on the indie artists... and those artists who try to have their music publically available (quite a few do exist) - how are they supposed to get a license so that the music can be shared? What standard does LimeWire plan to use in order to implement the license use?

Re-read the article. Presumably the Creative Commons license will suffice.

Now use Google... Nevermind, I'll give you the url CreativeCommons.org

They don't need to buy a license, they need to mark their works indicating that the works are released under a suitable license.

Have your sister release her songs under a Creative Commons license and mark her MP3s.

Presumably the cc-publisher branch mentioned in the article will include a Creative Commons publishing tool in the client.

"Is this where the future is headed? Everyone must license every single thing they ever play, write, direct, say - whatever? Every creative work MUST have a license or it will become unusable and unsharable?"

Yes. So fight the rearguard action here (http://www.eff.org/ and subvert the new order here (http://www.creativecommons.org./

Neither is going to take more time than typing that missive did.

Try reading this ... http://creativecommons.org/getcontent/features/doc torow

Well, opencores is open hardware, and there is a lot of music licensed under the Creative Commons.

You don't have to self publish, but yes your statement generally summarizes my thoughts. I bought music off of http://magnatune.com/ 2 days ago. This was the first music I've bought in at least 2 years. I was able to download my music in FLAC, OGG and MP3 formats. I paid $5 and $2.50 went to the band which is more than if I bought a CD from Sony and the band got less than a dollar. You could roll your own distribution site, or go with other distribution methods such as those linked on the left of this page:
http://creativecommons.org/audio/

or you could sign with a major record label and I will post about how that is a bad idea and get modded as a troll. Switchfoot chose the last one.

So, I say, we sidestep the whole issue, and just start enjoying media that artists release under Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/ licensing. That is, tell the RIAA, in your face! There is LOTS of good music (and other work) out there that can be had freely. Sure, it's not the bubblegum stuff you're hearing on KRAP radio, but lots of it is really worth listening to.

The more we adopt alternate methods, the more the power will slip away from the current abusers. It's not a total solution, but it's a place to start.

On top of that, reading in front of a monitor at this point in time is not enjoyable.

"no cost of shipping, no middleman warehouse distribution, no physical cost to print/bind, no brick and mortar store paying electricity, rent, stocking risky books at a premium, they'll be dirt cheap!" I was wrong.

I would be quite impressed if you built your own - it was my understanding that getting small enough components was a pain in the ass unless you're buying in bulk. I could be wrong - if so, kudos :)

As I don't have the skills, knowledge, to do it myself I can't but a friend does. I don't know about the availability of parts though.

Senate bill would ban P2P networks

Because P2P has legitimate uses I don't see how the USSC wouldn't strike any law that outlaws them as an abridgement of freedom of speech. It'd be like outlawing printing presses or copy machines. But if they did I'd be joining those saying "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants", Thomas Jefferson. As for a broadcast flag, Court yanks down FCC's broadcast flag. On taxing of storage media the US has had that at least since cassette tapes came out. I notice the article theregister.co.uk which you find particularly bothersome, much as I do, is more than 3 years old. If I recall right the bill went down in flames.

# The inability [papersplease.org] to travel by air in the US if you're not willing to obey laws you're not even allowed to see

Yea, "Wired magazine" had an article about John Gilmore two or three years ago. To see if it was online I did the search above and see they have a bunch of others. I'll want to go through and read them, and save them on my hd along with other articles about it. I will after I post this.

trouble [wm3.org] you can get into if you behave counterculturally in redneck America

It's not like I don't know that, I've following the case of political prisoner Leonard Peltier who was falsely conficted of murdering two FBI agents and has been in prison for more than 25 years, as well as Mumia Ab Jamal another person falsely conficted of killings, in this case of police officers. Oh, and I wouldn't call it redneck America as there are many flavors of redneck, me for instance. I've been called a long haired or hippy redneck.

Actually because of my speaking out on different issues and policies of the US government I've been called a traitor or hater of the USA, or in the case of Israel an antisemite but I'm not, it's the policies and deeds I disagree with. While I hate politics I'm passionate about liberty.

As for restrictive DRM policies, in part because these policies are getting so restrictive the Creative Commons are getting stronger. And I see this as continuing.

Sure, you can go out and buy a CD today, but what about in 10 years? 5? CDs will eventually be replaced by SACD or DVD-A, both of which have DRM schemes. If we don't stop DRM now, there will be no alternative.

Sure there'll be alternatives such as Creative Commons and open source. As DRM and the companies who use it get more restrictive more and more will seek alternatives. Of course some will go along with these restrictions, just as some went along with the NAZIs but for those who want freedom there will be alternatives.

This DRM thing will not remain limited to those online songs, it will (try to) become a general 'feature', locking you down and threatening your electronic freedom.

That's why you should support Creative Commons and other such organizations.

After reading that guide I'm glad I don't download or buy music online with DRM. If and when I ever start downloading music, I'll try to stick with creative commons websites or other websites like:

• Creative Commons
• dmusic.com
• Opsound
• Magnatunes

You can decide not to pay Tony anything and he'll break your legs (or at least try to). You can decide not to deal with the RIAA (that includes not pirating their music, obviously you can't steal something out of a shop when you decide not to pay for it, either) and the RIAA will ignore you. You don't get their goods, they don't get your goods.

The record companies don't sell goods, they sell rights. Copying something is not stealing.

"The point is, you shouldn't have to, just like you shouldn't have to pay a record company for making a copy of a CD you own"

In most jurisdictions you don't have to pay for that, unless you choose to distribute those copies which means you're competing with the rightsholder using his "reseach".

Well, it really depends on why you're making the copy as to whether or not you have to pay. But fine, let's say copying and distributing those copies. I shouldn't have to pay for that. I shouldn't have to pay for competing with the record companies just like I shouldn't have to pay for competing with Big Tony. Competition is essential in a free market.

It reduces the profitability of making software, likely to the point where paying lots of programmers to write it is no longer feasible.

I fail to see how this is the case.

It'll be mostly down to services then (i.e. you either pay someone because what you want doesn't exist yet or to set it up and maintain it).

In what way is "making software" not a "service"?

Remember, without the GPL there is no reason for anyone to contribute their stuff back into the main codetree

That's absolutely incorrect. There is at least one huge incentive to contribute back to the main codetree, and that is that it facilitates merging of changes made by other people. Maintaining a fork is hard, and it's not going to be done unless there are very good reasons for it. It's much easier to just send the diff to the project maintainers than it is to merge in their diffs every time they make them.

Alternatively, let me put it this way. The GPL doesn't require you to contribute your stuff back to the main codetree either.

it'd be pretty much the way BSD is now

With one major exception, a company couldn't take a piece of software, modify it, and copyright that derivative work. Sure, they wouldn't be required to release the source, but without the ability to sell shrinkwrapped software for more than the cost of the media that's not very useful. The source code clause of the GPL isn't the main thing that distinguishes it from the BSD license, the copyleft is. Things wouldn't be like the BSD licence or the GPL license, they'd be more like the Creative Commons ShareAlike license.

Or do you want to abolish trade secrets and NDAs as well and nuke the entire research sector?

I'd probably abolish trade secrets but not NDAs. Nuking the entire research sector would be a bad thing.

Also, without pressure from market demands the system wouldn't be very userfriendly (because there's noone paying for the development outside of large companies and those will only do what benefits them).

I don't see why it'd only be large companies, in fact I think small companies probably have more of a demand for software. But even if it is, why do you think that large companies don't demand user friendly products?

To supply a population of X with all the demanded goods, you need

I suggest you read up on Say's Law and the Broken Window Falacy. You might also want to look at In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russell.

The error you're making is that you're treating demand as some finite property which can be satisfied. Furthermore, if global demand is satisfied, that means everyone has everything he or she wants. If we all have everything we want, who cares if we're un

... Parents do their best to teach kids right and wrong and to give them that moral compass, ... that moral compass isn't sufficiently complex to cover ... copyright.

Here's a bedtime story I invented a few days ago because I was too lazy to get a book to read to my five years old Jonatan:

The Child and the Goldfish - bedtime story

A child wanted to draw a picture of the sea and wanted a nice fish in the picture. So the child typed the word "fish" in Google® and then clicked "images", and then he saw the picture of the nicest Goldfish he ever saw. It was exactly the fish he wanted in his drawing. He was so happy! He enlarged the picture and prepared to copy the picture just like he does with all the other images he finds in Google, but suddenly the fish started talking through the computer's speakers: "please don't copy me! I don't want you to copy me! Please! I will grant you three wishes if you don't copy me!"

The Child hesitated. He said to the fish: "But I do want to draw a picture of the sea, and I really like you!". Then the child thought for a moment and said: "OK. I promise. I want a sperm whale in my drawing. Can you get me a sperm whale?". "Sure!" said the fish. The fish extended a fin out of the screen and typed the words "sperm whale" in Google, then hit [enter], and an image of a sperm whale appeared. The child hit control-C, then control-V in Paint®, and continued working on his drawing.

Later the child wanted a dolphin. He remembered what the Goldfish promised, so he came back to Google, typed "fish", hit [enter], and there was this fish on the screen! How he wanted to copy the fish into his drawing. But he remembered what he promised. He asked the fish: "Can you find me a really nice dolphin?". "Sure!" replied the fish, and immediately extended one fin all the way to the keyboard, typed "dolphin", and there was this dolphin, exactly the one the child had in mind. The child hit control-C and then control-V and continued with his drawing.

But the child was not really happy with his drawing. It wasn't the drawing he wanted. He wanted that goldfish. It was exactly the fish he went looking for in Google in the first place. The child went back to Google, typed "fish" and then [enter], and there was the Goldfish again. The Goldfish asked "How is your drawing turning out?" and the child said "I don't really like it" in a very sad voice. The fish looked in the other window and said "but it's a really very nice drawing. I really like it!". The child said "I really wanted you in the picture, but I can't copy you... I promised". Then the fish said: "sure you can't copy me. But I can!" The fish extended one fin out of the screen all the way to the keyboard, hit control-C, then control-V, and there he was in the child's drawing!

The child was so happy! And the fish was happy too! The fish set his new home as the desktop wallpaper on the child's PC, and they lived happily ever after.

----------
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

Author and copyright holder: Ofer Hadas (aka hadaso in cyberspace)

I wonder why [Lawrence Lessig] does not actually act.

He tried to get parts of the most recent copyright extension declared unconstitutional, eventually personally arguing the case before the Supreme Court. He founded Creative Commons to make it easy for creators who want to make things more free to do so. That includes helping write a boilerplate license to make it easy to voluntarily put things into the public domain and another license to voluntarily limit ones own work to the "Founder's Copyright" of 28 years. What more do you want from him? The next major step will be convincing US citizens that things need to change. Once the citizenry believe that, it will be possible to convince congress to change the laws for the better. He's working on changing people's mind. You can hardly say that Lessig is a slacker.

I wonder why [Lawrence Lessig] does not actually act.

He tried to get parts of the most recent copyright extension declared unconstitutional, eventually personally arguing the case before the Supreme Court. He founded Creative Commons to make it easy for creators who want to make things more free to do so. That includes helping write a boilerplate license to make it easy to voluntarily put things into the public domain and another license to voluntarily limit ones own work to the "Founder's Copyright" of 28 years. What more do you want from him? The next major step will be convincing US citizens that things need to change. Once the citizenry believe that, it will be possible to convince congress to change the laws for the better. He's working on changing people's mind. You can hardly say that Lessig is a slacker.

I wonder why [Lawrence Lessig] does not actually act.

He tried to get parts of the most recent copyright extension declared unconstitutional, eventually personally arguing the case before the Supreme Court. He founded Creative Commons to make it easy for creators who want to make things more free to do so. That includes helping write a boilerplate license to make it easy to voluntarily put things into the public domain and another license to voluntarily limit ones own work to the "Founder's Copyright" of 28 years. What more do you want from him? The next major step will be convincing US citizens that things need to change. Once the citizenry believe that, it will be possible to convince congress to change the laws for the better. He's working on changing people's mind. You can hardly say that Lessig is a slacker.

As to my understanding, it is not possible to "release things" into the public domain.

Sure it is. Creative Commons even offers a boilerplate document to dedicate something to the public domain. You don't need CC's document ("I, the author of this work, hereby dedicate it to the public domain" is good enough), but it helps make your intentions extremely clear.

Wouldn't sending out freely redistributable legal recordings of non-RIAA artists in order to promote them make more sense? http://creativecommons.org/ http://dmusic.com/

They want to control the creators of music. They do this by locking artists into a certain number of albums, getting copyright, owning back-catalogues, etc.

They want to control the distribution of music. The Internet is disrupting their distribution model by showing how ineffective it is now.

They want to control the consumers (e.g. with DRM and copy-protected CDs).

And they want to control the licensing agreements. This is why they hate Creative Commons.

Even Stephen King couldn't get enough people to pay for a story delivered by installments about 4 years ago - and if he couldn't make it work, you can forget about anyone else doing it.

Yeah, but what is "enough"? Mr. King wanted 90% (or was it 75%? It doesn't matter which, really) of people who downloaded it to pay him. This was completely unrealistic. A more reasonable system, and one that's more favorable to small-time artists, would be to try to get 10% of people to pay. For example, if I write a book (I'd probably try Creative Commons, but a more restrictive license could work better) and release it online, and I get 50000 downloads, I'd be happy if 5000 of them each paid me a dollar. The way the publishing system works, this could still end up being more money than the author would have been paid for 50,000 dead-tree books (well, paperback. for hardcover gives the author more) and could well engender more good will from readers, and therefore more readers recommending you to their friends.

Does anybody care to comment? I know that folks like Cory Doctorow have used similar systems (though cory's was a bit different. He used a publisher to sell paper copies, and only used the CC non-commercial license for publicity and because he thinks it's the right thing to do. He didn't collect donations.)

Rather than adopting a standard U.S. copyright that will last in excess of 70 years after the author's lifetime, the Creative Commons and a contributor will enter into a contract to guarantee that the relevant creative work will enter the public domain after 14 years, unless the author chooses to extend for another 14. To re-create the functionality of a 14- or 28-year copyright, the contributor will sell the copyright to Creative Commons for $1.00, at which point Creative Commons will give the contributor an exclusive license to the work for 14 (or 28) years. During this period, Creative Commons will list all works under the Founders' Copyright, along with each projected public domain liberation date, in an online registry.

This basically deeds the rights to the Creative Commons, who then license it back to you for a period of time, after which they will deed it to the public domain.

So, through the Creative Commons, a fully exploitable, but more reasonably termed option also exists.

Rather than adopting a standard U.S. copyright that will last in excess of 70 years after the author's lifetime, the Creative Commons and a contributor will enter into a contract to guarantee that the relevant creative work will enter the public domain after 14 years, unless the author chooses to extend for another 14. To re-create the functionality of a 14- or 28-year copyright, the contributor will sell the copyright to Creative Commons for $1.00, at which point Creative Commons will give the contributor an exclusive license to the work for 14 (or 28) years. During this period, Creative Commons will list all works under the Founders' Copyright, along with each projected public domain liberation date, in an online registry.

This basically deeds the rights to the Creative Commons, who then license it back to you for a period of time, after which they will deed it to the public domain.

So, through the Creative Commons, a fully exploitable, but more reasonably termed option also exists.

This is why there is a Non-Commercial version of the license.

That's also why the Non-Commercial Creative Commons licenses suck. The whole point of sharing something with a Creative Commons license is to allow other people to build upon work that you've created, resulting in more creative works for people to enjoy. When you tack on the non-commercial restriction, you're making people jump through hoops to make sure they don't make any money with the new work that has been created. Let's look at an example of a blatant commercial use of a work, such as using a song in a television commercial. If a company uses a Creative Commons licensed song with the ShareAlike and Attribution requirements, that means the resulting commercial will be shared as well, allowing other people to make derivative works as well. That's supposed to be the goal: free usage of and derivation from creative works. Adding on the non-commercial restriction is supposed to let the creator earn money on the work, but far more often it just makes potential derivers look for alternatives, along with hampering the overall goal.

If someone wants to sell a movie with your song in it, they're either going to have to allow free redistribution of the movie, or ask you how much they have to pay to use your song in the movie. Both of those options are the goals of someone who is sharing their work. The non-commercial clause is unnecessary, and hampers the usage of shared works by many people. The only use that people often want to prevent when they add the non-commercial restriction is when the derivative work is an advertisement, as I've described above. When someone shares there Flickr pictures, they don't want to stop me from using their pictures just because I have Google ads on my blog, but that's what they end up doing. (Okay, I don't know what the non-commercial clause says exactly, but that's another problem. From the wording on the "Human-readable license summary, I think it would be prohibited.) When you combine the existance of the non-commercial clause with many people's latent distrust of corporations, you end up with a lot of people who limit the usefulness of works that they really want to share with people. The whole point of Creative Commons is to make it easy to share, so the murkiness and ill effects of the non-commercial clause hurt the goals of the licenses. If I want to ship people copies of Wired's Creative Commons CD but charge for shipping and the media itself, I can't do that, because some of the tracks are licensed with a non-commerical clause. Or can I? Do I have to provide receipts for the media and shipping to prove that I didn't make money off of it?

The success of copyleft licenses in the software arena is based heavily on the simplicity of the main license: the GPL. All you have to do is share alike, and you can use the code however you want. The only confusion that crops up is how much you have to share (do I have to pipe in commands from my closed source binary?), not whether or not one can make derivative works at all. If you're aiming for freedom, restricting usage is a bad idea, especially when it's done in such a way that many people choose to restrict usage without being aware of the consequences.

See also: Towards a Standard of Freedom: Creative Commons and the Free Software Movement

This is why there is a Non-Commercial version of the license.

That's also why the Non-Commercial Creative Commons licenses suck. The whole point of sharing something with a Creative Commons license is to allow other people to build upon work that you've created, resulting in more creative works for people to enjoy. When you tack on the non-commercial restriction, you're making people jump through hoops to make sure they don't make any money with the new work that has been created. Let's look at an example of a blatant commercial use of a work, such as using a song in a television commercial. If a company uses a Creative Commons licensed song with the ShareAlike and Attribution requirements, that means the resulting commercial will be shared as well, allowing other people to make derivative works as well. That's supposed to be the goal: free usage of and derivation from creative works. Adding on the non-commercial restriction is supposed to let the creator earn money on the work, but far more often it just makes potential derivers look for alternatives, along with hampering the overall goal.

If someone wants to sell a movie with your song in it, they're either going to have to allow free redistribution of the movie, or ask you how much they have to pay to use your song in the movie. Both of those options are the goals of someone who is sharing their work. The non-commercial clause is unnecessary, and hampers the usage of shared works by many people. The only use that people often want to prevent when they add the non-commercial restriction is when the derivative work is an advertisement, as I've described above. When someone shares there Flickr pictures, they don't want to stop me from using their pictures just because I have Google ads on my blog, but that's what they end up doing. (Okay, I don't know what the non-commercial clause says exactly, but that's another problem. From the wording on the "Human-readable license summary, I think it would be prohibited.) When you combine the existance of the non-commercial clause with many people's latent distrust of corporations, you end up with a lot of people who limit the usefulness of works that they really want to share with people. The whole point of Creative Commons is to make it easy to share, so the murkiness and ill effects of the non-commercial clause hurt the goals of the licenses. If I want to ship people copies of Wired's Creative Commons CD but charge for shipping and the media itself, I can't do that, because some of the tracks are licensed with a non-commerical clause. Or can I? Do I have to provide receipts for the media and shipping to prove that I didn't make money off of it?

The success of copyleft licenses in the software arena is based heavily on the simplicity of the main license: the GPL. All you have to do is share alike, and you can use the code however you want. The only confusion that crops up is how much you have to share (do I have to pipe in commands from my closed source binary?), not whether or not one can make derivative works at all. If you're aiming for freedom, restricting usage is a bad idea, especially when it's done in such a way that many people choose to restrict usage without being aware of the consequences.

See also: Towards a Standard of Freedom: Creative Commons and the Free Software Movement

No problemo, there is a "no commercial use" type of Creative Commons licence available.

To quote them:"Offering your work under a Creative Commons license does not mean giving up your copyright. It means offering some of your rights to any taker, and only on certain conditions."

And specifically, you can choose as part of your licencing conditions: "Noncommercial. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work and derivative works based upon it but for noncommercial purposes only.

Examples: Gus publishes his photograph with a Noncommercial license. Camille incorporates a piece of Gus's image into a collage poster. Camille is not allowed to sell her collage poster without Gus's permission."

Linky

However, the trouble is that some commercial entity will inevitably pick up the artist's work and use it for making money, exploiting the fact that the work is not protected by copyright. Surely an artist who donates his work to the public without any expectation of compensation does not intend for someone else to profit off of his work.

This is why there are non-commercial licenses such as this one.

As I remember it, creative commons does not involve giving up copyright, but simply telling others you are exempting certain activities from litigation, such as noncommercial sharing, remixing, etc. http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/

>DO NOT PURCHASE SONGS BACKED BY THE RIAA

I could not agree with this more! These people are driven by money. Their motive is money. They want more money. Hit them where it counts. It is time for a major boycott. And why not? There are thousands and thousands of unsigned and even signed musicians on small labels and its all out there for you to listen to. Do something novel today and find a non-RIAA musician to listen to. Try 15megsoffame for starters. Listen to music in the public domain music. Check out artists making music under the creative commons. In fact, don't even STEAL RIAA music. Just drop it and them.

Take that non-RIAA music that you find and like and burn it to a CD. Give it to a friend. Tell your friend why they should think about boycotting the RIAA.

This is the only way that the RIAA will ever think about their own problems and their overpricing. It's the ONLY way because it hits them in the pocketbook.

In order to get full resolution sound and video, under the media companies' real wet dream of a future, you'd basically need to replace everything from your computer to your home theater amplifier, with closed boxes that support DRM. I doubt people will do this though, instead they'll just have one DRM-enabled box (the computer) and watch whatever degraded analog output it produces, instead of the high-quality but impaired digital ones.

This may be true but then if they do they'll loose market share to those who don't require drm. Creative Commons and others like dmusic who offer open source and/or less restrictive licensing are gaining ground in the entertainment industry.

Yes, it is nice to see someone taking a shot at a standard supported by the community to rate (open source) software. From what I took in from the article and related documents, I could not see any concrete indication on how the data will be collected and owned except for inside an example evaluation for Mambo. The license for the example is the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License. As it can be plainly seen, one of the sponsors is SpikeSource who has a vested interest in selling "certified" open-source software stacks and update services.

The questions that this project brings up, as well as potentially raise, are:

• Who will be evaluating the software?
• Who will own the evaluation data and what will its license be? (I'm thinking of reasoning behind freedb)
• What if I want to sell my own software stack, and I'd like to give it a composite rating using contributed rating data? Am I out of luck because the data is owned by the openbrr partners?
• Sure the rating matrix is open and standard, but what will be the mechanism in trust in the ratings? (How will we be able to determine the bias in the ratings? For example, what if JBoss contributed a rating for Apache Geronimo? Or more subtly, how would we trust a consulting company that is a "business partner" with MySQL to do a review on another database such as PostgreSQL?
• Perhaps codeZoo being a partner in this effort is an indication that it could become the primary storage location for the rating data? Whoever is going to be the primary distributor for this information will be making a bid to eclipse all the other open-source software portals such as freshmeat.

My take is I won't be interested in participating in a community project where participant contributions are not freely redistributable.

There are other websites that like Magnatune allows free or low cost music downloads. Some of these are:

• Creative Commons
• DMusic
• Opsound
• Internet Archives
• Prelinger Archives'
• Common Content

Also there's Berklee Shares where you can find free music lessons.

I'm brewing a modified version of the Vores brew for the intern party at the end of the summer. Check out our blog post here.

Creative Commons liscenses allows "open sourcing" just about any IP you want: music, visual arts, writing... it's just a license that you have to print the license and the recipie if you want to distribute the beer.

Well, if you'd RTFA

http://www.voresoel.dk/main.php?id=70

It has a Creative Commons License, so if you change it you have to publish your modyfied version as well