The ABS conducts the annual Australian census, and is the holder of all official Australian statistical data. It’s been providing all its resources for free for a number of years, but under a limited re-use licence. The decision to go one step further and allow complete reuse of its material – even for commercial purposes – heralds a great opportunity for the Australian community, researchers and business, and hopefully will lead to a great leap in the use of and innovation based on this rich resource.

From the Abs website.

Creative Commons provides a spectrum of licensing for the use of intellectual property between full copyright and public domain – in essence “some rights reserved”. The Abs is poised to introduce Creative Commons licensing for the majority of its web content.

The relevant Creative Commons logo (which will link to the Attribution 2.5 Australia licence) will be included at the bottom of every page on the Abs website.

Mike Linksvayer, Urgent: Your input needed for “NonCommercial” questionnaire, Creative Commons Corp., December 2nd, 2008.

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.

Your input is greatly appreciated. CC CEO Joi Ito explains:

“The study has direct relevance to Creative Commons’ mission of providing free, flexible copyright licenses that are easy to understand and simple to use,” said Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito. “The NC term is a popular option for creators choosing a Creative Commons license, and that tells us the term meets a need. However, as exponentially increasing numbers of works are made available under CC licenses, we want to provide additional information for creators about the contexts in which the NC term may further or impede their intentions with respect to the works they choose to share, and we want to make sure that users clearly understand those intentions. We expect the study findings will help us do a better job of explaining the licenses and to improve them, where possible. We also hope the findings, which will be made publicly available, will contribute to better understanding of some of the complexities of digital distribution of content.”

You can also help by sending your friends and colleagues to the questionnaire.

CC founding board member and MIT computer science professor Hal Abelson sends this message:

Dear Staff and Board,

I’m writing with some great news:

Today, the technical specification RDFa in XHTML Syntax and Processing was formally accepted as a Web Consortium Technical Recommendation by W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee.

Those the words might not mean much to any but the geekiest of us — but this is a big deal.

Creative Commons was a early adopter of Semantic Web standards. And yet, while the Semantic Web provided RDF as a standard for expressing metadata, it did not provide a standard for how that metadata should be integrated into ordinary Web pages.

The original concept of the Semantic Web did not encompass the notion that ordinary Web pages would be augmented with machine-readable metadata. Even today, that notion remains controversial. One considerable faction still holds that HTML should be purely a formatting language with no provision for any semantic information at all. Other factions, like microformats community, advocate metadata standards that do not integrate well into RDF and general Semantic Web applications.

CC licensing was the first use of the Web to envision Web publishers augmenting their pages with small amounts of machine-readable markup: the CC licensing attributes. It was our desire achieve this consistently with the Semantic Web that led to our involvement with the Web standards community; and the need to advocate for such a standard was why CC joined the Web Consortium in the first place.

RDFa is the standard that has emerged from this effort. RDFa is a general mechanism for expressing machine-readable attributes on Web pages in a way that is integrates with HTML. The most obvious example for us is the Creative Commons Rights Expression language (ccREL) — a machine-readable way to express CC licensing.

W3C’s adoption today of the RDFa recommendation solidifies the technical underpinning of ccREL and opens the door to the development and widespread support for CC-compliant tools on the Web.

There are many people who deserve credit for RDFa. Mike Linksvayer and Nathan Yergler certainly get kudos for their consistent support and development of the CC infrastructure to emphasize RDFa and ccREL.

But the lion’s share of the credit goes to Ben Adida, CC’s W3C representative, who led this effort creatively and tirelessly. Ben’s leadership in the technical design of RDFa and the negotiations and refinements to bring RDFa all the way through the complex Web standards process has been an effort of more than five years.

This work on RDFa not only has major benefit to CC, but it’s a significant example CC providing technical leadership in Web community and a contribution that will have implications far beyond CC’s own applications.

Ben deserves our sincerest thanks and congratulations.

== Hal

(Also check out Hal’s starring role in the new Jesse Dylan video about Creative Commons, A Shared Culture.)

Congratulations and thanks to Ben and everyone else who has worked so hard on this effort for so many years.

If you’re a web developer, check out RDFa and ccREL. A great place to start is Ben’s Introduction to ccREL talk from our first CC technology summit held in June (slides and video available at the link; also check out the CFP for our upcoming December tech summit at MIT). Ben also recommends a new post from the founder of Drupal on Drupal, the semantic web and search.

Otherwise (and even if you are a web developer), the best way to support this work is by supporting Creative Commons. Our annual fundraising campaign just kicked off yesterday, so now is an excellent time to give.

Thanks!

Mike Linksvayer, RDFa now a W3C recommendation; message from Hal Abelson, October 16th, 2008

The objective is finding the meaning of “commercial” and “non commercial”, not based on a legal interpretation for each country, but on a shared definition between the involved entities (authors, artists, organizations, societies ecc.). The first step is an online survey, followed by live focus group in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York.

The premises are good, not the adopted method.

Creative Commons is conducting a research study that we expect will be of great interest across a wide range of communities. The study will explore the interpretations of “noncommercial use” that content creators, curators and users are working with today.

We are very interested in your perspective. Would you be willing to participate in a focus group intended to collect background information on your understanding of “noncommercial use”? We seek your experience and insights, not an endorsement of any particular approach to the research, or of Creative Commons itself.

In our opinion the method is in full contrast with the sharing and cooperation principles that should be at the basis of the project and of the community whose manifesto is founded on free culture and remixing.

[Please help to finish the translation in a comment or writing an e-mail]

Gli online focus group privati si svolgeranno da mercoledì 6 agosto a venerdì 8 agosto 2008, per circa 30-45 minuti al giorno. L’interesse della comunità a partecipare sembra essere elevato, ma, nonostante ciò, non sembra esserci la volontà di un’apertura da parte della corporation statunitense, se non in una seconda fase non ancora definita. Ci piacerebbe conoscerne le motivazioni.

Vi invitiamo a esprimere il vostro dissenso con un commento a questo articolo e una e-mail a Creative Commons.

Fortunatamente Davide D’Atri di BeatPick ha aperto uno spiraglio, invitando chiunque a postare le proprie opinioni sulla lista di discussione di Creative Commons Italia o audio-conferenze live attraverso l’account skype di BeatPick (user id: beatpick). Davide si farà portavoce delle proposte della comunità.

Una specifica pagina sul wiki di Frontiere Digitali è disponibile per contribuire a una definizione partecipata: è nata tempo fa per contribuire al progetto pilota sulle licenze con alcuni diritti riservati, nato dalla collaborazione di Liberius e Siae. Ci auguriamo che il wiki diventi lo strumento di collaborazione e condivisione a livello italiano per questi due progetti. Vi invitiamo a promuoverlo come strumento di sviluppo.

Bibliography

• Davide d’Atri e altri, Ricerca Creative Commons su interpretazioni “Non commerciale”, cc-it – Discussione delle licenze Creative Commons, 18 luglio 2008 e successivi.

Can you give our readers a bit of background about yourself and your music?

I’ve been writing, performing and recording songs for a while, yet its only in the last five or so years that I have settled down enough to get some kind of career going with what I do. I play live, although mostly based in Europe and that is where I’m based - I’m originally from Australia.

What are your influences?

Any song that lets me escape, songs from the 60’s, 70’s, 80’s of all types and also contemporary artists like Beck. I like songs that I can listen to again and again yet still stay fresh. Learning about copyright and Creative Commons has given me a new view on my influences though.

What licenses do you use and why?

I licensed the songs from the album “Shifting Sands Of A Blue Car” under a Creative Commons Attribution license. When I look at the amount of self published art that is used commercially compared to published content and then look at how much quality self published content is available online, less restrictions for my music makes more sense for me. Also, a lot of home creators that use a song might want to use the content in conjunction with a services like youtube or myspace, and who can say if these services are a commercial or non-commercial from the user of the contents point of view.

How do you distribute your works?

I’ve written a lot of songs, yet only produced one album. People find out about my tunes through services like Jamendo , Myspace , last.fm , facebook , youtube, and when content gets remixed using a CC license. I see the recording as a promotional tool for a live show. When I play tunes at festivals I make an effort hand out postcards with my info. When I perform a show at a bar or cafe I send posters and postcards prior to the event.

Have you seen any interesting examples of reuse as a result of using CC licenses?

The uncultured project used the song “how far” in many of its clips. Shawn from the uncultured project went looking for free content to use with his clips on Jamendo and found my songs. Shawn’s film project deals with issues that relate to poverty in Bangladesh. The clip at this link has had almost 500,000 plays.

Recently I started to license my live performances under a CC BY license. In Europe although venues are already paying a blanket license for the use of content, often the venue has to pay an extra fee for the use of live music. As a result many bars and cafes don’t have live music. My hope is that putting a Creative Commons license on the live performance of my songs for this use shall create more opportunity for a promoted live event. A lot of artists play shows in spaces that don’t have an agreement with a rights organizations for live music, yet these shows are mostly not promoted beyond the artists network of friends.

As an artist, how important is CC to you?

Prior to the 90’s it seemed necessary to have a recording and publishing industry, yet with the internet and changes in recording technology, the old system looks to be less and less relevant to today’s artist. I grew up in a system where i watched TV, people grow up in a world today where we have the tools to make the media. I see the Creative Commons licenses as a good way for people to get together and create.

Recently one of your songs, “Memories Child” got picked up to be played in the feature film “The X-Files: I Want to Believe“, how did this happen? How do you feel about it?

The director of the film heard the track and wanted to use it. Beatpick created a synchronization license in conjunction with Fox Films for the use of the song.

The use of the song is great news for me, its going to be a bit of a jolt to the system when the film is released though. My hope is that I’ll get more live work and the opportunity to promote and record a fresh production album. Artists that get known for what they create have people employed pushing buttons and pulling the strings, I do what I can with the resources i have, and for now I’m happy moving along on this path.

How does the Beatpick service work?

Beatpick doesn’t own any part of the artists copyright - the artist gives Beatpick the right to synchronize rights for use of the artists song. When the artist signs with Beatpick the artist also gives Beatpick the right to use their songs without having to pay the rights organizations. The contract that the artist agrees to with Beatpick is not permanent, and Beatpick license nothing exclusively. Beatpick license their artists songs using BY-NC-SA. Any proceeds Beatpick make from licensing a song are split with the artist/creator.

Will you collect any royalties as a result of the use of your song in the film?

As the song shall be performed in so many places I made the decision to sign with ASCAP as an artist/publisher and collect for the use. The difference between ASCAP and APRA (Australian equivalent) is that ASCAP artists can license using a Creative Commons license. Like APRA, ASCAP issue blanket licenses for use of their members songs to media, however members with ASCAP are able to license what they create as they choose and also pick up when a performance shows up in the system.

From the ASCAP bill of rights:

“We have the right to choose when and where our creative works may be used for free.”

“We have the right to license our works and control the ways in which they are used.”

What are your plans for the future? Is there anything else you’d like our readers to know?

I’m interested to have songs remixed via CC mixter in conjunction with a production recording. I’ve also started to collect images from travels that I project with my live show. I’m also interested in traveling with my tunes through transforming and developing countries.

Finding out about Creative Commons has been a stepping stone to understanding more clearly how the business of music works. Since i found out about Creative Commons I’ve started to put ideas I have that involve the use of Creative Commons licenses on the site iarts.