Rational Points on a Napkin

Creative Commons 5th Birthday in San Francisco

Last night, I went to Creative Commons' 5th birthday party in San Francisco. Once the event was announced, I jumped right on to the RSVP list. It had been a year since I attended my first CC event and had grown to love this free culture crowd.

Upon entering the Terra Art Gallery, the light wood floors, white walls dotted with unique canvasses, and side lighting created a classy yet welcoming atmosphere. Tony and I fell into a guessing game of remixed songs by DJ Spooky (Glass Onion, anyone?) and watched as old footage of a Brazilian (?) dancer ebbed and flowed with the music.

Lessig spoke about where Creative Commons has been over the last year. It is becoming less of a marginal entity for digital copyright, and moving into the realm of the mainstream. Lessig announced that 5 groups (one including the CC Board committing as the 5th organization dropped out at the last minute) have committed to fund Creative Commons $500K per year for the next five years. As Lessig's rhythmic speech and slide show ended, leaving me in a semi-euphoric state, he announced the star performer for the night.

Gilberto Gil and his son, Ben Gil, came on stage. Now, I guess I really wasn't paying attention to the CC announcement, because I had missed that this would be happening. We crowded towards the stage, eventually to sit on the floor as if we were all circling a camp fire listening to an incredible folk storyteller. And really, that's what it was like. Dressed up in a large urbanish art gallery, we sat on the floor, staring wide-eyed and agape, at one of the century's most influential culturists.

In short, it was a beautiful night - celebrating free culture over the last five years.

If you want to read more about the night, Lessig has posted key points of his speech on blog.

Finally, this post is under a Creative Commons Attiribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License due to the Share-Alike license of the wonderful photo above.

The Wikimedia Foundation Announces Compatibility with Creative Commons licenses

After IOC's concert last night, I headed down 3rd St in San Francisco to a party hosted by the Wikipedia and Creative Commons crowd.  Talking to various people in the crowd, I was impressed by all the work that each individual has done for the Free Culture Movement.  To boot, there were some talented karaoke singers and back-up dancers there.

At the event, Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, announced that Wikipedia would be making their content, currently licensed under the GFDL, compatible with the CC-BY-SA license.  You can find the video of it on jamendo's blog.

There is also a discussion of what this means happening on Lessig's blog.

A Clip From the IOC Concert

Durufle's Ubi Caritas from my choir's concert yesterday. Great piece for altos.

The text and translation are below.

Ubi caritas et amor
Deus ibi est.
Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor.
Exsultemus et in ipso jucundemur.
Timeamus et amemus Deum vivum.
Et ex corde diligamus nos sincero.
Ubi caritas et amor
Deus ibi est.
Amen.

Where there is charity and love,
God is there.
The love of Christ has gathered us together.
Let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Let us revere and love the living God.
And from a sincere heart let us love one another.
Where there is charity and love,
God is there.
Amen.

Palabras at CC Salon

I finally made it back to post about another presenter at this month's Creative Common Salon. *Phew*

Sharon Daniel, from UC Santa Cruz, spoke on her project, Palabras, a participatory video and media project for communities that are not connected to technology. Instead of individuals being bloggers or podcasters and representing a network, communities would be the collective voice for their local region. Currently, they have projects set up in several Buenos Aires shantytowns, San Francisco, and Darfur.

They introduce these communities to Palabras with simple tools -- an altered single-use digital video camera and a simple web application similar to that they use in gaming and chat -- and training in those tools. Videos are recorded and put into a database; users can tag their works, creating their own folksonomies. Currently, there are 5,000 clips. Communties can reference these videos through the tags, begin to make connections between various stories, and create a shared language. A bio of Sharon describes the project as "designed to facilitate Collective self-representation by employing folksonomies (folk + taxonomy) to generate sequences of original video clips based on the semantic associations given to clips by their authors."

I look forward to seeing where Palabras goes and if it can become a valuable space for empowering the voices of collectives and citizen journalists in impoverished areas.

Strayform at San Francisco CC Salon

So I finally made it out across the Bay to another Creative Commons Salon. I haven't been for several months and so it was great to get back to Shine, see familiar faces, and learn what people are doing with copyright in our new digital world. I'm going to highlight a few of the speakers in the next couple of posts.

It seems everywhere I'm turning these days, someone is talking about distributing the investment or sale of information works...Radiohead's newest album being a well-known example. I was introduced to another by Brandt Cannici last night. Strayform is a site that operates both as a means of funding artists, scientists, authors, or other producers of digital goods in a distributive way. An artist can work without restrictive contracts, and the viewers of the site can use and share that content for free.

By cutting out the middle man, Strayform also reduces the cost of music, art, and word production and distribution by 90%, reducing the needed investment cost and increasing profits to artists. Strayform takes care of the life cycle of producing a piece of art. Let's take a CD as an example.

The Investment

Currently, large media companies are needed to fund the life cycle of a CD, from production to distribution and advertising. With Strayform, a musician can post a project on Strayform, setting a fundraising goal if he would like. Anyone can then contribute as much as she would like to that project. Strayform gets a percentage of the final transaction for a successful project to run their operations. If a project doesn't meet the needed funding, Strayform eats the cost.

The Production

Strayform allows the artist to upload images or tracks as he makes his project. Contributors can follow the making of that project over time, becoming involved not just in the consumption of the final product, but also in the creation of the art.

The Marketing and Distribution

The finished project is licensed on Strayform under a Creative Commons license. Currently the only license available on this site is a non-commercial, non-derivate CC license. However, as CC licenses are non-exclusive, the artist will be able to go elsewhere and license his work differently. The artist will also keep all commercial rights to the work.

Commercial Uses

Strayform currently presents the means to move the works to YouTube or iTunes where the works can be monetized. The artist also has the ability to set their own rules for people wishing to use the work for commercial purposes. The artist can specify how much a person must pay if, for example, his piece were to be used in soundtrack for a film with a $10 million budget.

What's Next?

Strayform launched in August. Currently there are over 100 artists, and 300 pieces of content on the site. In a future version of Strayform, there will also be ticketing and sales options. The artist will be in charge of their work here as well. Based on sales of tickets, the venues will contact the artist. You can find more about Strayform and what future updates will bring on their site.

I'm excited to see how this service progresses and if it is an answer...with the community taking care of their artists and the artists giving back to their communities.