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September Newsletter: Success stories, challenging AT&T, and Blogworld 2011

Submitted by New Media Rights on Thu, 09/08/2011 - 09:40

Our September newsletter brings news of success stories fighting DMCAi abuse, a grant awarded by the California Consumer Protection Foundation, and our continuing efforts to stop the AT&T-Tmobile merger. 

You can also catch us in person at Media Law in the Digital Age in October, a conference coproduced by Harvard Berkman Center's Digital Media Law Project and the Center for Sustainable Journalism at Kennesaw State University, as well as Blogworld 2011 in LA in November.

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Youtube offers of one out of six Creative Commons licenses, sends mixed messages

Submitted by New Media Rights on Mon, 06/06/2011 - 15:51

New Media Rights offers legal help to creators on the use of Creative Commons licenses. We were interested to see how Youtube has recently begun to incorporate this progressive licensing structure into their video options. Although we welcome Creative Commons license inclusion into Youtube's service, the way that Youtube has rolled out its CCi license options raises serious questions about the future of the online video ecosystem and how "open" that ecosystem will be.

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Open Attribute, a simple way to attribute Creative Commons licensed works on the web

art neill's picture
Submitted by art neill on Mon, 02/07/2011 - 15:03

Open Attribute - Creative Commons

A big shoutout from New Media Rights to the entire team that has put together OpenAttribute. 

OpenAttribute simplifies the process of attributing an openly licensed piece of content, by providing a quick link where you can get an HTML or plain text attribution. Paste this code or plain text whereever you are reusing the Creative Commons licensed work, and you can have a properly formatted attribution.

I encourage you to go install this right away and start improving your attributions today!

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Data portability policies to ensure and open and competitive internet - an idea whose time has come?

art neill's picture
Submitted by art neill on Wed, 09/22/2010 - 15:19

Data Portability Icon - CC-BY 2.0

I recently shared the concept of developing data portability policies, standards, and best practices as a potential project for New Media Rights' Drumbeat San Diego event, and as project that could fit within Mozilla's larger Drumbeat initiative fostering projects that celebrate and ensure and open web.

This project begins with the concept that user choice, and user control over their experience, should remain a distinguishing feature of the open internet.

To maintain a healthy competition amongst online services heavily reliant on user-submitted data, it will become increasingly important to make sure user data is easily portable. This will help ensure that popular services make changes according to the interests of their users, and that new services can compete on the basis of their merits and usability, without artificial barriers to competition. Keeping data in the hands of users, rather than allowing confusing legal and technological techniques to lock upconsumer data, will help ensure an open and competitive internet.

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Open College Textbook Act (S. 1714) promises seed money for the open education cause

Submitted by Meghan Bohn on Fri, 10/02/2009 - 16:29

The Open College Textbook Act proposes "to authorize grants for the creation, update, or adaption of open textbooks."

Specifically, it would authorize the Secretary of Education to award 1-year grants on a competitive basis to higher education institutions, professors, non-profit, or for profit-organizations that produce textbooks. The textbooks would be open licensed and available to be downloaded, redistributed, changed, revised, or altered by any member of the public.

Learn more here and then please sign our petition supporting the Open College Textbook Act.

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Youtube puts ads on videos without permission

art neill's picture
Submitted by art neill on Fri, 07/31/2009 - 15:57

Youtube's filtering technology may be causing advertisements to appear on content without permission.  Besides the possible contract violations, the ads create catch 22's when uploading openly licensed (ie. Creative Commonsi) content to Youtube.   Youtube could have a significant effect on the future openly licensed video content.  This is appears to be a slap in the face to open content and step in the wrong direction.

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Nine Inch Nails chooses Creative Commons, but what does that really mean?

art neill's picture
Submitted by art neill on Mon, 03/31/2008 - 09:41

Sure, NIN has licensed their new album using Creative Commons , but what does it mean for grassroots creators who want to share, remix, or sample it? What are the practical impacts of NIN choosing Creative Commons on day to day use of their work? There's bound to be more artists adopting CCi licenses, so let's see what's acceptable and what's not.

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UCAN Oil Hog 2008

Submitted by New Media Rights on Thu, 03/06/2008 - 15:00
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CC+: Creative Commons & Commerce

Submitted by New Media Rights on Wed, 03/05/2008 - 00:58

This video discusses how Creative Commonsi licenses provide a default set of rights to all users, yet also allows creators to make separate agreements and contracts.

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How the law strangles creativity, an introduction to Creative Commons by Lawrence Lessig

Submitted by New Media Rights on Mon, 03/03/2008 - 21:33

Lawrence Lessig discusses remix culture and how the law strangles creativity.

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