tag archive: creative commons

This is the cover of the October 1948 issue of Amazing Stories, which some neglector of intellectual property has prematurely let fall into the public domain. Project Gutenberg has a bunch of amazing artwork and history like this that you might find with a search of [science fiction covers].

I love the teaser for the featured story, The Brain: “A Giant Calculating Machine Decides To Rule The world!” A calculating machine! And it has decided to rule the world!

I was happy to share my Hawaii vacation pictures under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, but it occurred to me that I may not have the legal right to do so for several of them.

Three were taken by my wife, but I’m pretty sure she’ll go along with me on the licensing choice.

Two of the pictures I placed online were of my wife and me together, and these were taken by random bystanders. Since I neglected to bring copyright assignment forms to be filled out and signed in triplicate, I think that means the copyright belongs to those unknown — and by now almost thoroughly unknowable — people.

Since they agreed to take the pictures, it seems safe to suppose that they consented for them to be captured to …

In a post about the relicensing option from the GNU Free Documentation License to Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, Richard Stallman writes:

If a wiki site exercises the relicensing option, that entails trusting Creative Commons rather than the Free Software Foundation regarding its future license changes. In theory one might consider this a matter of concern, but I think we can be confident that Creative Commons will follow its stated mission in the maintenance of its licenses. Millions of users trust Creative Commons for this, and I think we can do likewise.

Sounds like a strong endorsement from someone with demanding standards.

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And seems like an opportunity to shill for donations to Creative Commons. They are running their annual fundraiser right now, and for $50 ($25 for students) you can become a member of the CC Network, which allows you to …

Ice House ruins in Tyler, Texas
photo by Terry Shuck (crowt59)
Creative Commons Attribution 2.0

I can’t remember when or how I first found Terry Shuck’s work on Flickr, but I immediately became a fan of his photography. It appears that he uses HDR techniques quite a bit, although I can’t tell what all magic he summons with different lens and filters and whatnot.

I liked that he often shared his images under Creative Commons licenses, including the liberal Attribution license which allows for commercial reuse. It was for this reason as much as anything that I subscribed to his photostream. It’s good to find kindred free culture spirits. But then he increasingly released …

Navin R. Johnson: The new phone book’s here! The new phone book’s here!

Harry Hartounian: Boy, I wish I could get that excited about nothing.

Navin R. Johnson: Nothing? Are you kidding? Page 73 – Johnson, Navin R.! I’m somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity – your name in print – that makes people. I’m in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.

–The Jerk (of course!)

That’s what I felt like after receiving a copy of the 2008/2009 Rapid City/Gillete phone book in the mail recently. Look!