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Hey Kids!This was posted at http://writelarge.com/node/212 first.

I use Creative Commons because I believe that it's better to share my creative works with people who can appreciate it than it is to die with a huge stack of unpublished works.

Creative Commons is not permission for you to make money off my work without compensating me. Creative Commons is not the same thing as dedicating your works to the Public Domain. Creative Commons is a way to let other artists know that they are welcome to see, enjoy, be a fan of, redistribute, and build on your work.

Raster and I played some good cop/bad cop on the Internet the other day regarding this subject. Here's a shout-out to the Creative Commons discussion going on here.

A side issue not being discussed here is the general emergence of the feeling that "the Long Tail" is bullshit. My opinion is that if you feel that the Long Tail is bullshit, I say you and I are probably talking about a different Long Tail.

Also, if you want to learn more about Creative Commons, I highly recommend this film.

Hey Kids!This was posted at http://writelarge.com/node/210 first.

It's strange. I can never predict which photos at Flickr are going to be popular.

Big shout-out and thank you to the folks at SeriousEats who were kind enough to call Gaia "Adorable."

I'll pass on the discussion over whether this is a correct application of the creative commons license in favor of simply basking in my daughter's new found internet fame.

Hey Kids!This was posted at http://writelarge.com/dumb_big_man first.

It may be one of my proudest moments.

A few months ago, you guys may recall, I posted a photobooth snapshot of myself holding a note I'd written on a postie that I couldn't read. This photo was from the period where I was releasing photos on a creative commons Share Alike license.
So it turns out this photo was featured on an otherwise unremarkable productivity blog called Dumb Little Man , on an otherwise unremarkable productivity article called "12 Ways To Become an Utter Failure at Work."
Words cannot express how much joy this brings me.
Although Dumb Little Man doesn't release their content under a 'share alike' license, share alike only requires you re-license under a "similar" licence.
We'll call CC-BY-ND good enough, I guess. I would prefer that they'd use my work under a little less restrictive licence, but whatever. I'm just flattered that they liked my photo enough to use it.

Hey Kids!This was posted at http://writelarge.com/Nightswimming first.

In honor of International Pixel-stained Techno-peasant Day I'm releasing this new short-story on this here blog.

This is a short story originally written for Matthew Wayne Selznick's sidelined Wordhouse Anthology project. The idea was to pick a song you loved and write a story that captured some of the images and feelings from the song. I wrote "Nightswimming" based on the R.E.M. song.

The story is hosted at Scribd.

It's released under the usual terms.

Hey Kids!This was posted at http://writelarge.com/Free_Tor_books_program first.

Today's free TOR book is "Farthing." Go, click on that link and sign up and get a copy right now. You won't regret it. It's a great book.
I read it about 10 months ago at the recommendation of Boing Boing.
It's an alternative history story wherein peaceful terms between Hitler and Great Brittan were agreed-- but it's way sexier than that. It was one of those books where I ended up staying up to 3 a.m. reading so I could finish the night before I had to return it to the library. It's that good.

Anyway, TOR's free books thing is really cool. It's aways nice to get a copy of a free, DRM free book to have a look at and play with, however, Patrick Nielson Hayden pulled back hard on the emergency lever of the speculation train that Tor might be releasing it's whole catalog as such.

... the munificence of this offer (Slashdotted twice on its first weekend), combined with our vagueness in describing the actual site for which the offer is merely a build-up, has caused a lot of people to jump to the conclusion that the new site will be all about selling and/or giving away digital books. This isn’t the case... "

Frankly, this stinks of the kind of PR Blunder the likes of Harley Davidson's Secret 100th anniversary headliner.

Oh, ok. Maybe not that bad. But still bad. Look, Tor, you can't put the Genie back in the bottle. You've given us a taste of free, awesome, award winning books. Don't stop. Keep it going. Make it bigger. Offer your free, awesome award winning books under more and better terms. Add a creative-commons blessing. Let your fans enjoy your work. There is evidence that authors can make careers out of giving away free books. I believe publishers can to.

Hey Kids!This was posted at http://writelarge.com/Nine_Inch_So_What first.

So, Nine Inch Nails is getting all the love these days. Nine Inch Nails offers it's latest album, Ghosts I-IV, under a Creative Commons license. The media reported, servers crashed, lavish "collector" copies of the album were scooped up by people with far too much disposable cash. NIN's site claims that the download is 36 tracks, but I only got 9. BoingBoing's; coverage suggests that all 36 tracks are available as remixes, and maybe they are, but not by clicking on "downloads" at NIN's site.

This is being heralded as a victory for "free music;" the mainstream media is glomming on to the idea that you can make a profit from giving your content away. JoCo would be turning over in his grave, only he's not dead. And Trent's not giving his content away. If you want to hear Ghosts II-IV, you've got to buy them. Or download them from someone else. But given the morose instrumental nature of Ghosts I (one BoingBoing commenter called it 'edgy elevator music'), why bother?

There are basically two things wrong with the Ghosts I-IV story. First, The nine tracks I've downloaded are only marginally ok at best, and if NIN were really embrasing the copyleft, why not make the entirety of the NIN catalog available? I could get into a free copy of Pretty Hate Machine. It's not like I didn't buy it once already anyway.
And secondly, by releasing Ghosts I-IV as CC-redistributable music, but not making himself the distributor (although there is evidence that NIN seeded the torrent themselves), people are going to be confused about the legality of grabbing a copy of the 36-track complete work off the torrents.

I'm happy for the increase in CC-awareness amongst Rock and Roll superstars, and, even though I've outgrown Nine Inch Nails, I want this venture to be successful for them.

Hey Kids!This was posted at http://writelarge.com/jott_license first.

Dear Mr. Pete, et. all.
Please consider this post my sincere blessing and approval of any and all remixes of any and all of my posts to Jott, including but not limited to the profane tirade that was posted to Jott on Dec. 15, 2007.

Someone send me the MP3 and I'll host it right here.

And so there's no question about the license, I hereby designate any and all of my Jott recordings, including those I may make in the future, under a Creative Commons Sampling+ license.



My recordings on Jott are licensed under a
Creative Commons Sampling Plus 1.0 License.
This license only applies to my Jott Recordings and should not be applied to any other content appearing on Writelarge.com without my express consent. It does not supersede or change the license terms offered at Writelarge.com.

Edit:
Item! Thanks to Mr. Raster, we've uploaded the file. Remix away!
It would be polite to mark this with a NSFW tag.

The No Derivative Works condition to the Creative Commons stinks. It lets liscensors get the "feel-good" from the creative commons without really adding to the Creative Commons idea-pool.
If you're going to enact the No Derivatives Clause, then I demand you make derivatives available to me. I don't like to read html formated fiction. I like to make a plain text file, then format it in a certain way that I like.  (if you're curious, it's a two column horizontal format with tight leading.)

Now, there's nothing stopping me from doing that for my own personal use with most Creative Commons works anyway, but technically, reformatting, purposing, or format-shifting is a derivation and is banned by th "No Derivative Works" condition. Frankly, the only Creative Commons restrictions that makes sense to me is share-alike condition. The first because it fosters adaptation of the creative commons philosophy.   The rest of the conditions seem to merely muddy the waters and allow otherwise awesome works to be released in less-than-their-full-creative-commons glory.   I am guilty of using the "no commercial" condition, but I don't think that the "no commercial" condition is in the spirit of my idea of the Creative Commons ideal.

Look, if I'm going to go through the hassle of creative a format-shifted work, I'd like to be allowed to redistribute it, at a minimum of back to the author.

I endorse (and practice)  the Creative Commons movement, but too many licensors seem reluctant to give their intellectual property wings. Let it fly, my creative brothers and sisters, and you will be amazed at what comes back to you.

I tried to find some music for my new podcast today using Owl Multimedia. Am I doing it wrong?

Owl is supposed to help you find music based on the soundpatterns. You upload  music you like and then it will recommend something based on that upload. I was especially interested in it because it's got a creative commons filter, so I can find just music that I can use for remixing and as background tracks and music beds for my podcast.
But it doesn't work.

I put in Men Without Hats "On Tuesday." It suggested I play "down to the music" by MadTiger.
I put in "Aerosmith, "last child" it suggested ""down to the music" by MadTiger.
I put in Melora Craeger's "Girl Lunar Explorer" and it suggested "down to the music" by MadTiger.
I put in "The Benefits of Language" by "Honest Bob and the Factory to Dealer Incentives" and it suggested "down to the music" by MadTiger.
I put in AFI "Death of Seasons" and it broke.
Now It won't play anything I upload.

Needless to say,  the service failed to wow me, and coupled with it's assy, homebrew upload box, I can't imagine I'm going to be singing the praises of Owl anytime soon.

Here's how they can fix it, though.
1. Fix the assy homebrew  upload box. Use the one that my browser comes with, ok? You don't need to reinvent the fucking finder every time you craft a new application.
2. Don't break. Give me a meaingful error message when you do. "Clip Unavailable" doesn't tell me anything beyond, "I'm broke."
3. Actually find some music that kind of sounds like the music I've uploaded.
4. Dump the commercial stuff. If I want to find out what commercial bands I might like, I'll surf iTunes, or LastFm. They do it better. Or I'll ask my friends. I tend to know whether they're full of shit or taking bribes.

If you're listening Owl, I want to like you, but you don't seem particularly ready for prime time. Especially your assy upload box.