Support Creative Commons October 6, 2007
Creative Commons (CC) is holding their 2007 fundraiser now through Dec 31st and they need your help. Creative Commons licenses enable artists (an artist is you!) to grant some or all of their rights to the public while retaining others as opposed to an “all rights reserved” copyright. For example you can grant your fans the right to download your works for non-commercial uses as long as they give you credit, or not, it’s up to you. Creative Commons was officially launched in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig (wiki). Today there are many millions of works licensed under Creative Commons and that number is growing fast.
There’s a lot more to the Creative Commons web site than just Licenses though. CCmixter “is a community music site featuring remixes licensed under Creative Commons, where you can listen to, sample, mash-up, or interact with music in whatever way you want.” There are tens of thousands of samples and tracks from artists and recording labels like the freesound project, Magnatune, Fort Minor and more. All available for download legally, for free.
There are many more projects and tools on their Projects page and while you are there, think about supporting Creative Commons with a donation or buy some geek gear.
Free downloads 12, this time games! September 15, 2007
Continuing our free downloads series here is a new one that has some slightly different content from our usual links. Abandonia Reloaded is a site dedicated to remakes, freeware, and opensource games. The site has games spanning every genre so there is just about something for everyone there. So if your looking to waste some time give it a look.
Free Download 11, Please Share Labrador’s Summer Sampler August 5, 2007
When a major record label bends even a tiny fraction of an inch away from their old world busyness model the press goes wild. Independent record labels treat their fans much better and they do it all the time but they hardly ever get noticed in the mainstream media. Labrador Records is one of those independent labels giving away their Summer Sampler as a 68 track (mp3) download for free. They tried to release this years free download on their own servers but things didn’t work as planned. Heres how they put it.
“Well, putting the massive 68-track Labrador Summer Sampler 2007 on our server didn’t work quite as smoothly as we’d hoped. I don’t know if we overestimated our server or underestimated the need of good music this summer. Either way, it’s been taken care of now.
Download Labrador Summer Sampler 2007 from Piratebay here!”
You can download the entire sampler via torrent (~350MB ) or listen to full releases from Labrador’s artists here. This is a good example of how P2P file sharing helps connect independent artists and record labels to their fans. And it’s all free and legal! And Please share it on The Pirate Bay!
Free Download 10, “Good Copy, Bad Copy” August 2, 2007
The folks that produced the documentary “Good copy, Bad copy” have released it as a free download (link to Pirate Bay torrent) Thanks /.
This is a great film about our culture in the digital age and the impact copyright law has on artists today. This is a must see film which includes interviews with Girl Talk, Danger Mouse, Lawrence Lessig and more.
Free Downloads 9, SXSW 2007 February 21, 2007
The South by Southwest Music Festival is coming (March 9-18) but you don’t have to wait to hear some great music. You can download the festivals first torrent of 2007 Showcasing bands. This ginormous collection has 739 free legal mp3’s all in one 3.1 G download, or download just the ones you want . While you wait for the music to download check out the Film, Music, and Interactive Panels Schedule. The panels are packed with interesting people like Terry McBride from the Nettwerk Music Group, an interview with Rickie Lee Jones, and Gilberto Gill (wikipedia). There’s some fun topics as well, like “Music Litigation Update“, “Why Does Today’s Music Sound Like Sh*t?“, and the obligatory Bruce Sterling Rant.
Take an MIT course, Introduction to Copyright Law January 5, 2007
Groklaw posted about a great resource for people who want to learn more about copyright law. MIT OpenCourseWare is offering this course, an Introduction to Copyright Law and American law in general, on line for free.
The course description says “Topics covered include: structure of federal law; basics of legal research; legal citations; how to use LexisNexis®; the 1976 Copyright Act; copyright as applied to music, computers, broadcasting, and education; fair use; Napster®, Grokster®, and Peer-to-Peer file-sharing; Library Access to Music Project; The 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act; DVDs and encryption; software licensing; the GNU® General Public License and free software.”
There are lots of other free MIT courses so go get yourself all learned up for free.
Free Download 8, Don’t Download This Song! August 22, 2006
Weird Al has released a song about file sharing entitled “Don’t Download this song” (thanks BoingBoing!). You can download it from his MySpace page or from www.dontdownloadthissong.comtracks/DDTS.mp3 when the server recovers from the millions of pirates trying to download it.
The lyrics are a hoot,
“You don’t want to mess with the RI-double-A
They’ll sue you if you burn that CDR
It doesn’t matter if you’re a grandma
Or a seven year old girl
They’ll treat you like
the evil hard-bitten criminal you are…”
and
“…don’t download this song
or you’ll burn in hell
(and you deserve it)…”
It’s good to see artist’s standing up for what they believe in.
Free Download 7, God Save The Internet! June 24, 2006
The Broadband, three singer/songwriters, Kay Hanley, Jill Sobule, and Michelle Lewis, (with special guest appearance by Michelle’s mom) have released their new hit single for free download at SaveTheInternet.com called God Save The Internet. If the song doesn’t move you to call your reps you could always Ask a Ninja or watch a bunch of cool videos. Download this great new tune by independent artists while you still can!
Free Downloads 6, new album-mix-type-thingy March 28, 2006
The Kleptones announced the release of their new 2-CD album “24 Hours”. I am only half way through this amazingly cool collection of mash-ups but I will definitely be checking out their other 4 albums later. Thanks to BoingBoing for pointing us to this free download. You can download individual tracks, the whole album as one file, or all the tracks in one zip file.
While I was poking around at the Kleptones blog I came across a link to “Introduction to Copyfighting“, “a brief but informative introduction to the current on-line war of intellectual property rights” by Scott Kleper. It’s a good read while you are listening to some great tunes.
Free downloads 5, South by Southwest March 18, 2006
From their about page “the 2006 SXSW Music and Media Conference showcases hundreds of musical acts from around the globe on over fifty stages in downtown Austin…” and you don’t have to go there to enjoy the music. Presently, they have released two torrent files to download with almost 1000 free mp3’s. I have been listening to these two collections for over a week and the music is great. I’ve found several new favorites to add to my play list.
Free downloads 4, Evil free music March 3, 2006
I want to tell you about a record label that lets you listen to their entire catalog for free, Magnatune.com . I’m serious! They actually want you to listen to their stuff for free, no DRM, no time limits, no restrictions. And get this, you are not gonna believe this, they want you to share the mp3’s you get from them. They don’t mind. If all this were not insane enough they go right over the edge and let you use the music from their artists to create derivative works. They call it “Open Music” and describe it like this
“Open Music is music that is shareable, available in “source code” form, allows derivative works and is free of cost for non-commercial use. It is the concept of “open source” computer software applied to music.”
Free downloads 3, Legal Torrents for all February 24, 2006
Here is a site with loads of content under the Creative Commons license with the full permission of the rights holders to download for free. As LegalTorrents.com puts it,
“LegalTorrents is a collection of Creative Commons-licensed, legally downloadable, freely distributable creator-approved files, from electronic/indie music to movies and books, which we have made available via BitTorrent”
If music is what you are after, some of these archives are the better part of a gigabyte in size and some contain hundreds of mp3’s from a great number of artists. There is more than just music though, go explore this pocket of fair use friendly media. Happy downloading!
Free downloads 2, no law suits February 20, 2006
There are a tremendous number of artists out there who want you to download their work (for free), listen to it, and even use it to create new works. Opsound.org has a large collection of DRM-free music you can download.
Free downloads 1, no law suits February 16, 2006
I’m sure this service is way underused. On CreativeCommons.org there is a very large, very simple button that allows you to “search for Creative Commons audio, images, text, video, and other formats that are free to share on line.” It’s big and square and it has the word “Find” on it. you can’t miss it.
