Creating in a Commons: Conversations with Creative Commons and Disquiet Junto

From Monkey Selfies to Machine Learning: Generative Art and the Public Domain

In our final episode of the season we reconnect with Michael Weinberg, Director of the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy, for the recent legal cases revolving around generative AI models and the continuing impact of the monkey selfie legal case.

Episode page with notes and transcript

This season of the podcast was produced with the Engelberg Center for Innovation Law and Policy at NYU.

Our host is Lee Tusman. Our audio production is by Max Ludlow.

All of the music on today’s episode are by our audio engineer Max Ludlow. The tracks are Body Memory, Poole and Relic, CC BY.

This episode is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Intellectual Property and Indigenous Heritage

In today’s episode, we’re looking at issues that come up in Indigenous communities, and one initiative to respond to the limitations of the law and to reassert cultural authority in one’s own heritage, culture and data.

Episode notes

In this season of the podcast we’re working with the Engelberg Center for Innovation Policy at NYU Law.

In this episode, Dr. Jane Anderson talks about how she found “the law doesn’t do a very good job in protecting collective knowledge.”

One of the big challenges in the area that I work in is the language of ownership to start with, and the framework of property itself conditions what’s possible to think about and what’s possible to talk about.

Jane co-founded Local Contexts, “a global initiative that supports Indigenous communities with tools that can reassert cultural authority in heritage collections and data. By focusing on Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property and Indigenous Data Sovereignty, Local Contexts helps Indigenous communities repatriate knowledge and gain control over how data is collected, managed, displayed, accessed, and used in the future.”

We also speak with Courtney Papuni of Te Whakatohea iwi in Opotiki. Courtney speaks on her community’s work with Local Contexts labels and the limitations of western notions of copyright on cultural heritage and knowledge.

Full transcript, notes, links and contact can be found on the episode website.

Fair Use, the Internet Archive and the Public Domain

In this episode we speak to Brewster Kahle, the Founder and Chief Librarian of the Internet Archive on the occasion of Public Domain Day. We also speak to Amanda Levendowski, Founding Director of the Intellectual Property and Information Policy Clinic on the concept of fair use, its history and application for artists.

Full episode notes, transcription, links and bios can be found on the episode notes page.

Episode notes

This episode is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Creating in a Commons: Conversations with Creative Commons and Disquiet Junto

Kat Walsh from Creative Commons joins us to talk about the history of Creative Commons as a 'hack on copyright.' Marc Weidenbaum speaks on the history of the Disquiet Junto, a long-running online distributed community creating new music in response to a weekly online composition challenge.

Episode notes, credits and transcript

In this season of the podcast we’re working in collaboration with the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy at NYU Law. In addition to our usual crop of artists and programmers we’re adding in legal scholars to help us unpack some of the thorny issues for those working in art and code as they unleash their work into the world.

In this episode we dive into the world of Creative Commons, which is now over 20 years old. It is both an organization as well as a collection of copyright licenses used by artists, musicians, writers, directors and creators worldwide to communicate to the world how they want their work shared and potentially to be used as a source to build upon.

We also speak to Marc Weidenbaum, founder and steward of the Disquiet Junto, an online “community of practice.” Each week Marc sends out an email newsletter with a creative prompt, consisting of a title, and instructions. These instructions may read like a Fluxus event score, a recipe in sound, a concept or technical description. Those who choose to participate create a single piece of music, then post it online, to be shared, listened to and potentially discussed by the online community. Marc has been leading Disquiet Junto since 2012, and from the beginning has encouraged participants to share their work with Creative Commons licenses. In fact the creative re-use of Creative Commons licensed sound and music has often been an integral part of Disquiet Junto creative prompts.

Kat Walsh is the General Counsel at Creative Commons. She has a nearly 20-year history in the free and open culture movements, including many years on the boards of the Wikimedia Foundation and the Free Software Foundation, and has previously worked in library policy, technology startups, and online community management. As General Counsel, she oversees the legal support for all aspects of CC’s activities, provides strategic input, leads the stewardship of CC’s legal tools, and advises the organization on new programmatic initiatives.

image description: a black and white image of Marc looking to the right. He has dark hair and a close cropped beard, wearing a high collared knit sweater and black frame glasses.

Marc Weidenbaum founded the website Disquiet.com in 1996 at the intersection of sound, art, and technology, and since 2012 has moderated the Disquiet Junto, an active online community of weekly music/sonic projects that explore constraints as a springboard for creativity and productivity.

Creative Commons Licenses and Tools

Creative Commons talks with Marc Weidenbaum

Email announcement list for the Disquiet Junto

Marc’s website Disquiet, on the intersection of sound, art and technology

Our audio production is by Max Ludlow. Design by Caleb Stone.

Our music on today’s episode is all taken from Creative Commons licensed music created as part of the Disquiet Junto.

all at fives, sixes and sevens by wasabicube, CC BY NC SA. three euclidean rhythms, CC BY NC SA, by Lee Evans/Hippies Wearing Muzzles, both from disquiet0567 Three Meters.

Ways, CC BY NC SA, by the artist analoc for disquiet0482 Exactly That Gap.

Little Green Aura, CC BY NC SA, by he_nu_ri and lako by Ohm Research, for disquiet0566 Outdoor Furniture Music

four voice folly by caustic_gates, CC BY NC SA, part of disquiet0565 Musical Folly

much too young to…, CC BY, by NolanVerde for disquiet0066 Communing with Nofi, a posthumous collaboration with the artist Jeffrey Melton, aka Nofi, who passed in 2013.

This episode is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Lawyers and Hackers

This episode kicks off our season working with the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy. We talk about copyright and its limits; licenses and ethical open source; and the infamous monkey selfie legal case.

This episode features conversations with Michael Weinberg, the Executive Director of the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy at NYU School of Law. We also speak with computer scientist, game designer and media artist Ramsey Nasser on the Anti-Capitalist Software License. Finally, we join some of the organizers from the ml5.js programming library, which aims to make “machine learning approachable for a broad audience of artists, creative coders, and students.”

Episode notes and transcript