A resource guide compiled by and for the Play-Jurisms conference in Cambridge, MA May 21-22, 2011. Please email suggestions for new additions or edits to alana.kumbier @ gmail.com or heather.lyn.mccann@gmail.com.

We *heart* Creative Commons

All resources on this page offer content you can legally use in projects -- for free. Some content is provided under Creative Commons licensing.
Learn more about Creative Commons & terms of use for different licenses here.
You can find CC-licensed work in a variety of media via the CC Search tool.
30+ Places to find Creative Commons Media - Links to even more search engines & CC-content sites.

Audio Content

These sources provide free & legally-reusable content for digital audio & music creation.

ccMixter & DigCCMixter - Songs, licensed using different Creative Commons types, featuring one or more samples of previous work (all legally sampled).
Free Music Archive - The Free Music Archive is an interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads. Curated by independent, free-form radio station WFMU.
Freesounds - Guide to open music resources, sound sample collections, applications & tools, tutorials, and social networking tools for sharing your work.
... not to be confused with ...
The Freesounds Project - "The Freesound Project aims to create a huge collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, recordings, bleeps, ... released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License."
jamendo - "All the music on jamendo is available under one of the six Creative Commons licenses. They authorize free music download and enable the artists to promote their music while protecting their rights."
Open Music Search - A search engine for copyleft, Creative Commons, open source, and public domain works.
Opsound - "Musicians and sound artists are invited to add their work to the Opsound pool using a copyleft license developed by Creative Commons. Listeners are invited to download, share, remix, and reimagine."
Phonography - A directory of resources for soundscape recordings and for public domain sound files ( look under "sounds")
Soundtransit - a collaborative, online community dedicated to field recording and phonography. On this site, you can plan a sonic journey through various locations recorded around the world, or you can search the database for specific sounds by different artists from certain places. If you are a phonographer, you can also contribute your recordings for others to enjoy. The Creative Commons Attribution license encourages the sharing and reuse of all sounds on this website.

Images

Digital Images Collections Wiki - From Wellesley College, a resource of Free- and Fair-Use digital image collections that are available for anyone to use for personal or educational purposes
Flickr - Browse or search for CC-licensed images
Wikipedia - List of web sites with images in the public domain
Freemages - A Creative Commons and Free Art License photo site.

Video

Blip.tv - check for CC-license under the Metadata section.
Internet Archive: Moving Image Archive - This library contains thousands of digital movies uploaded by Archive users which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Many of these videos are available for free download.
BBC's Virtual Revolution Rush Footage: As an experiment in crowd interaction, the BBC released the raw, but high-quality (1280x720), footage of the various interviews, location shots and infographics from their documentary series about the world wide web, The Virtual Revolution (aired in the UK, February 2010). Interviewees include Tim Berners-Lee, danah boyd, Sherry Turkle, and Mark Zuckerberg and the footage is licensed under the BBC's equivalent of an Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license.
Sandbox at WGBH Lab - WGBH shares high-quality video clips with users. Use Sandbox clips to "make a mash-up, documentary, music video, or whatever!"
YouTube Do an advanced search (after your initial search, click on the link for Advanced Options on the right-hand side of the page), and add "creative commons" as a term in your search.

Texts

If you're interested in copyright questions related to texts, digital/electronic books, and readers' rights, check out the page NYC Red Reffers created for their panel on Compensation, Access, and Theft: Copyright in the 21st Century: http://radicalreference.info/2011/anarchistbookfair/copyright/resources

Actual, material stuff

Massachusetts-specific resources:
Extras for Creative Learning - Teachers, group leaders, parents, and artists are able to obtain low-cost or no-cost recycled materials that offer unlimited creative opportunities to nurture learning, exploration, and discovery in classrooms, child care centers, youth groups, and beyond.
Freecycle - List of active Massachusetts groups. For a Freecycle overview, click here.
Mass Material Trader - “The Mass Material Trader (MMT), a FREE online materials reuse network, assists businesses/organizations in *Massachusetts by helping them find, sell, trade, or give away useful used or surplus materials that would otherwise be disposed of. MMT members align corporate and environmental objectives by reducing their environmental footprint, saving money, and providing fellow MMT members in need of low-to-no cost supplies, furniture, and equipment with the materials they need.”

Resources for licensing your (non-software) work.

With a Creative Commons license, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit — and only on the conditions you specify here.
A type of Create Commons license, the Share Alike aspect requires all derivatives of a work to be licensed under the same (or a compatible) license as the original. An example: CC BY-SA 3.0
With a Free Art License, others may freely copy, distribute, and transform creative works without infringing on the author's rights.
Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS) explains the benefits of and ways you can use open access for your academic publications.
More on retaining rights to reproduce your scholarly publications from the Association of College & Research Libraries Scholarly Communication Toolkit.

Other resource guides

Copyright, Intellectual Property, and Fair Use - from Yale University
Question Copyright - Our Mission: to reframe and expand the range of public debate about copyright; to show the economic, artistic, educational and social effects of distribution monopolies; and to help creators and their allies realize the potential of freedom-based distribution.