"On Monday, Creative Commons will release its collection of free, machine-readable licenses. The idea is to give copyright holders another way to get the word out that their works are free for copying and other uses under specific conditions. "

A good article in Wired explaining the Creative Commons project further.

"Creative Commons's first project, in December 2002, was the release of a set of copyright licenses free for public use. Taking inspiration in part from the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), Creative Commons has developed a Web application that helps people dedicate their creative works to the public domain -- or retain their copyright while licensing them as free for certain uses, on certain conditions. Unlike the GNU GPL, Creative Commons licenses are not be designed for software, but rather for other kinds of creative works: websites, scholarship, music, film, photography, literature, courseware, etc. We hope to build upon and complement the work of others who have created public licenses for a variety of creative works.

Our aim is not only to increase the sum of raw source material online, but also to make access to that material cheaper and easier. To this end, we have also developed metadata that can be used to associate creative works with their public domain or license status in a machine-readable way. We hope this will enable people to use the our search application and other online applications to find, for example, photographs that are free to use provided that the original photographer is credited, or songs that may be copied, distributed, or sampled with no restrictions whatsoever. We hope that the ease of use fostered by machine- readable licenses will further reduce barriers to creativity."

A GPL for the non-computer world.

"Russian software developer ElcomSoft has been cleared of charges that it illegally created a program to disable encryption on Adobe e-books.

The jury verdict, announced Tuesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, concludes the first criminal trial of a company accused of violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a 1998 federal statute that protects copyrights on electronic content."

The first criminal trial test of the DMCA is over, and the Act took a beating. 

"Web site was established to provide information about a proposed Settlement of lawsuits brought by Attorneys General of 43 states, Commonwealths and Territories, and by counsel for the Plaintiff Settlement Class entitled In re: Compact Disc Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation."

Come and get it!  If you've bought a CD, cassette, or LP between 1995 and 2000, you've got $5-$20 coming to you...unless too many folks respond, and then it all goes to charity.  Either way, it comes out of the MAN's pocket, so get it while it's hot.