Uncensored Interview and Creative Commons Team Up to Give Free Access to Artist Interviews

NEW YORK, NY, March 5, 2009 — Today, Uncensored Interview, a video producer and licensor of musician interviews, announced a collaboration with Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization focused on building a body of openly shareable and reusable creative work, by releasing thousands of videos from its interview footage archive under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC-BY) license. Previously, Uncensored Interview's library consisted of premium content available for commercial licensing, but now includes videos available via download in Ogg Theora, a free and open video compression format. Under CC-BY, users of the content are only required to give attribution to Uncensored Interview as the content source.

"This is a visionary move on the part of Uncensored Interview," said Eric Steuer, creative director of Creative Commons. "By offering this vast and amazing body of work to the public under our most permissive license, the people behind Uncensored Interview are making a clear statement that allowing the sharing and creative reuse of material — even for commercial purposes — can enhance the value of that material for its creators. In promoting a 'some rights reserved' approach to distribution, Uncensored Interview is opening up a wide variety of possibilities, and we are very excited to see the kinds of projects that result from this pioneering effort."

By working with Creative Commons, Uncensored Interview opens a direct line for fans to download, share, remix and promote select interview videos of their favorite artists. Uncensored Interview's videos will be clearly marked as available via the CC license, while simultaneously providing a mechanism via the CC+ protocol for partners to seek out licensing permissions beyond those already granted.

"Consumers are not just consumers anymore. They are creators and collaborators in their own right. By licensing our premium content under Creative Commons in Ogg Theora, we immediately enable use of our content as source material for online users while simultaneously promoting the artists and their points of view," said Sander van Zoest, Chief Technology Officer for Uncensored Interview.