The Creative Commons is a great initiative with the aim of making it easier to spread culture with the help of permissive copyright licenses that everyone can use.  Millions of people, organizations and companies have chosen to publish their creations with one of these pro-freedom licenses.

One of the most interesting CC-creators is the Blender Foundation who produces both a 3D-graphics suite, Blender, as well as a number of great short movies that have been created with it. The software is open source and all of the movies have been released under Creative Commons licenses.

Amelia thought it would be a good idea to introduce the Creative Commons to the parliament by showing some CC-licensed, open movies. So this Wednesday, November 14, our office organized a quite unique and interesting event here in the European Parliament: a showcase of the Creative Commons with a screening of three open movies by the Blender Foundation. Legal scholar Andres Guadamuz came to speak about the Creative Commons. Ton Roosendaal director of the Blender Foundation described their work and introduced the movies. We screened three movies by the Blender Foundation:

Big Buck Bunny (2008) [website]:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE7VzlLtp-4&feature=relmfu

Sintel (2010) [website]:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ

Tears of Steel (2012) [website]:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6MlUcmOul8

Not only can these excellent shorts be freely shared, modified and distributed over the net, the entire production material is also available under Creative Commons licenses.