Radiohead one step closer to CC

(via Joi Ito - thanks, Fred, for the tip)

Those of you who read my blog on a regular basis will know how much I have been repeating myself about Radiohead and Creative Commons being the next big thing to happen. We're not quite there yet, but I am still very happy to see RH one step closer with this news. I must admit that I have written a few letters to their press person (who never bothers to reply) and management, but RH is a big train to derail and one that many want to steer in their direction.. Anyway, I am just happy to see two of my big passions moving one step closer..

Radiohead just released a new video for its song "House of Cards" from the album "In Rainbows".

No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.

There are more videos and information on the page for this.

Exciting for Creative Commons is that the data (although not the music) used to produce this music video are being made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License on the Google Code site.

The Source code to the software used is being made available under a Apache License 2.0.

This combination of Open Source licenses for code and Creative Commons licenses for data/content is very "good idea".

The code and the data not the music are available on the radiohead Google Project Page.

Thanks to Aaron Koblin (the guy who wrote the code), Radiohead, Warner-Chappell and DeWitt Clinton and his team at Google for taking the lead on this. Awesome video and looking forward to seeing what other people do with the software and data.