San Francisco - Rock band Deerhoof have posted the sheet music for an unreleased single from their forthcoming album online under a Creative Commons license, and are encouraging fans to record a version of the song themselves and post it to a community site, Wired.com reports. So far, nine versions have been posted to the band's CASH Music site. One fan even went so far as to transcribe the sheet music into MIDI format, and posted the resulting basic sound files online, so that those who don't read music can take a crack at a mix.

Raleigh, N.C. - Lulu.com, an online marketplace for digital content, announced that it is partnering with the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University "to showcase new creative endeavors launched through the ETC Press, a new academic publishing imprint." Under the arrangement, all ETC Press publications will be released under a Creative Commons license, and will also have associated websites to "encourage and enable a community of collaborative authorship and discussion," according to the announcement. Lulu.com itself has over 380,000 recently published titles, and more than 5,000 new titles added each week, created by people in 80 different countries.

Luxembourg - Jamendo, a site that exclusively offers albums made available for free under a Creative Commons license, has added its ten thousandth album, Wired.com reported. The site, which claims over 2 million unique monthly visitors and 500,000 downloads daily, enables users to donate to artists via PayPal, while Jamendo also shares half of any ad revenue generated off their music with artists.

San Francisco - Creative Commons, the less-restrictive copyright scheme developed by Lawrence Lessig, is looking to sell off its music remix community ccMixter, PaidContent reports.

San Francisco - Creative Commons, the non-profit set up to promote a less-restrictive copyright licensing scheme, announced on Wednesday that it has received a new $4 million grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and said founder and CEO Lawrence Lessig is stepping down to focus on his new Change Congress project.

Los Angeles - Nine Inch Nails has launched a Radiohead-type release for its first offering since the band's major label contract with Interscope expired last October, including a mix of free and paid downloads, regular CDs and various limited edition versions. "I've been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, but by its very nature it wouldn't have made sense until this point," Reznor writes on his website. "I'm very pleased with the result and the ability to present it directly to you without interference."

Palo Alto, Calif. - Stanford Law professor and Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig has decided against a run for Congress, after talking with a pollster who advised him his chances of winning would be slim, Wired.com reports. Lessig said last week on his website that he was considering a run for the seat vacated by the death of Rep. Tom Lantos earlier this month. The pollster told Lessig he would not likely be able to defeat veteran California politician Jackie Speier, who had already announced her intention to run for Lantos' seat -- and gotten Lantos' endorsement as well.

Palo Alto, Calif. - Lawrence Lessig, the noted Stanford law professor, copyright expert and founder of the Creative Commons less-restrictive copyright scheme, is considering a run for Congress, CNET reports, citing a note on Lessig's blog. If he decides to run, Lessig would be vying for the seat vacated by the death last week of Rep. Tom Lantos. Lessig says he would run on a "Change Congress" theme, that includes banning lobbyist/PAC contributions and legislative earmarks, and moving to public campaign financing. "I need to see your support right now to understand there is enough support for this idea to make this campaign worth it," Lessig states in a video at Lessig08.org.

San Francisco - Creative Commons, the nonprofit that advocates for less-restrictive copyright license terms, has found itself the target of a lawsuit, after a photo of a 16-year-old posted to Flickr under a Creative Commons license found its way into a Virgin Mobile ad campaign.

Several months ago, a little robot did a little dance and captured the hearts of the Internets. He was a very sophisticated robot, but didn't look like the typical Transformer-inspired, back-handspring-performing models coming out of Japan that make the rounds at gadget sites. This robot was cute. Very cute. His name is Keepon, and he's like a little, yellow, mouthless snowman and baby chick rolled into one. With googly-eyes that don't google. His signature anthropomorphic skill: dancing.

Luxembourg - Jamendo, a free music download site featuring 40,000 tracks offered without digital rights management under a Creative Commons license, has raised an undisclosed sum in its first round of financing, led by Mangrove Capital Partners.

Palo Alto, Calif. - Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig, an expert in intellectual property law and champion of less restrictive copyrights, has announced that he will no longer focus on IP law and instead turn his attention to political corruption. "Unless there are very strong reasons, I will not be accepting invitations to talk about the issues that have defined my work for the past decade," Lessig wrote on his blog. Lessig intends to remain chairman of Creative Commons, the alternative copyright movement that places less restrictions on what users can do with creative works.

New York - Ground Report on Tuesday announced the launch of its site that allows amateurs to publish original articles, rate content and earn a share of advertising revenues. Stories posted to the site are given prominence based on ratings by users, and will be published exclusively under Creative Commons licenses. "GroundReport's mission is simple: create an independent news source and give everyone a voice," said GroundReport founder and CEO Rachel Sterne, who previously held positions at the United Nations and LimeWire.

After a six years sales decline and negative PR surrounding lawsuits against 15,000 individuals, a recent experiment by Pearl Jam offers a glimmer of hope that major record labels and their customers may be reconciling.

Nielsen SoundScan figures through the week ending July 2 show that sales of digital albums soared 126% during the first half of the year, while digital tracks rose 77%. This does not make up for the decline in physical album sales, but it shows that the prospect of getting paid for music online, despite of P2P? services offering the same pirated albums and tracks for free, is not that far-fetched after all.