Matt Yglesias

The Cuteness Stimulus

Obama transition team acts to counter national cuteness deficit by posting photos of Sasha and Malia getting ready for their first day at school”

Aww …

Since we’re c (4) educatin’ with this post, why not throw in a policy angle? I got that from the Obama-Biden Transition Project’s Flickr’ page where I noticed that the photos are all held under an “all rights reserved” copyright. Given that the Transition is seeking to serve the public interest, it seems to me that it would be nice to release these photos under a Creative Commons license of some sort. In practice, it almost certainly doesn’t make a difference since the Transition presumably wants these images to be disseminated widely and isn’t going to be denying anyone permission or writing any cease-and-desist letters. But that’s all the more reason to go Creative Commons and serve as a model for other institutions out there.