When a rep for Yoko Ono pinged me last week about a new crowdsourced remix project the legendary artist was launching, my first question was, "Will the resulting fan-remixes be made available under a Creative Commons license? And if not, would you consider talking to the CC folks to learn more about why that's a good idea?"

Well, I am very excited to share that after some good conversations between Ms. Ono's camp and the Creative Commons folks (specifically Creative Director Eric Steuer), the answer is YES.

This is so awesome ! Brava to Ms. Ono for introducing her work into the realm of "open culture," this is a brave and significant step. It makes me very happy to see this kind of dialogue and risk-taking happen with artists whose legacies and cultural influence are as broad as hers. I also think the remix project in question sounds like a lot of fun, and I encourage you to go check it out — and participate! Here's the announcement from her team:

Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band – The Sun Is Down (remix) competition. We're very pleased to announce that thanks to the helpful advice of Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing and Eric Steuer at Creative Commons, the audio elements for Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band – The Sun Is Down (remix) are now being released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License.

We firmly believe that releasing the elements under a CC license embodies the true spirit of the competition. In light of this, we have extended the competition deadline to 12 December 2009 to allow time for those who may now wish to contribute under the revised terms.

In addition, artists interested in permissions beyond the scope of the CC license can email us at remix@yopob.com.

Long live the remix. Here's a post about this cool news on the Creative Commons blog.