[cc-lessigletter] CC in Review: Lawrence Lessig on New Projects

Lawrence Lessig lessig at pobox.com
Wed Dec 21 16:16:43 EST 2005


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 From last week's email:
Next week: More new projects.

The story continues.
So, what's new? Where are we going next? What projects would Creative  
Commons like to do that this fundraising campaign could support?

In this next-to-last email, I'll describe two projects we'd like to  
launch. This isn't a formal announcement. If you ask me about these  
projects outside of this email, I'll deny knowing anything about  
them. Both are far enough along to build support to launch them, but  
not far enough along to properly announce them. What would put them  
over the edge is a strong reaction of support from you (or your  
friends). And now is the time we need that support.

A public domain wiki
One project that we're very close to announcing draws together the  
wisdom and expertise of the Wikipedia project with the extraordinary  
foresight of a major rights organization keen to help clarify the  
boundaries of the public domain. The project would work something  
like this: This rights clearing organization (and we can't say which  
one just now) would give us a data dump of records they have about  
authors in a particular country. Those records would include books  
published by those authors, the authors' dates of birth, and if  
available or relevant, the authors' dates of death. Using that  
information, one could determine which works were in the public  
domain. The problem is that the data about whether an author has died  
is  often incomplete and sometimes inaccurate. So the question is how  
we might supplement that data through a community process that could  
add lots of value to this database.

Enter the ideals of a wiki. Through a site run by the Creative  
Commons affiliate in the country we're working with, we'd build a  
community devoted to "rediscovering the public domain in country X."  
That community would develop procedures for updating the data about  
the public domain status of a work— procedures for establishing  
levels of confidence in the accuracy of that data, for example,  
before it was added to the wiki. The community would also encourage  
other data be added to the database, such as reviews of the authors'  
books, links to places the books might be bought, and biographies of  
the authors themselves. We imagine this site could become a goldmine  
of information about authorship within country X, drawing new  
attention out  of print or hard to find work by older authors and  
generating new interest in their work.

We'd then craft a set of APIs — basically interfaces to the database  
— that anyone could use to ping the database and get information  
about a particular work. For example, anyone could ask, for free, if  
a particular book by a particular author is in the public domain or  
not, and the database would return an answer with some indication  
about levels of confidence. (E.g., "With 95% confidence, we can say  
this book is in the public domain.") This data could then be used by  
people to decide what books could be made available on the Internet  
or what permissions are needed to use the book in a university class.

This project, called the WikiPD, has just received seed funding. For  
us to commit to it will require another big chunk of public support.  
So here's the question for you: Should we?

Returning Authors' Rights
The second project we've been working on in stealth is a plan to give  
creators a chance to recover rights that they signed away many years  
ago which the law gives them the chance to recover. Under US  
copyright law, a creator has the right to "terminate" any transfer of  
rights he or she made 35 years after the transfer. But to do so  
requires an insanely complex series of steps which most creators  
simply don't have the time or knowledge to engage in. Thus, the law  
gives authors this right, but the law is so insanely complicated that  
creators  would have a difficult time trying to exercise it.

We can help with this. Over the past year, we've been mapping out a  
computer program — a kind of wizard for termination of transfer  
applications — that creators could use to know whether they have  
rights that they might reclaim and to help authors reclaim those  
rights. Using our wizard, a creator would enter information about his  
or her transfer of rights. The wizard would then indicate what  
possibilities are likely. And if the creator wants, the system would  
then refer the case to a legal aid clinic or Volunteer Lawyers for  
the Arts, so that with the help of a trained counselor, the creator  
could reclaim his or her rights. We'd offer this tool for free. And  
while, of course. we'd give creators the freedom to license any  
rights they recover under Creative Commons licenses, we wouldn't  
require them to do so. Instead, our only purpose is to make the law  
simple so that it might work better for the people it was intended to  
benefit: Creators.

This project will surprise some — those who think (wrongly) that  
we're against authors' rights. In fact, in my view, this project is  
the best expression of the ideals of Creative Commons: Find a way to  
make the law simpler to manage, and find a way to make it easier for  
creators to get what they want.

This project too needs a substantial amount of support. We should  
have a beta by the beginning of February. But to test and implement  
the project will require a great deal of infrastructure. Here is yet  
another reason why you need to click on the support link below. Or  
better yet, another reason why you should send the support link to  
your 10,000 best friends. If we're to make these projects happen, we  
need to build the infrastructure that they need. And while some out  
there work for the sort of salary I get at CC (ie, nothing!), not  
everyone on our staff can afford that sort of commitment. So click  
and support, or email and ask others for support.

Next week, the final of these emails.

-------

To link to or comment on this message, go to:
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5734

Week 11 - Lawrence Lessig on CC Tools
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5726

Week 11 - Lawrence Lessig on CC Tools - Spanish Version
http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/translations/lessig-letter-11-es.pdf

Thanks to Maria Cristinia Alvite for translation.

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