From lessig at pobox.com Wed Oct 18 19:19:25 2006 From: lessig at pobox.com (Lawrence Lessig) Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 16:19:25 -0700 Subject: [cc-lessigletter] A Report on the Commons Message-ID: <2AA9AC5D-92B1-49F7-B08D-E0E07ACF8BFB@pobox.com> So, with this email, Creative Commons launches its second (now officially) annual fundraising campaign. Last year, through the course of that first campaign, I wrote a series of letters explaining a bit about where Creative Commons came from, and where it was going. Those letters (creatively labeled "Lessig Letters") are still available here. [ http://creativecommons.org/support/letters ]. This year, I'm going to talk a bit less, and in my place, we're going to tell the stories of some of the extraordinary Creative Commons projects that have been flourishing around the world. But first, a bit of recap: Creative Commons is a nonprofit corporation, dedicated to making it simpler for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. We provide free licenses that mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share the work, or remix the work, or both share and remix the work, as the author chooses. We were motivated to begin this project about four years ago because we realized a point that's obvious once you see it: that however important the "all rights reserved" model of copyright is to some creators, it is not the model that works for many, maybe most. Scholars, scientists and educators, for example, are also creators, but they don't depend upon the perfect control of their work - deciding who can access it, or who can copy it, or who can build upon it - for them to have the incentive to create great works. Perhaps even more importantly, for the many who create for what our board member, Joi Ito, calls the "sharing economy," "all rights reserved" makes little sense. The millions of photos on Flickr [ http:// flickr.com/creativecommons ], for example, licensed under Creative Commons licenses are made available by people who want to make their creativity available to others without demanding payment upfront, or control over how their work gets used. These people are creators - some professional, but many amateur, where amateur doesn't mean "amateurish," but rather people who do what they do for the love of their work, and not for the money. Creative Commons provides free tools to help these creators create in the way that they think best. Creative Commons launched the licensing project in December 2002. Within a year, there were more than 1,000,000 link-backs to our licenses (meaning at least a million places on the web where people were linking to our licenses, and presumptively licensing content under those licenses). Within two years, that number was 12,000,000. At the end of our last fundraising campaign, it had grown to about 45,000,000 link-backs to our licenses. That was December, 2005. In the first six months of 2006, that number grew by almost 100,000,000 licenses. In June, we reported about 140,000,000 link-backs to our licenses. We have hit a stride, and more and more of the net marks itself with the freedoms that Creative Commons helps secure. This success has been primarily built by thousands of volunteers across the world who have worked to launch Creative Commons projects locally, and worked to spread our movement to artists and educators internationally. But it is supported by the contributions of many more. Each year we ask more to join this movement in both ways. These letters are invitations to join in the support for Creative Commons. The plea for support in these letters will be subtle. (We've perfected subliminal email.) But if you'd like to opt out of these letters, just click here http://creativecommons.org/about/newsletter#unsubscribe Alternatively, if you know others who might enjoy this weekly missive, click here http://creativecommons.org/about/newsletter and we'll invite them to join as well. And if you'd like to just get it over, and donate, click here. http://creativecommons.org/support/donate Next week, I'll talk a bit more about the values behind our movement. And the week following that, the first story from the front lines of CC. ---------------------------------- To link to or comment on this message, go to: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/6106 Archive of Lessig Letters http://creativecommons.org/support/letters Support the Commons http://creativecommons.org/support Learn More http://creativecommons.org/learnmore For comics and movies: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/how1, http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/ From lessig at pobox.com Wed Oct 25 13:49:36 2006 From: lessig at pobox.com (Lawrence Lessig) Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 10:49:36 -0700 Subject: [cc-lessigletter] CC Values Message-ID: In the four years since we launched CC, the Internet, and the world's understanding of the Internet, have changed dramatically. In 2002, the media was obsessed by something called "piracy." Today, they call it "user-generated content." Just around the time we launched, Wikipedia crossed 100,000 articles; today it is the most important testament to the Internet's potential to enable something different and extraordinary. When we started, none of us had any real idea about what the Internet would become. But we all had dreams. Mine was that the Internet would offer something different from the world of analog culture. While many were obsessed with how new technologies would radically change old businesses, I was eager to see the new ways of creating and interacting that would develop. iTunes does better what Tower Records did pretty well. But what would the Internet create in 2010 that didn't exist (in any significant sense) in 1990? One dream was what Andy Raskin called in his 2004 "Business 2.0" article about Creative Commons [http://money.cnn.com/magazines/ business2/business2_archive/2004/05/01/368240/index.htm], the "sharing economy." The "sharing economy" is different from a traditional commercial economy. It is not simply people working for free. Instead, this is the economy that supports Wikipedia (and free and open source software before that). It is the economy that drives much of the creativity in YouTube and blip.tv. It is the world of "amateur" creators, meaning again, not those whose work is amateurish, but those who do what they do for the love of what they do, and not for the money. This sharing economy is not meant to displace the commercial economy. Its purpose is not to force Madonna to sing for free. Its aim instead is to enable the millions of other people around the world who are also creative, but who want to create in a different kind of community. The editors who make Wikipedia sing are not people who couldn't get a job at Encyclopedia Britannica. They instead create for a different reason, within a very different community of creators. At its core, Creative Commons is designed to support this sharing economy. Our free tools give creators a simple way to signal the rules under which they want to create. And, perhaps more importantly, by signaling clearly and reliably these freedoms, they encourage others who otherwise might hesitate to share and build upon that work. Thus, for example, the Public Library of Science [http:// plos.org] publishes all of its articles under a CC license that gives users the freedom to share those articles broadly. Libraries and institutions around the world can now archive these works and make them available locally. Without the confidence of the CC licenses, no doubt lawyers within these different institutions would have panicked. The CC licenses let that panic be avoided, and invite many (who otherwise would not) to help share and build upon work. The next challenge is to figure out how this sharing economy interacts with a traditional commercial economy. What happens when Time wants to use a fantastic CC-licensed Flickr photo? Or how does a hit on ccMixter move into the commercial space? CC will never become a part of that commercial economy. But it is important, I believe, that we play a role in enabling this crossover. The alternative is a world we're seeing too much of all ready: large entities that create sandboxes for "sharing," but then effectively claim ownership over everything built within that sandbox. This is, in my view, not a sharing economy. It is instead simple sharecropping. The key is to build alternatives that creators on the Internet can use to both create as they wish and keep control of their creativity. That's the challenge I see over the next four years. And as we review over the next few weeks some of the best of CC from around the world, you'll begin to see how this challenge might be met. ---------------------------------- This email is part of a weekly series written by Lawrence Lessig If you would like to be removed from this list, please click here: http://creativecommons.org/about/lessigletter#unsubscribe Alternatively, if you know others who might find these interesting, please recommend they sign up at http://creativecommons.org/about/lessigletter Week 1 - A Report on the Commons http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/6106 Week 1 - A Report on the Commons - Spanish version http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/translations/lessig-letter-06-1- es.pdf (Thanks to Maria Cristinia Alvite for translation) Support the Commons http://creativecommons.org/support To link to or comment on this message, go to: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/6118 Archive of Lessig Letters http://creativecommons.org/support/letters Learn More http://creativecommons.org/learnmore For comics and movies: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/how1, http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/ From lessig at pobox.com Wed Nov 1 16:57:04 2006 From: lessig at pobox.com (Lawrence Lessig) Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 13:57:04 -0800 Subject: [cc-lessigletter] CC & Web 2.0 Message-ID: <7C15FC24-CBAC-4484-976E-38B6A0FF4092@pobox.com> From last week's email... The key is to build alternatives that creators on the Internet can use to both create as they wish and keep control of their creativity. That's the challenge I see over the next four years. And as we review over the next few weeks some of the best of CC from around the world, you'll begin to see how this challenge might be met. The story continued... Creative Commons is a Web 2.0 tool: A protocol, both legal and technical, that enables users of the Web to create and share creativity as they choose. Or at least, that's the hype. How does it actually do any work? What does CC actually add to the mix? Here's an example emerging from Japan that I saw demonstrated just two months ago. Members of CC-JP were walking around the conference with beautiful t-shirts, each with its own slightly different design. At the bottom of each shirt were CC licensing icons. On the left sleeve of each shirt was an Aztec Code -- a two dimensional bar code common in Japan that (most) Japanese cell phones can read and convert into a URL. [See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_Code]. I asked the obvious question: "What do these codes do?" These shirts, I was told, were part of a new project called "C- shirt." C-shirt was inspired by three other Japanese sites. Once I describe these three sites, you'll see how C-shirt makes them work together. The first site is the most familiar. Photozou [http://photozou.jp] is a photo site much like Flickr. Images can be marked with CC licenses, tagged, and organized into categories, including the location from which a photo was taken. Images from Photozou can thus be moved elsewhere -- consistent with the CC license -- and modified. One place they can be moved is the second site: Willustrator. [http:// willustrator.org] Willustrator is an online drawing tool. Developed by Keisuke Kambara, the tool by default embeds CC licenses into new illustrations. And that means that the collection of illustrations at the site can be reused and remixed however users would like. The site has extraordinary drawing tools, including a Bezier drawing tool. And with these tools, anyone can drawn an image, and either share it with others or import it to another application. Willustrator is thus a "true sharing" site, designed to enable people to move their creation away from the Willustrator site -- onto a blog, into a report, or, more interestingly, to the third site that I saw demonstrated that day -- Nota. Nota is the most extraordinary Web page generating technology I've seen. It too builds upon Creative Commons licenses, by using assets that are CC licensed. And it offers an amazing WYSIWYG Web editing ability. Think of a large whiteboard, which can be "edited" in just the way you might ?edit? a whiteboard ? with a marker or with photos taped to the wall. Within Nota, you can take a photo from Photozou, or an illustration from Willustrator, and import both onto the Web page. Using a drawing tool, you can underline important text. Or you can add a background drawing or photo to change the overall look of the page. Then with a single click, a Web page is generated -- again, marked with a CC license if the user selects one, and made immediately accessible to the Web. These three sites build upon each other. C-shirt is a perfect example of just how. Imagine you meet a friend on the street wearing a C-shirt. Using your cellphone, you take a picture of the Aztec Code on the sleeve. That gives you the URL to the Nota page where that image lives. On the Nota page, you can either buy your own copy of the T-shirt, or modify its design. You can use Nota, for example, to lay out elements of the shirt, Willustrator to edit the designs, and Photozou to import source images to add to the design. When you are finished, the Nota site will then enable you to have your T-shirt manufactured and sent to you. Or you can set up your own design for others to buy or modify as they see fit. Thus, click a button, and the shirt is produced and sent to you. Or click a button, and you can open up your own store. C-shirt is still in Alpha. I saw it when it was just three weeks old, but even then it was already functioning, because it simply built upon the components that other CC-enabled sites had exposed. But C-shirt is important not because it will replace Versace. It is important instead because it demonstrates the potential once we extend Web 2.0 principles to the content layer. So far, much of the excitement around Web 2.0 has been about modular technologies that can be made to interact simply. CC makes it simple to build modular content that can be made to interact simply. A community of creativity can thus be realized when the components expressly invite this collaboration. This is one important aim of CC: To build a simple, free, and extensible infrastructure at the content layer that enables the freedoms that the many different creative projects of the Web need to interact. Next week we'll see more examples like these. (And stay tuned for the official launch of C-shirt!) ---------------------------------- This email is part of a weekly series written by Lawrence Lessig If you would like to be removed from this list, please click here: http://creativecommons.org/about/lessigletter#unsubscribe Alternatively, if you know others who might find these interesting, please recommend they sign up at http://creativecommons.org/about/lessigletter Week 2 - CC Values http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/6118 Week 2 - CC Values - Spanish version http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/translations/lessig-letter-06-2- es.pdf (Thanks to Maria Cristinia Alvite for translation) Support the Commons http://creativecommons.org/support To link to this message, go to: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/6123 Archive of Lessig Letters http://creativecommons.org/support/letters Learn More http://creativecommons.org/learnmore For comics and movies: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/how1, http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/ From lessig at pobox.com Thu Nov 2 16:16:06 2006 From: lessig at pobox.com (Lawrence Lessig) Date: Thu, 2 Nov 2006 13:16:06 -0800 Subject: [cc-lessigletter] Creative Commons: Fundraising Through Viral Video Sharing Message-ID: I'm writing to tell you about something new Creative Commons has launched, and to ask for your help. Starting this week, we've launched a cool new fundraising hack: We're the first nonprofit organization to raise money through online video sharing. See http://creativecommons.org/support/videos We've uploaded our short videos to Revver, a video-sharing platform that uses Creative Commons licenses to help creators make money from their work. Revver attaches a short ad at the end of each video on its network. When a viewer clicks on the ad, Revver splits the resulting ad revenue with the video's creator. Usually, it's a 50/50 split, but Revver is generously giving Creative Commons 100% of the money our videos make through the end of our fundraising campaign on December 31, 2006. So now we're in a big push to get as many people as we can to watch our Revverized videos (or help us spread them by embedding them on your blog, MySpace page, or Web site). Please check out the ads, and help Creative Commons get paid! As part of this launch, we're premiering our latest video -- Wanna Work Together? -- which pays tribute to the people around the world using CC licenses and CC-licensed content to build a better, more vibrant creative culture. I'd be grateful for anything you can do to help us spread the word, and get as many people as possible to watch the videos. Thanks for your help. Lawrence Lessig Creative Commons From lessig at pobox.com Thu Nov 16 19:00:07 2006 From: lessig at pobox.com (Lawrence Lessig) Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 16:00:07 -0800 Subject: [cc-lessigletter] CC as a Global Movement Message-ID: <8CC91198-D78B-47BE-A55B-FF32098FCDEC@pobox.com> In my last letter, I described some of the ways CC technologies get integrated into Web 2.0 applications. Many of you wrote that you were surprised by the examples, and were especially excited that the applications reached so broadly internationally. That response has led me to tell a bit more about CC as a global movement. For certainly the most exciting work in spreading CC is going on in cultures far from our headquarters in San Francisco. So, this week, consider just three examples drawn from a pool of many more. In each, our tools for encouraging sharing are encouraging a much wider range of creativity. Brazil The first example comes from Brazil, at the site "Overmundo." [http://www.overmundo.com.br] Overmundo is a collaborative website designed to spread Brazilian culture. Its distinction is that both its content and design are generated by its users. Users choose what should or should not be published on the website. They choose what goes on the front page. And everything made available on the site is licensed under a CC license. The Overmundo tools give users the capacity to rate the quality of contributed content. This invitation to the site's users has in turn inspired a community that has built a "cultural database," with thousands of people sharing and making content available broadly. In less than 7 months, there have been more than 7,000 contributors from all over Brazil. The site has hosted a few million visitors, and is now, according to Technorati, among the top 7,000 websites in the world. The site's traffic is growing by 20 percent per month, and there are more than 400,000 references to it recorded by Google. The Netherlands My second example focuses more on archives. From the Netherlands, the "Images for the Future" project is building a large-scale conservation and digitization project to make available 285,000 hours of film, television, and radio recordings, as well as more than 2.9 million photos from the Netherlands' film and television archives. A basic collection drawn from the archive will be made available on the Internet either under CC licenses, or in some cases, in the public domain. The Government of the Netherlands, a long time supporter of the local Dutch CC project, will invest a total of 173 million Euros over a seven-year period. Their aim is to spur innovative applications with new media, while providing valuable services to the public. The idea of an archive like this is not new. But the scale and values of this project are extraordinary. The Netherlands may be a small country, but if it is successful, the "Images for the Future" project may well be the largest archive of free culture available anywhere in the world. South Africa Finally, consider some magic from South Africa. ccMixter South Africa [http://www.ccmixter.co.za] is leading a unique cultural remixing competition, drawing upon the work of creators from both Brazil and South Africa. The competition is part of the "culturelivre" project, which is a joint effort of Creative Commons in Brazil and South Africa. To find samples for the competition, ccSA invited some of the most important custodians of musical heritage in South Africa ? including the International Library of African Music (ILAM) ? to produce short riffs using traditional African instruments. Among these instruments are the "Mutumba drums," which are generally inaccessible on the Internet today. These drums were originally from Zimbabwe and were used to accompany spiritual ceremonies that include dancing, singing, clapping, and playing the mbira thumb piano. Young musicians entering the competition will remix these traditional sounds, and in the process, develop an understanding of the roots of music in both cultures. Ultimately, the team hopes that the competition will develop new sounds that young start-up musicians can use to advance their own musical careers. In all of these cases, CC tools provide a legal platform to spread and build culture. That much we expected when we launched CC four years ago. The part I never expected, however, is the extraordinary community that this platform is inspiring internationally. CC has come to be about much more than just licenses, and certainly much more than any of us dreamed. ---------------------------------- This email is part of a weekly series written by Lawrence Lessig If you would like to be removed from this list, please click here: http://creativecommons.org/about/lessigletter#unsubscribe Alternatively, if you know others who might find these interesting, please recommend they sign up at http://creativecommons.org/about/lessigletter Week 3 - CC & Web 2.0 http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/6123 Support the Commons http://creativecommons.org/support To link to this message, go to: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/6155 Archive of Lessig Letters http://creativecommons.org/support/letters Learn More http://creativecommons.org/learnmore For comics and movies: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/how1, http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/ From lessig at pobox.com Thu Dec 7 16:28:14 2006 From: lessig at pobox.com (Lawrence Lessig) Date: Thu, 7 Dec 2006 13:28:14 -0800 Subject: [cc-lessigletter] CC Labs Message-ID: <0B72D776-B6C7-4A25-9FC7-B4C0808720D1@pobox.com> From our last letter: "CC has come to be about much more than just licenses, and certainly much more than any of us dreamed." The story continued: So this week we launched a fresh face to the Creative Commons website. Built within WordPress, we hope the site will make it easier for people to understand and use our tools. Most noticeable are the new CC license icons, which expressly indicate the terms of the particular CC license used. But with this letter, we also launch a new page at the CC site -- labs.creativecommons.org. At CC Labs, we begin to demo some cool new innovations that the CC team has been working on. In this letter, I'll describe three of these innovations. The most important -- by far -- is an extension to the CC model that I first described in these letters last year [ http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/ 5704 ]. I suspect nothing will be as important in spreading the CC model as this critical extension. First, however, let me describe the other two innovations. One very difficult issue we've faced from the start is making understandable the freedoms our licenses are intended to provide. We've made that task more difficult by emphasizing in the names we've given to our licenses the limits on the freedoms, rather than the freedoms themselves. Thus, we talk about the CC-BY license ? which says you must give attribution, but doesn't say "you have the freedom to share and remix this content." For people who get it, this isn't a problem. But for people not yet on this page, emphasizing requirements, or restrictions, doesn't seem very free. One step towards solving this problem is a tool to give people a more intuitive sense of the freedoms they're allowing, and the conditions they're imposing. That's the aim of our Freedoms License Chooser. [ http://labs.creativecommons.org/freedomslicense ]. When you open the page, you're presented with four puzzle pieces that are interlinked. The top two ? in green ? specify the freedoms you can select to apply to your creativity: the freedom to Share, or the freedom to Remix, or both. On the bottom, there are two limiting conditions -- in red -- that you can select to restrict the freedoms you have granted: NonCommercial, or ShareAlike, or both. Not all combinations are possible. (For example, if you don't give the freedom to Remix, you can't require that others ShareAlike, since ShareAlike is a restriction on remixes or derivative works.) As you toggle the freedoms and limitations, the resulting license is displayed in the center of the puzzle. Click through all the options and you begin to get a much more intuitive sense of the shape of the commons. The second example of CC Labs is also a licensing engine, again designed to make it easier to understand and implement CC licenses. It begins with the same questions that the Freedoms License Chooser has -- select the freedoms and select the limitations. More insistently than before, it also asks you to give more information about your work, so that the metadata attached to your work makes the license more valuable. But then this License Generator gives an option we haven't had before. In the current version, it asks where the license will be applied -- on a web page, or (and this is the cool part) in MySpace. If you select a web page, then, as always, the tool gives you the code to paste into the web page. But if you select MySpace, then it asks you to select a style, and indicate whether you want a floating license or a license for your profile. If you select a floating position, then the CC license governing the content on your MySpace page will live at the bottom of the screen. Ok, so these innovations are designed to do a bit better what we've always done. The last innovation on CC Labs, however, will radically change the scope and reach of CC licenses. You might not think so given the title of this innovation -- "Metadata Lab." It's the nature of tech-types to be understated. But I don't think we could overstate the importance of this new innovation. And in the few words left in this letter, I want to introduce you to this potential. As you know, CC licenses are nonexclusive. That means the terms of the CC license are general, offered to anyone in the world. But they don't limit the author's right to enter into other deals. So for example, my book, Free Culture, is offered under a CC BY-NC-SA license, meaning anyone is free to take and modify the work, but only for noncommercial purposes. Yet I also have another deal with my publisher that permits it to sell the book (something that's not permitted by the NC license). That deal is not inconsistent with the CC license, since again the CC license is not exclusive. The CC license says, "Here are the terms that anyone in the world can take." But you're always free to strike different deals with particular people. Some people don't want to strike different deals. They want their CC license to specify all terms for everyone. My blog, for example, is offered under a CC-BY license. That's an invitation to anyone to commercialize my content without worrying about contacting me. Some have. CNET Japan, for example, was translating my blog and selling advertisements around it. That's perfectly fine with me, given the license I selected. But some people are quite happy to strike deals that complement their CC license. A Flickr photographer, for example, might post her photos under a BY-NC license. But she'd be happy to license the photo to a magazine for commercial purposes -- so long as the magazine asked. So far that second step has been somewhat difficult. Of course, it's often easy to go from a CC licensed work to the original author, just because the work is online, and links are easy. But it's been hard to integrate the CC license into other applications. And very hard to specify upfront just what the terms of a different license would be. Soon, this will no longer be the case. What the Metadata Lab demonstrates is a particular example of a much more general facility that we will enable very soon. Using our licensing engine to add the appropriate metadata, users will be able to specify rights or applications beyond those specified in the license itself. Those rights, or applications, might include commercial rights, or things people can buy, or, as I describe more below, other CC licenses. So for example, the CC license might say CC-BY-NC. But when wrapped in the appropriate metadata, the CC Commons Deed could have a link to an agent, or just a web site, where commercial uses could be negotiated. Or alternatively, the CC license might say CC-BY-NC. But the metadata would indicate a tip jar, where a donation could be made. Or where you can get a CD of the music offered under a NC license. Or one of the band's t-shirts. Thus, the general facility this innovation will provide is a simple and automatic way to say,"the CC license gives you these rights automatically, but go here to get different rights, or different applications." Here are some examples from companies we're beginning to work with. Click on the CC License icon to see how the "Rights Beyond" is handled. [ http://labs.creativecommons.org/metadata/#examples ] Now as I indicated last year, CC is not hosting these different applications. We're not in the business of selling content, or (other peoples') t-shirts. So this is not an architecture to enable CC to become commercial. Our stuff is still free (well, not our t-shirts). Our tools will always be free. Instead, what this innovation does is to give people a simple way to point to places beyond the CC license for uses or applications that the CC license doesn't itself provide. Must these uses be commercial? No. In my view, perhaps the most important case for using this "rights beyond" facility is to specify alternative CC licenses. For example, let's say you offer your content under a CC-BY-NC license. But you'd be happy to have your content included within Wikipedia. One solution would be to dual license your content. But a simpler solution would be to use this "Rights Beyond" facility. You can specify your primary license as the NC license. But offer as an alternative, through the "Rights Beyond" facility, the same content under a CC-BY-SA license. And assuming we fix the problem with CC/FDL interoperability -- assuming, wink, wink -- that would mean your creative work could be included within Wikipedia (or other copyleft projects), even though the general license you offer is a NC license. But won't this innovation encourage people to mark creativity with BY- NC when they would otherwise just make it free? It may, for some. It will also encourage many to use CC licenses who otherwise wouldn't. But if it does push some to adopt a NC restriction where you believe they shouldn't, then you should join us in arguing against that restriction. I believe, for example, with the Public Library of Science, that scientific journals should be freely available. All PLoS content is licensed under a CC-BY license. If some other scientific journal started to make its content available under a CC-BY-NC license, then you should join me in arguing that that model is inconsistent with the ethics of science. The CC licenses give us a vocabulary to make that argument. But it is up to us to actually utter the words of the argument. Code has no ethical obligation to do ethical politics. We do. There are more details to this important innovation. But the general message is clear: Using this technology, you can specify rights beyond those granted by the CC license. Any rights, or any applications, however the adopter chooses. I trust as you think through this innovation, you'll see why I think it is the most important change we've introduced since we introduced CC. Remember the hybrid economy from this year's first post. [ http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/6118 ]. Here are the tools to help this hybrid flourish. ---------------------------------- This email is part of a weekly series written by Lawrence Lessig If you would like to be removed from this list, please click here: http://creativecommons.org/about/lessigletter#unsubscribe Alternatively, if you know others who might find these interesting, please recommend they sign up at http://creativecommons.org/about/lessigletter Week 4 ? CC as a Global Movement http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/6155 Week 4 ? CC as a Global Movement ? Spanish Version http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/translations/lessig-letter-06-4- es.pdf (Thanks to Maria Cristina Alvite for translation) Support the Commons http://creativecommons.org/support To link to this message, go to: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7143 Archive of Lessig Letters http://creativecommons.org/support/letters Learn More http://creativecommons.org/learnmore For comics and movies: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/how1, http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/ From lessig at pobox.com Mon Dec 18 15:31:40 2006 From: lessig at pobox.com (Lawrence Lessig) Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2006 12:31:40 -0800 Subject: [cc-lessigletter] CC Changes Message-ID: <002FC935-247B-4B39-A486-BA091FEC98C7@pobox.com> Last week, culminating Friday night, in parties around the world ( http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Birthday_party#Parties ), Creative Commons celebrated its fourth birthday. Hundreds of people helped mark this event. My 3 year old son, Willem, and I cut the first cake at the party in Portugal. http://www.flickr.com/photos/12625534 at N00/326306569/ Five hours later, in the Creative Commons party in the virtual world of Second Life, I made for me an announcement. As I removed the CC torch from my bag of objects, I told those in world, and in San Francisco, that Joi Ito, a venture capitalist from Japan and a key driver in the "sharing economy," would be replacing me as Chairman of Creative Commons. I will remain on the board, and as CEO. But from the moment I handed him the torch, he is CC's new Chairman. This is a very happy moment for CC. I'm not going anywhere -- CC will continue to get everything I can give. But we are movement, not a cult. And it is important that movements have leaders. I have had enormous respect for Joi since first meeting him in Japan in early 2000. It was a real coup when I was able to convince him to join our Board. Joi's whole ethic has been to build the sharing economy. That ethic of building is precisely where CC is going right now. This has been the best job I will have had. I can't describe how extraordinary it has been to watch this organization grow, nor how rewarding it has been to see the passion and energy it has inspired. We have tried to show the world something about how creativity works ? not through obsessive control, but by creators inviting others to create and share as well. More and more, this is a message the world seems to get. But for now, let me leverage a bit the opportunity that the ambiguity of new leadership creates. After the thermometer is updated to reflect a very generous anonymous gift we just received, we will have just $100,000 left in our campaign. That's a lot to raise in two weeks, but I think we can do it. Indeed, you can look at this change in leadership in two ways, each of which gives some of you a reason for one last push: - Some of you have been loyal supporters of me from the very beginning. I can't begin to express how grateful I've been for this support, or for the generous thanks you've offered. To you, please show that support one more time, by supporting CC in this final two weeks of our drive. - Some of you have been loyal critics, with a different vision of copyright, or CC, and with a strong hope that the organization move beyond the particular vision I've offered. Now you have your chance: please celebrate the change, by supporting CC in this final two weeks of our drive. Either way, what both I and CC need most just now is your support. A simple click is all we need to get that going. http://creativecommons.org/support Finally, thanks to all of you, and the Board of CC in particular, for allowing me this extraordinary opportunity. And join me in helping, and supporting, Joi Ito in his new role. Next week, a final letter with some final thoughts for CC. ---------------------------------- This email is part of a weekly series written by Lawrence Lessig If you would like to be removed from this list, please click here: http://creativecommons.org/about/lessigletter#unsubscribe Alternatively, if you know others who might find these interesting, please recommend they sign up at http://creativecommons.org/about/lessigletter Week 5 ? CC Labs http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7143 Week 5 ? CC Labs ? Spanish Version http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/translations/lessig-letter-06-5- es.pdf (Thanks to Maria Cristina Alvite for translation) Support the Commons http://creativecommons.org/support To link to this message, go to: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7158 Archive of Lessig Letters http://creativecommons.org/support/letters Learn More http://creativecommons.org/learnmore For comics and movies: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/how1, http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/ From lessig at pobox.com Thu Dec 28 11:48:02 2006 From: lessig at pobox.com (Lawrence Lessig) Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2006 08:48:02 -0800 Subject: [cc-lessigletter] CC's Future Message-ID: <9DF5179C-EE43-40A3-B4DC-66FF00E5A3D3@pobox.com> The story so far: "Next week, a final letter with some final thoughts for CC." The story continued... The hardest thing about pushing the work of Creative Commons is the thought that in 15 years, it will be impossible to explain just why this work was important -- either because the worst would have happened, and the technologies that have encouraged the explosion of creativity we see just now will have been re-controlled, or because the best would have happened, and the balance that we're pushing for will have been achieved, in both practice and law. I'm famous for a certain sort of pessimism. But about this, I'm optimistic that it is the second sort of change that we're most likely to see. The creative energy of the next generation will not be stopped. The technologies of creativity are not going to become insanely expensive again. And thus, in my view, the most likely future is one in which this potential for creativity will be reconciled with a copyright system that offers protection where that's necessary to create great new works, without burdening the world of creativity that doesn't depend upon copyright to flourish. Creative Commons' most important contribution will be to help transition to this more sensible world. As I've described in these past weeks, we have already built the infrastructure to help the "sharing economy" flourish. The tools we've begun to demonstrate at ccLabs [ http://labs.creativecommons.org ] will also help support the inevitable growth of a hybrid creative economy, where works are available freely in some contexts, but commercially exploited in others. Both bits of legal infrastructure will encourage creativity, while respecting authors' rights. Both suggest a different balance the law might strike, when politicians begin to recognize why this difference is important. But until the day when this point is obvious, it is critical that we all continue to push this voluntary, private effort to get artists and creators to signal to the world the freedoms they believe their work should carry. We need that signal not just in hundreds of millions of licensed objects, but in billions of licensed objects. We need it built into the infrastructure where every creative work gets made. And we need this as a signal and a practice: as an effort every creator makes to encourage a certain ecology of creativity. Over the next year, working with our new Chairman, Joichi Ito, we will push the program of interoperability that we started last fall. We will push as well the project of integration into many more applications of creativity. And most importantly, we will launch an endowment of the Creative Commons core to guarantee that the central project of CC will forever survive. Or at least if not forever, until the point is so obvious that we all can move on. Thank you again for the support you've given me over these past four years. And again, please help celebrate this transition by supporting us in this final week of our fundraising campaign. We need just $20,000 to reach our goal. If each of you asked just 5 of your friends to join, we would certainly make that number by December 31. And if we make that number, it will be much easier for me, after four very hard years pressing the message of CC, to see this project pass to a new, and I promise, fantastic leader. With that final plea, the Lessig Letters end. ---------------------------------- This email is part of a weekly series written by Lawrence Lessig If you would like to be removed from this list, please click here: http://creativecommons.org/about/lessigletter#unsubscribe Alternatively, if you know others who might find these interesting, please recommend they sign up at http://creativecommons.org/about/lessigletter Week 6 ? CC Changes http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7158 Week 6 ? CC Changes ? Spanish Version http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/translations/lessig-letter-06-6- es.pdf (Thanks to Maria Cristina Alvite for translation) Support the Commons http://creativecommons.org/support To link to this message, go to: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7176 Archive of Lessig Letters http://creativecommons.org/support/letters Learn More http://creativecommons.org/learnmore For comics and movies: http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/how1, http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/