[Community_studios] [cc-lessigletter] CC in Review: Lawrence Lessig on Continuing the Movement

Lawrence Lessig lessig at pobox.com
Wed Nov 2 18:41:23 EST 2005


This email is part of a weekly series written by Lawrence Lessig and  
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 From last week's episode:

Thus we use our licenses to build the freedoms authors want upon a  
reinforced layer of "fair use" freedoms. Creative Commons is thus  
"fair use"-plus: a promise that any freedoms given are always in  
addition to the freedoms guaranteed by the law.

That's the end of the background. Next week I will describe some of  
the fun stuff Creative Commons has built, and some more about where  
we're going.



The story continues:

About two months ago, a friend asked:

"I don't get what Creative Commons is, beyond a bunch of servers  
serving up licenses to people around the world. Why would you need  
support?"

The question was completely understandable. Most who see us just see  
us through our licenses. Yet there's a great deal more to what we're  
doing. And my aim over the next few weeks is to describe that great  
deal more.

This email is just a start (I promised to keep these short). Its aim  
is to describe the initial core of CC.

When Creative Commons was launched in December, 2002, we had a  
simple, narrow focus — to spread Creative Commons licenses. The  
organization was housed in the basement of Stanford Law School. The  
tiny staff worked so hard that some at Stanford thought they lived  
there too.

The aim at the time was straightforward: to explain why Creative  
Commons licenses mattered. We did that with lectures, with stories  
for the press, and even with Flash:
http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/getcreative/clicktoplay.html

Slowly, we found traction. MIT's OpenCourseWare project used CC  
licenses to free an extraordinary range of content for anyone to  
build upon or share. Rice University's Connexions project did the  
same. And Tim O'Reilly gave us over 500 titles from O'Reilly Press to  
release under free licenses, including some under a license (the  
Founders' Copyright) that voluntarily reduces the term of copyright  
to just 14 (or 28) years.

Very soon into the project, we started getting emails from around the  
world asking how others in other countries could participate too.  
Technically, our licenses were designed to work anywhere in the  
world. But this enthusiasm went far beyond the desire to adopt US- 
based licenses.

So early on we launched the "iCommons Project." Headquartered in  
Berlin, the initial aim of the iCommons Project was to coordinate  
with volunteers from around the world to develop versions of our  
licenses that were tuned to the law of local jurisdictions. Japan was  
the first, developing a license based in Japanese law that could also  
be used anywhere in the world. These localized licenses would then  
link to a translated "Commons Deed" (remember, the simple plain  
English (and now, plain-Japanese, Spanish, French, etc…) explanation  
of the license), and then to a universal set of metadata that would  
make the freedoms attached to the content understandable by computers.

See http://creativecommons.org/worldwide/#more

iCommons quickly exploded. Soon we had volunteers from over 70  
countries around the world interested in porting our licenses to  
their local law. And as countries completed the project, I began  
trekking across the world to celebrate the launch of Creative Commons  
internationally. With Slovenia's launch this last weekend, there are  
now 24 jurisdictions that have gone live. And a bunch more will  
become live very soon.

This is the core of what CC has been — making free licenses work  
wherever we can. But that's just the beginning of the work we've  
done. Next, we'll describe the Science Commons. And after that,  
another major new international project.

Stay tuned.

-----

One final fundraising related bit of news: As you know, I'm writing  
these letters as part of our annual fundraising campaign. This letter  
might begin to help you see why such a campaign is needed. But I  
wanted to tell you about a new feature to this campaign: We're asking  
our supporters to add a Creative Commons button to their site, to  
help grow the Commoners Movement. Please support us by adding a  
button to any page you might control. You can get the button here:

http://creativecommons.org/support/getabutton

Thanks for any help you can offer.



To link to or comment on this message, go to:
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5689

Week 4 - CC in Review: Lawrence Lessig on CC & Fair Use
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5681

Week 4 - CC in Review: Lawrence Lessig on CC & Fair Use - Spanish  
Version
http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/translations/lessig-letter-4-es.pdf

Thanks to Maria Cristinia Alvite for translation.

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/






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