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  • From: Lawrence Lessig <lessig AT pobox.com>
  • To: cc-lessigletter AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Community_studios] [cc-lessigletter] CC & Web 2.0
  • Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 13:57:04 -0800

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/
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  • [Community_studios] [cc-lessigletter] CC & Web 2.0, Lawrence Lessig, 11/01/2006

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