Discussion of all things related to Public Domain

[Lawrence Lessig <lessig AT 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  
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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
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