Discussion of all things related to Public Domain

[Lawrence Lessig <lessig AT 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 Users choose what should or should not be  
published on the website.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.


----------------------------------

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Week 3 - CC & Web 2.0
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