Discussion of all things related to Public Domain

[Lawrence Lessig <lessig AT 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.

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

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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/

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