Amalyah Keshet
Chair, IP SIG
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Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 13:30:45 -0700
From: Lawrence Lessig <les...@pobox.com>
[This email is part of a weekly series written by Lawrence Lessig and
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From our last episode:
Creative Commons was launched in December, 2002. Within a year, we
counted over 1,000,000 link-backs to our licenses. At a year and a
half, that number was over 1,800,000. At two, the number was just
about 5,000,000. At two and a half years (last June), the number was
just over 12,000,000. And today -- three months later -- Yahoo!
reports over 50,000,000 link-backs to our licenses.
CC: Aims and Lessons
So what problem was Creative Commons trying to solve? And from what
in the past did we learn?
Creative Commons took its idea ˜ give away free copyright licenses ˜
from the Free Software Movement. But the problem we aimed to solve
was somewhat different.
When Richard Stallman launched the Free Software Foundation just over
20 years ago, he was responding to something new in the world of
software development. In his experience, software had been free, in
the sense that the source code was freely accessible and could be
freely modified. But by the early 1980s, this norm was changing.
Increasingly, software was proprietary, meaning the source code was
hidden, and users were not free to understand or modify that source
code. Stallman thus launched his movement to build a buttress against
this trend, by developing a free operating system within which the
freedoms he had known could continue.
The story with culture is somewhat different. We didn't begin with a
world without proprietary culture. Instead, there has always been
proprietary culture ˜ meaning work protected by an exclusive right.
And in my view at least, that's not a bad thing either. Artists need
to eat. Authors, too. A system to secure rewards to the creative
community is essential to inspiring at least some creative work.
But for most of our history, the burdens imposed by copyright on
other creators, and upon the culture generally, were slight. And
there was a great deal of creative work that could happen free of the
regulation of the law. Copyright was important to cultural
development, but marginal. It regulated certain activities
significantly, but left most of us free of copyright's control.
All that began to change with the birth of digital technologies, and
for a reason that no one ever fully thought through.
If copyright regulates "copies," then while a tiny portion of the
uses of culture off the net involves making "copies," every use of
culture on the net begins by making a copy. In the physical world, if
you read a book, that's an act unregulated by the law of copyright,
because in the physical world, reading a book doesn't make a copy. On
the Internet, the same act triggers the law of copyright, because to
read a book in a digital world is always to make a "copy." Thus, as
the world moves online, many of the freedoms (in the sense of life
left unregulated by the law of copyright) disappear. Every use of
copyrighted content at least presumptively triggers a requirement of
permission. The failure to secure permission places a cloud of
uncertainty over the legality of the use. (The critical exception in
the American tradition is "fair use," which I'll talk about next week.)
Now many don't care about clouds of uncertainty. Many just do what
they want, and ignore the consequences (and not just on the Net). But
there are some, and especially some important institutions like
schools, universities, governments, and corporations that rightly
hesitate in the face of that uncertainty. Some, like an increasing
number of universities, would require express permission to use
material found on the Internet in classrooms. Some, like an
increasing number of corporations, would expressly ban employees from
using material they find on the web in presentations. Thus just at
the moment that Internet technologies explode the opportunities for
collaborative creativity and the sharing of knowledge, uncertainty
over permissions interferes with that collaboration.
We at Creative Commons thought this was a kind of legal insanity ˜ an
insanity, that is, created by the law. Not because we believe people
ought to be forced to share. But because we believe that many who
make their work available on the Internet are happy to share. Or
happy to share for some purposes, if not for others. Or eager that
their work be spread broadly, regardless of the underlying rules of
copyright. And these people, we thought, could use a simple way to
say what their preferences were.
And thus the motivation for CC licenses: A simple way for authors and
artists to express the freedoms they want their creativity to carry.
Creators who want to say "All Rights Reserved" need not apply. But
creators who want just "Some Rights Reserved" could use our licenses
to express that idea simply. And individuals and institutions that
wanted to use work they've found on the Internet could do so without
fearing they would be confused with those who believe in "No Rights
Respected" when it comes to copyright.
Like the Free Software Movement, we believed this device would help
open a space for creativity freed of much of the burden of copyright
law. But unlike the Free Software Movement, our aim was not to
eliminate "proprietary culture" as at least some in the Free Software
Movement would like to eliminate proprietary software. Instead, we
believed that by building a buttress of free culture (meaning culture
that can be used freely at least for some important purposes), we
could resist the trends that push the other way. Most importantly,
the trend fueled by the race to "digital rights management" (DRM)
technologies.
What's wrong with DRM? And what about "fair use"? Great questions.
Tune in next week for the start of an answer.
To link to or comment on this message, go to:
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5668
Week 1 - CC in Review: Lawrence Lessig on Supporting the Commons
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5661
Week 1 - CC in Review: Lawrence Lessig on Supporting the Commons -
Spanish version
http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/translations/lessig-letter-1-es.pdf
Thanks to Maria Cristinia Alvite for translation.
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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