Creative Commons Launch
December 16, 2002
The day after the Creative Commons
Launch, I wrote an email to a friend at the
Electronic Frontier Foundation who wasn't able to make it, and summarized
the event for her. After I sent the email, I realized that my description
might be of interest to others as well, so I've added it here as a blog entry.
Dear { },
I expect that you've probably heard details about the Creative Commons
event from more authoritative sources than I, but thought I'd pass along a
couple of my own impressions about the event onto you, since you weren't able
to be there last night.
After an introduction by
Glenn Brown, Executive
Director of the Creative Commons,
Lawrence Lessig gave an excellent,
inspiring, and informative speech introducing the concept of the Creative
Commons to the audience. Several hundred people were in attendance (including
Craig Newmark and
Eric Eldred, plaintiff in the recent Supreme Court
case, Eldred vs. Ashcroft).
Midway through his speech, Lessig presented two video messages. The
first, from John Perry Barlow, was well recieved. His presence was missed
by all in attendance, and I'm sure he would have been delighted by the
enthusiatic response that his wholehearted support of the Commons recieved.
Then, Jack Valenti appeared on the screen behind Lessig. There was a
shocked silence, as for a moment, everyone wondered whether Lessig was
playing some sort of practical joke upon the assembled Commoners. As
Valenti spoke, there were hushed boos and laughter from the audience, but
the vast majority of the audience was hanging on every word,
their attention split evenly between trying to find the slightest fault in
what was being said, and utter surprise that the most unpopular figure in
the room was supporting -- supporting! the concept of the Creative
Commons.
Having listened to Valenti's speech, I'm torn. On the one hand, I still
maintain an intense philosophical dislike for motives and actions of the
Motion Picture Association of America, and the man himself. On the other,
I'm surprised that he supports the concept of a Creative Commons, and
given his uncompromisingly complimentary remarks about the project, can't
find fault with his position. He even got a grudging round of applause.
Lessig's presentation also included showing
"Get Creative", a short
animated film explaining the high level concepts behind the Creative
Commons licensing scheme. The film also provided examples of how CC
license usage had the potential to vastly streamline creative
collaboration across the 'Net.
"Get Creative" was the response from the US Copyright
Office, contacted in the early stages of forming the Creative
Commons, when asked whether a legal precedent existed within the USCO
for what the Creative Commons was proposing to implement.
Brewster Kahle spoke shortly after
Lawrence Lessig. The founder of Alexa
Internet, and the cofounder of the Internet
Archive, Brewster has a long standing precedent
for supporting free information initiatives on the 'Net. His
Internet
Bookmobile , which provides
free editions of over 20,000 public domain texts, was present in the hall
behind the audience, and printed a large number of books during the course
of the evening.
The Internet Archive, in cooperation with Alexa Internet, announced that
it would be providing free storage and hosting for works placed in the
Creative Commons for those who desired it. In the words of Brewster
Kahle,
"...Hundreds of terabytes don't bother us. We have gigabit
connections onto the Internet..."
"...the larger your content is, the happier we'll be..."
The round of applause was deafening. Having witnessed the sheer scale of
data that Alexa and the Internet Archive jointly collect and manage, it's
clear that Brewster and the Archive are able to easily support this
endeavour.
Aaron Swartz, Volunteer Metadata Advisor to
the Commons, gave a hands on demonstration of the process for
selecting and using a Creative Commons license via the CC website.
Despite a few video projection problems, everyone gained a good sense of
how easy the license selection and metadata tagging process was.
The evening concluded with video and music presentations by several
artists who'll be making their work available under the Creative Commons,
in addition to incorporating public domain and freely available works
into the work that they do.
DJ Spooky
presented a video remix of D.W. Griffith's 1915 film, "Birth of
a Nation". Well recieved, but the volume was about 10 dB too loud, and
the soundtrack was a little jarring at times. Thankfully, since the film
is under the Creative Commons, I may well have a go at making the effort a
little more pleasing to the ear!
I hope this summary has been of interest. It was a very exciting and
interesting evening, and the Creative Commons looks to be the start of a
very promising move in the right direction for all who value fair use and
balanced interpretations of intellectual property rights.
Happy Holidays,
--- Rupert
Rupert Scammell
Last updated Tue Dec 17 19:47:01 PST 2002
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.