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On Friday, Creative Commons founder, former Electronic Freedom Frontier board member, and copyright-turned-corruption guru Lawrence Lessig announced that he will be returning to Harvard to serve as a professor of law and faculty director of Harvard's Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, continuing his recent anti-corruption work. Lessig was on hand Friday night to reacquaint himself with Harvard, sitting on a Creative Commons panel with James Boyle, Joi Ito, and Molly S. Van Houweling. The group was moderated by Jonathan Zittrain. The main theme of the evening pitted a tradition of control vs. a future of sharing.
Noting that law school teaches systems of control without considering the environmental consequences of this control, Lessig and co. called lawyers "the enemies of sharing." Instead of encouraging action and collaboration, copyright law encourages stagnation and insularity. Comparing the state of copyright law to the global warming crisis, the panelists noted that, by not taking action now, we are allowing the situation to worsen such that it may soon become too late to reform it. Fortunately, groups like Creative Commons are working hard to restructure how we think about copyright.
Creative Commons began as somewhat of a countercopyright movement, interested in shutting down traditional notions of copyright. It toyed with the idea that everyone should be able to define the "copyright" status of their own works, but soon realized, as Van Houweling said, "Copyright is not a handicraft." There have to be at least some standardized rules in order for sharing—or not sharing—to be successful. Rules also enable interoperability between systems, another crucial aspect of the Commons. As the system moves to embed more information in Creative Commons licensed works, using tools like RDFa, it's important that the licenses can be functionally implemented in a variety of situations.
The initial development of Creative Commons also stemmed from a desire to enable easy sharing of scientific research results. Science Commons, an offshoot of Creative Commons, now works to promote openness in the scientific community and re-use of scientific work. Throughout the evening, Lessig repeatedly emphasized the success of Red Hat and the open source software movement in discussing Creative Commons, saying that free software took over the world—now Creative Commons (and Science Commons) can do the same.
Currently, with Creative Commons licenses at least somewhat established in the U.S., Creative Commons is beginning to look beyond our borders. Dealing with differing copyright laws across countries will be difficult, but the organization thinks it will be necessary in our increasingly global world. Panelists cited WIPO as an important ally in creating the framework for a Creative Commons International.
Echoing Stephen Pimpare's call for Obama supporters to continue their activism, the Creative Commons panelists asserted that we all have a responsibility to help build an infrastructure for successful sharing. Although legislative and judicial changes are necessary to support Creative Commons, it's not just a governmental issue—we all need to understand Creative Commons and educate others about it if the movement is to be successful. Lessig also called for small, "Obamalike" donations to keep Creative Commons strong. The movement has set a goal of $500,000 by December 31 and is not quite halfway there.
Also crucial to Creative Commons' success is the ability to demonstrate positive examples of CC use. It needs to be possible to show that Creative Commons can lead to happiness and profit, not just anarchy and re-use. Ito in particular stressed this necessity. If positive examples get enough visibility, the panelists thought that even "big media," like the RIAA and MPAA, could be convinced to loosen restrictions in some cases, perhaps allowing more remix and reuse of their work.
Even as the visionary Lessig continues to grapple with corruption, rather than copyright, Creative Commons has a strong foothold for making significant change in the way we think about and license our work. As the panel put it, Creative Commons gives us "a language to talk about what free should be." We join James Boyle in hearing the "swelling chord of hope" for a future in which sharing has fewer barriers.
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