hydrarchist writes

"You're making a movie and need still images. You're starting out as a photographer and want to spread the word. You're teaching a course and need materials. You've written an article and you want people to analyze it. You're building a website and need graphics. You're a digital artist who wants to collaborate with other artists. You're performing a concert and need a symphony. You've composed a symphony and want people to perform it. How will Creative Commons help you?

Cultivating a New Creative Commons: Creative Commons is a non-profit organization founded on the notion that some people would prefer to share their creative works (and the power to copy, modify, and distribute their works) instead of exercising all of the restrictions of copyright law.

Giving License to Creativity: Our initial goal is to provide an easy way for people (like scholars, musicians, filmmakers, and authors--from world-renowned professionals to garage-based amateurs) to announce that their works are available for copying, modification, and redistribution. We are building a Web-based application for dedicating copyrighted works to the "public domain," and for generating flexible, generous licenses that permit copying and creative reuses of copyrighted works.

Shining a Spotlight on Sharing: We want to make it easy for people to find works that are in the public domain or licensed on generous terms. We are developing a method for labeling such works with metadata that identify their terms of use. Potential users could then search for works (say, photos of the Empire State Building) based on the permitted uses (say, noncommercial copying and redistribution).

Creative Commons, a new web-based enterprise launched yesterday to assist
creators in extending certain uses of their copyrighted
works to the public. Conceived by Eric Eldred
(Eldritch Press), Lawrence Lessig (Stanford), James Boyle
(Duke), Hal Abelson (MIT), Michael Carroll (Villanova) and
Eric Saltzman (Berkman Center), Creative Commons is designed
to encourage and enable the sharing and use of creative works
on the Internet. The goal: to combine the flexibility of
copyright law, the power of metadata tagging for permitted
uses, and Internet search capability to nurture a rich
public domain alongside traditional copyrights.

Last May, the Berkman Center convened the first Creative
Commons meeting. The core question: How do we (literally)
give license to creativity on the Net? What are the legal
and technical barriers to building an IP conservancy?
(View the meeting archive at
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/creativecommons/>. )

"The intellectual property wars will continue to rage for
some time, and with particular ferocity in the digital
environment," says Saltzman, Executive Director of the
Berkman Center, who shepherded the project through its
development. "Creative Commons won't replace traditional
licensing schemes or end these battles, but we've laid
the cornerstone of a promising new alternate reality for
the use of creative works in digital form."

Follow the
links below for more information, including the official
press release and press coverage by the New York Times
and the Associated Press.

http://www.creativecommons.org/news/may16.html>

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/13/technology/13FRE E.html>

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,52562,00. html>

http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2002/view/e _sess/2376>"