Creative Commons

Founder(s)	Lawrence Lessig
Type	Non-profit organization
Founded	2001
Location	San Francisco, California, United States
Key people	Joi Ito
Focus	Expansion of "reasonable", flexible copyright
Method	Creative Commons licenses
Website	creativecommons.org

A sign in a pub in Granada notifies customers that the music they are listening to is freely distributable under a Creative Commons license.

Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization headquartered in Mountain View, California, United States devoted to expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share.^[1] The organization has released several copyright-licenses known as Creative Commons licenses free of charge to the public. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. An easy to understand one-page explanation of rights, with associated visual symbols, explains the specifics of each Creative Commons license. Creative Commons licenses do not replace copyright, but are based upon it. They replace individual negotiations for specific rights between copyright owner (licensor) and licensee, which are necessary under an "all rights reserved" copyright management with a "some rights reserved" management employing standardized licenses for re-use cases where no commercial compensation is sought by the copyright owner. The result is an agile, low overhead and cost copyright management regime, profiting both copyright owners and licensees. Wikipedia is using one of its licenses.

The organization was founded in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred^[2] with support of the Center for the Public Domain. The first article in a general interest publication about Creative Commons, written by Hal Plotkin, was published in February 2002.^[3] The first set of copyright licenses was released in December 2002.^[4] In 2008, there were an estimated 130 million works licensed under Creative Commons.^[5] As of October 2011, Flickr alone hosts over 200 million Creative Commons licensed photos.^[6] Creative Commons is governed by a board of directors and a technical advisory board. Their licenses have been embraced by many as a way for creators to take control of how they choose to share their intellectual property. There has also been criticism that it does not go far enough, or that it discourages regional cultural production.^[who?]

Aim and influence[link]

Golden Nica Award

Creative Commons Japan Seminar, Tokyo 2007

Creative Commons has been described as being at the forefront of the copyleft movement, which seeks to support the building of a richer public domain by providing an alternative to the automatic "all rights reserved" copyright, dubbed "some rights reserved."^[7] David Berry and Giles Moss have credited Creative Commons with generating interest in the issue of intellectual property and contributing to the re-thinking of the role of the "commons" in the "information age". Beyond that, Creative Commons has provided "institutional, practical and legal support for individuals and groups wishing to experiment and communicate with culture more freely."^[8]

Creative Commons attempts to counter what Lawrence Lessig, founder of Creative Commons, considers to be a dominant and increasingly restrictive permission culture. Lessig describes this as "a culture in which creators get to create only with the permission of the powerful, or of creators from the past".^[9] Lessig maintains that modern culture is dominated by traditional content distributors in order to maintain and strengthen their monopolies on cultural products such as popular music and popular cinema, and that Creative Commons can provide alternatives to these restrictions.^[10][11]

Governance[link]

Catherine Casserly is the CEO of Creative Commons.^[12] Mike Linksvayer is Vice President and Diane Peters is the General Counsel.

The board of Creative Commons is currently chaired by Joi Ito. The Board further includes: Hal Abelson, Glenn Otis Brown, Michael W. Carroll, Catherine Casserly, Caterina Fake, Davis Guggenheim, Lawrence Lessig, Laurie Racine, Eric Saltzman, Annette Thomas, Molly Suffer Van Houweling, Jimmy Wales, and Esther Wojcicki (Vice Chair).^[12]

The Technical Advisory Board includes five members: Hal Abelson, Ben Adida, Barbara Fox, Don McGovern and . Hal Abelson also serves on the Creative Commons Board.^[12]

Creative Commons also has an Audit Committee, with two members: Molly Shaffer Van Houweling and Lawrence Lessig. Both also serve on the Creative Commons Board.^[12]

Affiliate Network[link]

In 2011, there are more than 100 affiliates working in over 70 jurisdictions to support and promote CC activities around the world.^[13]

Creative Commons Asia-Pacific[link]

South Korea[link]

Creative Commons Korea (CC Korea) is the affiliated network of Creative Commons in South Korea. In March 2005, CC Korea was initiated by Jongsoo Yoon (in Korean: 윤종수), a Presiding Judge of Incheon District Court, as a project of Korea Association for Infomedia Law (KAFIL). The major Korean portal sites, including Daum and Naver, have been participating in the use of Creative Commons licences. In January 2009, the Creative Commons Korea Association was consequently founded as a non-profit incorporated association. Since then, CC Korea has been actively promoting the liberal and open culture of creation as well as leading the diffusion of Creative Commons in the country.

• Creative Commons Korea^[14]
• Creative Commons Asia Conference 2010^[15]

Supporters of Creative Commons[link]

Corporate Support[link]

Sustainer Level (Committed for 5 years)

• The Beal Fund of Triangle Community Foundation, on behalf of Lulu.com
• Google
• Mozilla Foundation
• Red Hat

Investor Level ($25,000 and up)

• Best Buy
• Digital Garage
• Duke University
• eBay
• Microsoft Corporation
• Mountain Equipment Co-op
• Nike

Types of Creative Commons licenses[link]

Wanna Work Together? animation by Creative Commons

The second version of the Mayer and Bettle promotional animation explains what Creative Commons is.

Creative Commons licenses consist of four major condition modules: Attribution (BY), requiring attribution to the original author; Share Alike (SA), allowing derivative works under the same or a similar license (later or jurisdiction version); Non-Commercial (NC), requiring the work is not used for commercial purposes; and No Derivative Works (ND), allowing only the original work, without derivatives.^[16] These modules are combined to currently form six major licenses of the Creative Commons:^[16]

• Attribution (CC BY)
• Attribution Share Alike (CC BY-SA)
• Attribution No Derivatives (CC BY-ND)
• Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC)
• Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (CC BY-NC-SA)
• Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)

As of the current versions, all Creative Commons licenses allow the "core right" to redistribute a work for non-commercial purposes without modification. The NC and ND options will make a work non-free according to the Definition of Free Cultural Works.

An additional special license-like contract is the CC0 option, or "No Rights Reserved."^[17] This license dedicates a work to the public domain (or an equivalent status in jurisdictions where a dedication to public domain is not possible). Compared with a "public domain" statement added to the work, a CC0 statement is less ambiguous and achieves the desired effect on a global scale, rather than limited to some jurisdictions.

For software, Creative Commons endorses three free licenses created by other institutions: the BSD License, the CC GNU LGPL license, and the CC GNU GPL.^[18][19]

Usage and list of projects that release contents under Creative Commons licenses[link]

This section may need to be rewritten entirely to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards. You can help. The discussion page may contain suggestions. (June 2011)

Creative Commons maintains a content directory wiki of organizations and projects using Creative Commons licenses.^[20] On its website CC also provides case studies of projects using CC licenses across the world.^[21] CC licensed content can also be accessed through a number of content directories and search engines (see CC licensed content directories).

On January 13, 2009, some broadcasting content from Al Jazeera on the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict was released under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.^{[22][23][24][25][26][27]}

• Arduino (CC BY-SA)
• Citizendium (CC BY-SA)
• knol (mostly CC BY-SA or CC BY-NC-SA)
• NINJAM (CC BY-SA)
• The Saylor Foundation (CC BY)
• Wikipedia (CC BY-SA, since June 2009)
• Wikimedia Commons (CC licenses among other options)
• Wikia (CC BY-SA, since June 2009)

Jurisdiction ports[link]

Countries to which Creative Commons licenses have been ported (green) or are being ported (blue)

The original non-localized Creative Commons licenses were written with the U.S. legal system in mind, so the wording could be incompatible within different local legislations and render the licenses unenforceable in various jurisdictions. To address this issue, Creative Commons has started to port the various licenses to accommodate local copyright and private law. As of May 2010, there are 52 jurisdiction-specific licenses, with 9 other jurisdictions in drafting process, and more countries joining the worldwide project.^[28]

For the upcoming version 4 of the CC licenses a re-integration of the ports into single licenses is being considered.

Criticism[link]

This article's Criticism or Controversy section may compromise the article's neutral point of view of the subject. Please integrate the section's contents into the article as a whole, or rewrite the material. (April 2010)

General criticism[link]

CC some rights reserved

Péter Benjamin Tóth asserts that Creative Commons' objectives are already well served by the current copyright regime, and that Creative Commons' "some rights reserved" slogan, as against Copyright's "all rights reserved", creates a false dichotomy. "Copyright provides a list of exclusive rights to the rightholder, from which he decides which ones he wishes to "sell" or grant and which to retain. The "Some rights reserved" concept is therefore not an alternative to, but rather the very nature of classical copyright."^[29] Other critics fear that Creative Commons could erode the copyright system over time.^[30] or allow "some of our most precious resources — the creativity of individuals — to be simply tossed into the commons to be exploited by whomever has spare time and a magic marker."^[31] Some critics question whether Creative Commons licenses are useful for artists, and suggest that Creative Commons primarily serves a "remix culture" and fails to meet the real needs of financial compensation and recognition of artists.^[31] or worry that the lack of rewards for content producers will dissuade artists from publishing their work.^[32]

Generally, many critics erroneously view Creative Commons as a replacement of Copyright, whereas in reality it is a standardized, copyright based solution for those cases where re-use and re-mixing is desired under specific conditions.^[33]

Some critics contend that the Creative Commons licensing system dissuades content producers from coordinating efforts to revise the Copyright Act.^[30]

Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig counters that copyright laws have not always offered the strong and seemingly indefinite protection that today's law provides.^[34] Rather, the duration of copyright used to be limited to much shorter terms of years, and some works never gained protection because they did not follow the now-abandoned compulsory format.^[34]

Another critic questions whether Creative Commons is the commons that it purports to be, given that at least some restrictions apply to people's ability to use the resources within the common field.^[32] This is restricted entirely within the private rights of others and has nothing to do with rights shared by all.^[35] Creative Commons also does not define "creativity" or what aspects a work requires in order to become part of the commons.^[32]

Critics such as and Giles Moss argue that the founding of Creative Commons is not the proper mechanism for creating a commons of original content.^[35] Rather, a commons should be created, and its presence preserved, through the political process and political activism, not through lawyers writing down new rules.^[35]

Many criticize that four out of the six Creative Commons licenses are neither "free" nor truly "open" because of the restrictions they place on reuse. With the definition of open being "A piece of content or data is open if anyone is free to use, reuse, and redistribute it — subject only, at most, to the requirement to attribute and share-alike."^[36]

License proliferation and incompatibility[link]

Critics have also argued that Creative Commons worsens license proliferation, by providing multiple licenses that are incompatible.^[37] The Creative Commons website states, "Since each of the six CC licenses functions differently, resources placed under different licenses may not necessarily be combined with one another without violating the license terms."^[38] Works licensed under incompatible licenses may not be recombined in a derivative work without obtaining permission from the license-holder.^[39][40][41] Some worry that "without a common legal framework, works which inadvertently mix licenses may become unshareable."^[42]

The compatibility issue is especially relevant because the most frequently used licenses, the non-free "non-commercial" licenses (CC BY-NC-SA or CC BY-NC-ND) and the open attribution-share-alike license (CC BY-SA, used, e. g., by Wikipedia) cannot be combined.

License misuse[link]

Creative Commons guiding the contributors. This image is a derivative work of Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix.

Creative Commons is only a service provider for standardized license text, not a party in any agreement. Abusive users could brand the copyrighted works of legitimate copyright holders with Creative Commons licenses and re-upload these works to the internet. No central database of Creative Commons works is controlling all licensed works and the responsibility of the Creative Commons system rests entirely with those using the licences.^[43] This situation is, however, not specific to Creative Commons. All copyright owners must individually defend their rights and no central database of copyrighted works or existing license agreements exists. The United States Copyright Office does keep a data-base of all works registered with it, but absence of registration does not imply absence of copyright.

Although Creative Commons offers multiple licenses for different uses, some critics suggest that the licenses still do not address the differences among the media or among the various concerns that different authors have.^[32] For example, one critic points out that documentary filmmakers could have vastly different concerns from those held by a software designer or a law professor.^[32] Additionally, people wishing to use a Creative Commons-licensed work would have to determine if their particular use is allowed under the license or if they need additional permission.^[32]

Lessig wrote that the point of Creative Commons is to provide a middle ground between two extreme views of copyright protection—one demanding that all rights be controlled, and the other arguing that none should be controlled.^[34] Creative Commons provides a third option that allows authors to pick and choose which rights they want to control and which they want to relinquish.^[34] The multitude of licenses reflects the multitude of rights that can be passed on to subsequent creators.^[34]

The Free Software Foundation[link]

Some of Creative Commons licenses have been denounced by FSF founder Richard Stallman because, he says, they "do not give everyone [...] minimum freedom" "to share, noncommercially, any published work".^[44]

Mako Hill asserts that Creative Commons fails to establish a "base level of freedom" that all Creative Commons licenses must meet, and with which all licensors and users must comply. "By failing to take any firm ethical position and draw any line in the sand, CC is a missed opportunity.... CC has replaced what could have been a call for a world where 'essential rights are unreservable' with the relatively hollow call for 'some rights reserved.'" Some critics fear that Creative Commons' popularity may detract from the more stringent goals of other free content organizations.^[37]

Other criticism of the non-commercial license[link]

Other critics, such as Erik Möller, raise concerns about the use of Creative Commons' non-commercial license. Works distributed under the Creative Commons Non-Commercial license are not compatible with many open-content sites, including Wikipedia, which explicitly allow and encourage some commercial uses. Möller explains that "the people who are likely to be hurt by an -NC license are not large corporations, but small publications like weblogs, advertising-funded radio stations, or local newspapers."^[45]

Lessig responds that the current copyright regime also harms compatibility and that authors can lessen this incompatibility by choosing the least restrictive license.^[46] Additionally, the non-commercial license is useful for preventing someone else from capitalizing on an author's work when the author still plans to do so in the future.^[46]

Debian[link]

The maintainers of Debian, a GNU and Linux distribution known for its rigid adherence to a particular definition of software freedom,^{[citation needed]} rejected even the Creative Commons Attribution License prior to version 3 as incompatible with the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) due to the license's anti-DRM provisions and its requirement that downstream users remove an author's credit upon request from the author.^[47] However, version 3.0 of the Creative Commons licenses addressed these concerns^[48] and is considered to be compatible with the DFSG.^[49]

Legal cases[link]

This section requires expansion.

Creative Commons have been defended in several jurisdictions.^[50] Some notable cases are:

Dutch tabloid[link]

A Creative Commons license was first tested in court in early 2006, when podcaster Adam Curry sued a Dutch tabloid who published photos without permission from his Flickr page. The photos were licensed under the Creative Commons Non-Commercial license. While the verdict was in favor of Curry, the tabloid avoided having to pay restitution to him as long as they did not repeat the offense. An analysis by Professor Bernt Hugenholtz, director of the Institute for Information Science of the University of Amsterdam and main creator of the Dutch CC license of the decision states, "The Dutch Court's decision is especially noteworthy because it confirms that the conditions of a Creative Commons license automatically apply to the content licensed under it, and bind users of such content even without expressly agreeing to, or having knowledge of, the conditions of the license."^[51][52]

Virgin Mobile[link]

In 2007, Virgin Mobile launched an Australian bus stop ad campaign promoting their cellphone text messaging service using the work of amateur photographers who uploaded their work to Flickr using a Creative Commons-BY (Attribution) license. Users licensing their images this way freed their work for use by any other entity, as long as the original creator was attributed credit, without any other compensation required. Virgin upheld this single restriction by printing a URL leading to the photographer's Flickr page on each of their ads. However, one picture, depicting 15 year-old Alison Chang at a fund-raising carwash for her church,^[53] caused some controversy when she sued Virgin Mobile. The photo was taken by Alison's church youth counselor, Justin Ho-Wee Wong, who uploaded the image to Flickr under the Creative Commons license.^[53] In 2008, the case (concerning personality rights rather than copyright as such) was thrown out of a Texas court for lack of jurisdiction.^[54][55]

CC-Music – Spanish Court (2006)[link]

The issue in this case was not whether the CC license was enforceable, but instead whether the major collecting society in Spain could collect royalties from a bar that played CC-licensed music. In this case, the main Spanish collecting society—Sociedad General de Autores y Editores ("SGAE") sued a disco owner for the public performance of music supposedly managed by the collecting society. However, the Lower Court rejected the collecting society's claims because the owner of the bar proved that the music he was using was not managed by the society, since it was under CC licence.^[56]

GateHouse Media, Inc. vs. That's Great News, LLC[link]

On June 30th, 2010 GateHouse Media filed a lawsuit against That's Great News. GateHouse Media owns a number of local newspapers, including Rockford Register Star, which is based in Rockford, Illinois. That's Great News is a company that makes plaques out of newspaper articles and sells them to the people featured in the articles, so those people can memorialize their "15 minutes of fame."^[57] GateHouse sued That's Great News for copyright infringement and breach of contract, because their publications were licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerial-NoDerivs License, which doesn't allow commercial use of the publications. The case was settled on August 17th, 2010, though the settlement was not made public.^{[57] [58]}

See also[link]

Find more about Creative Commons on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Definitions and translations from Wiktionary
	Images and media from Commons
	Learning resources from Wikiversity
	News stories from Wikinews
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource
	Textbooks from Wikibooks

Listen to this article (info/dl)

This audio file was created from a revision of the "Creative Commons" article dated 2005-11-20, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help)

More spoken articles

• CC PDF Converter
• Comparison of wiki farms
• Copyleft
• Copyright
• Creative Commons licenses
• Free content
• Free Culture movement
• List of works available under a Creative Commons License
• Open content
• Open source
• Public domain
• Share-alike

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Creative Commons wiki (English) (German) (Spanish) (Catalan) (French) (Hebrew) (Italian) (Portuguese) (Russian)
• Creative Commons Videos with subtitles
• Short Flash animation describing Creative Commons
• Creative Commons Explained: Lawrence Lessig on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos
• Search Creative Commons Photos

Lawrence Lessig
Born	(1961-06-03) June 3, 1961 (age 51) Rapid City, South Dakota, U.S.
Occupation	Founder, Creative Commons Founder, Stanford Center for Internet and Society Professor, Harvard Law School
Spouse	Bettina Neuefeind
Website
lessig.org

Interview with Lawrence Lessig in 2009.

Lawrence "Larry" Lessig (born June 3, 1961) is an American academic and political activist. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark, and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications, and he has called for state-based activism to promote substantive reform of government with a Second Constitutional Convention.^[1]

He is a director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University and a professor of law at Harvard Law School. Prior to rejoining Harvard, he was a professor of law at Stanford Law School and founder of its Center for Internet and Society. Lessig is a founding board member of Creative Commons, and also is on the board of MapLight.^[2] He is on the advisory boards of the Sunlight Foundation^[3] and Americans Elect.^[4] He is a former board member of the Free Software Foundation, Software Freedom Law Center and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.^[5]

Academic career[link]

Born in Rapid City, South Dakota, Lessig grew up in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and earned a B.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Management (Wharton School) from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.A. in philosophy from the University of Cambridge (Trinity) in England, and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1989. After graduating from law school, he clerked for a year for Judge Richard Posner, at the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago, Illinois and another year for Justice Antonin Scalia at the Supreme Court.^[6]

Lessig started his academic career at the University of Chicago Law School, where he was Professor from 1991 to 1997. From 1997 to 2000, he was at Harvard Law School, holding for a year the chair of Berkman Professor of Law, affiliated with the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.^[6] He subsequently joined Stanford Law School, where he established the school's Center for Internet and Society.^[7]

Lessig returned to Harvard in December 2008 as Professor and Director of the "Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics".^[8]

Political activism[link]

Lessig is currently considered politically liberal. As a law clerk, however, he worked for both Judge Richard Posner and Justice Antonin Scalia, two influential conservative judges.

Lessig has emphasized in interviews that his philosophy experience at Cambridge radically changed his values and career path. Previously, he had held strong conservative or libertarian political views, desired a career in business, was a highly active member of Teenage Republicans, serving as the Youth Governor for Pennsylvania through the YMCA Youth and Government program^[9] in 1978 and almost pursued a Republican political career.

What was intended to be a year abroad at Cambridge convinced him instead to stay another two years to complete a graduate degree in philosophy there and develop his changed political values. During this time, he also traveled in the Eastern Bloc, so acquiring a lifelong interest in Eastern European law and politics.

Lessig refuses to embrace conventional libertarianism. While Lessig remains skeptical of government intervention, he favors regulation by calling himself "a constitutionalist". In his blog, Lessig came out in favor of then-Democratic primary candidate Barack Obama, citing the transformative nature of Obama's campaign as one of his chief reasons. On one occasion, Lessig also commended the John McCain campaign for discussing fair use rights in a letter to YouTube where it took issue with YouTube for indulging overreaching copyright claims leading to the removal of various campaign videos.^[10]

In a speech in 2011, Lessig revealed that he was disappointed with Obama's performance in office, criticizing it as a "betrayal", and he criticized the president for using "the (Hillary) Clinton playbook".^[11] Lessig has called for state governments to call for a national constitutional convention,^[12] and that the convention be populated by a "random proportional selection of citizens" which he suggested would work effectively. He said "politics is a rare sport where the amateur is better than the professional."^[12]

Constitutional convention[link]

In 2010, Lessig began to organize for a national constitutional convention.^[13] He co-founded Fix Congress First! with Joe Trippi.^[14] Lessig called for a convention to propose amendments to the United States Constitution^[15] in a September 24–25, 2011 conference co-chaired by the Tea Party Patriots' national coordinator,^[16] in Lessig's October 5 book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress – and a Plan to Stop It,^[17] and at the Occupy protest in Washington, DC.^[18] Reporter Dan Froomkin said the book offers a manifesto for the Occupy Wall Street protestors, focusing on the core problem of corruption in both political parties and their elections.^[19] Lessig's initial constitutional amendment would allow legislatures to limit political contributions from non-citizens, including corporations, anonymous organizations, and foreign nationals, and he also supports public campaign financing and electoral college reform to establish the one person, one vote principle.^[20] Lessig's web site convention.idea.informer.com allows anyone to propose and vote on constitutional amendments.^[21]

Rootstrikers[link]

Change Congress, founded by Lessig and Joe Trippi, the Fix Congress First project, and the Rootstrikers project were created to help volunteers to address the problem of money in politics.^[22][23] In November 2011, Lessig announced all three projects would become part of the "United Republic". http://unitedrepublic.org/.  organization, along with Dylan Ratigan’s Get Money Out campaign.^[24][25]

Money in politics[link]

At the iCommons iSummit 07, Lessig announced that he will stop focusing his attention on copyright and related matters and will work on political corruption instead.^[26] This new work may be partially facilitated through his wiki, "Lessig Wiki", which he has encouraged the public to use to document cases of corruption.^[27] Lessig criticized the revolving door phenomenon in which legislators and staffers leave office to become lobbyists and have become beholden to special interests.^[28]

In February 2008, a Facebook group formed by law professor John Palfrey encouraged him to run for Congress from California's 12th congressional district, the seat vacated by the death of U.S. Representative Tom Lantos.^[29] Later that month, after forming an "exploratory project", the decision was made not to run for the vacant seat.^[30]

Despite having decided to forgo running for Congress himself, Lessig remained interested in attempting to change Congress to reduce corruption.^[30] To this end, he worked with political consultant Joe Trippi to launch a web based project called "Change Congress".^[31] In a press conference on March 20, 2008, Lessig explained that he hoped the Change Congress website would help provide technological tools voters could use to hold their representatives accountable and reduce the influence of money on politics.^[32] He is a board member of MAPLight.org, a nonprofit research group illuminating the connection between money and politics.

Lessig has known president Barack Obama since their days of both teaching law at the University of Chicago, and had been mentioned as a candidate to head the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates the telecommunications industry.^[33] However, this position is now held by Julius Genachowski.^[34]

At his talk at the 2009 Aspen Ideas Festival, Professor Lessig talked about Forbin Problems in a talk entitled Will Technology Change Our Lives?^[35] and also about his idea that the American public has lost faith in the central institution of our democracy, Congress.^[36]

Internet and computer activism[link]

"Code is law"[link]

In computer science, "code" typically refers to the text of a computer program (the source code). In law, "code" can refer to the texts that constitute statutory law. In his book Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace, Lessig explores the ways in which code in both senses can be instruments for social control, leading to his dictum that "Code is law." Lessig later updated his work in order to keep up with the prevailing views of the time and released the book as Code: Version 2.0 in December 2006.

Legislative reform[link]

Despite presenting an anti-regulatory standpoint in many fora, Lessig still sees the need for legislative enforcement of copyright. He has called for limiting copyright terms for creative professionals to five years, but believes that introducing the bureaucratic procedure needed to renew trademarks, by making copyright need to be renewed for up to 75 years after this five year term, would mean that creative professionals' work, many of the independent, would become more easily and quickly available.^[37] Lessig has repeated taken a stance that privatization through legislation like that seen in the 1980s in the UK with British Telecommunications is not the best way to help the Internet grow. He said, "When government disappears, it's not as if paradise will take its place. When governments are gone, other interests will take their place," "My claim is that we should focus on the values of liberty. If there is not government to insist on those values, then who?" "The single unifying force should be that we govern ourselves." ^[38]

Free Culture[link]

In 2002, Lessig received the Award for the Advancement of Free Software from the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and on March 28, 2004 he was elected to the FSF's Board of Directors.^[39] In 2006, Lessig was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.^[40] Lessig is also a well-known critic of copyright term extensions.

He proposed the concept of "Free Culture".^[41] He also supports free software and open spectrum.^[42] At his Free Culture keynote at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention 2002, half of his speech was about software patents, which he views as a rising threat to both free/open source software and innovation.

Lessig and Jimmy Wales at the iCommons iSummit07 in Dubrovnik.

In March 2006, Lessig joined the board of advisors of the Digital Universe project.^[43] A few months later, Lessig gave a talk on the ethics of the Free Culture Movement at the 2006 Wikimania conference.

Lessig claimed in 2009 that, because 70% of young people obtain digital information from illegal sources, the law should be changed.^[44]

Net neutrality[link]

Lessig has long been known to be a supporter of Net Neutrality. In 2006, he testified before the US Senate that he believed Congress should ratify Powell's four Internet freedoms and add a restriction to access-tiering, i.e. he does not believe content providers should be charged different amounts. The reason is that the Internet, under the neutral end-to-end design is an invaluable platform for innovation, and the economic benefit of innovation would be threatened if large corporations could purchase faster service to the detriment of newer companies with less capital. However, Lessig has supported the idea of allowing ISPs to give consumers the option of different tiers of service at different prices. He was reported on CBC News as saying that he has always been in favour of allowing internet providers to charge differently for consumer access at different speeds. He said, "Now, no doubt, my position might be wrong. Some friends in the network neutrality movement as well as some scholars believe it is wrong - that it doesn't go far enough. But the suggestion that the position is 'recent' is baseless. If I'm wrong, I've always been wrong." ^[45]

Combating sexual abuse[link]

In May 2005, it was revealed that Lessig had experienced sexual abuse by the director at the American Boychoir School which he had attended as an adolescent.^[46] Lessig reached a settlement with the school in the past, under confidential terms. He revealed his experiences in the course of representing another student victim, John Hardwicke, in court.^[47] In August 2006, he succeeded in persuading the New Jersey Supreme Court to restrict the scope of immunity radically, which had protected nonprofits that failed to prevent sexual abuse from legal liability.^[48]

Media references[link]

Lessig appears as a character in a 2005 episode of the television political drama The West Wing ("The Wake Up Call", season 6, episode 14). Lessig’s character, portrayed by Christopher Lloyd, is intended to be a realistic depiction including such details as citing his book The Future of Ideas and his expertise in Eastern European constitutional law.^[49]

Artist group Monochrom performed a "Love Song for Lessig" on Boing Boing TV in the November 15, 2007 episode.^[50] The German term "lässig" (meaning "cool" or "relaxed") is pronounced the same as Lessig's last name, and "Love Song for Lessig" uses the homonym for humor.

"Prometeus - The Media Revolution", a video produced by Italian internet consulting company Casaleggio Associati that attempts to predict the future of media over the next 40 to 50 years, proposes Lawrence Lessig to become the new US Secretary of Justice and declare copyright to be illegal in 2020.

Legal challenges[link]

Lessig's political opinions on copyright law have led to legal challenges where he has attempted to put them into action without legislative change. In March 2003 he acknowledged severe disappointment with his Supreme Court defeat in the Eldred copyright-extension case, where he unsuccessfully tried to convince Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who has sympathies for de-regulation, to back his "market-based" approach to intellectual property regulation.^[51]

Notable cases[link]

• Hardwicke v. American Boychoir (representing plaintiff John Hardwicke) Pending^[48]
• Golan v. Gonzales (representing multiple plaintiffs)
• Eldred v. Ashcroft (representing plaintiff Eric Eldred) Lost
• Kahle v. Ashcroft—(also see Brewster Kahle) Dismissed
• United States v. Microsoft (special master and author of an amicus brief addressing the Sherman Act^[52])
  • Lessig was appointed special master by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson in 1997. The appointment was vacated by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.^[53] The appellate court ruled that the powers granted to Lessig exceeded the scope of the Federal statute providing for special masters. Judge Jackson then solicited Lessig’s amicus brief.
  • Lessig himself says about this appointment: "Did Justice Jackson pick me to be his special master because he had determined I was the perfect mix of Holmes and Ed Felten? No, I was picked because I was a Harvard Law Professor teaching the law of cyberspace. Remember: So is 'fame' made."^[54]
• MPAA v. 2600 (submitted an amicus brief with Yochai Benkler in support of 2600^[55])

Personal life[link]

Lessig is married to Bettina Neuefeind, and is the father of three children (Willem, Teo, and Tess) [1].

Bibliography[link]

• Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace (2000) ISBN 978-0-465-03913-5
• The Future of Ideas (2001) ISBN 978-0-375-50578-2 - available as a free Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommerical (by-nc)
• Free Culture (2004) ISBN 978-1-59420-006-9 - available as a free Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial
• Code: Version 2.0 (2006) ISBN 978-0-465-03914-2 - available as a free Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (by-sa)
• Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy (2008) ISBN 978-1-59420-172-1 - available as a free Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (by-nc-nd)
• Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress--and a Plan to Stop It (2011) ISBN 978-0-446-57643-7

See also[link]

• 99 Percent Declaration
• Copyleft
• Free software movement
• Free content
• FreeCulture.org
• Open educational resources
• Gratis versus Libre
• Open content
• Law of the Horse
• Lobbying in the United States
• Second Constitution of the United States proposal for constitutional reform

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Lawrence Lessig

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Lawrence Lessig

• Official website Lessig (includes blog 2002-2009)
• Official website Lessig Blog, v2
• Lawrence Lessig on Twitter
• Lawrence Lessig's channel on YouTube
• Lawrence Lessig at Harvard Law School
  • Profile at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics
• Rootstrikers
• Lawrence Lessig at TED Conferences
• Appearances on C-SPAN
  • C-SPAN Q&A interview with Lessig, November 20, 2011
• Lawrence Lessig on Charlie Rose
• Lawrence Lessig at the Internet Movie Database
• Works by or about Lawrence Lessig in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Lawrence Lessig collected news and commentary at The New York Times
• Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress—and a Plan to Stop It talk by Lawrence Lessig