SAN FRANCISCO — For generations, the owners of creative material had tight control over how it was distributed. Violating someone's copyright took a major effort. A printing plant was needed to pirate a book, a factory to bootleg an album.
The Net changed all that, making casual infringement, unauthorized borrowing and wholesale piracy effortless and pervasive. Copyright holders are responding by cracking down on violators, who in other circumstances might be customers.
Into this messy and acid-edged situation comes Creative Commons, a new nonprofit organization that will launch its first projects today. Based at Stanford Law School's Center for Internet and Society, Creative Commons has a high-profile board and an ambitious mission. The goal is to promote creativity and collaboration by developing new forms of copyright while reinvigorating the ever-shrinking sphere of copyright-free works: the public domain.
"Using the copyright system, we will make a wider, richer public domain for creators to build upon and individuals to share," said Stanford law professor and Creative Commons Chairman Lawrence Lessig. "Walt Disney built an empire from the riches of the public domain. We'd like to support a hundred thousand more Walt Disneys."
As a first step, Creative Commons has developed a group of licenses that will allow copyright holders to surrender some rights to works while keeping others.
One license, for instance, allows people to copy or distribute a work as long as they give the owner credit. Another allows a work to be copied, distributed or displayed as long as it is for a noncommercial purpose. A third license permits copying but forbids using the work to make another, derivative work. (The licenses are legal documents, although that doesn't guarantee that people will honor them.)
A license pioneer is Roger McGuinn, leader of '60s rock group the Byrds and more recently a folk music enthusiast. He's licensing 80 songs through Creative Commons, giving the world permission to take his work as long as all three of his licenses are respected.
By encouraging free distribution and widespread sampling, McGuinn might end up increasing his sales. It's an argument almost as old as the Web; Creative Commons is merely offering tools to allow it to happen on an easier, artist-sanctioned basis.
