Open Access and Creative Common Sense

In this "Open Access Now" interview article published by BioMed Central, Larry Lessig, author of "Free Culture", discusses 'Creative Commons' - a non-profit corporation that he founded in 2001. The idea behind Creative Commons is to promote the use of copyright to encourage the creative re-use of intellectual works, rather than to prevent it - Lessig feels that current "intellectual property and copyright laws ... have become too restrictive for the Internet era and are now stifling creativity and innovation." The Creative Commons organisation provides a free set of copyright licenses - "Creative Commons licenses" - that creators can use, which explicitly allow re-use while protecting certain rights.

From the Introduction

There are two ways to get hold of Professor Lessig's latest book, "Free Culture". Either you can purchase a hardcover copy from your nearest bookstore for US$24.95 or you can download it for no charge from his website. The publisher, Penguin Press, agreed to release "Free Culture" under a new type of copyright license being championed by Lessig and by Creative Commons, a non-profit corporation that he founded [in 2001]. Creative Commons promotes the use of copyright to encourage the creative re-use of intellectual works, rather than to prevent it. The organization provides a free set of copyright licenses that creators can use, which explicitly allow re-use while protecting certain rights.

"Penguin adopted the licence because they believed that if they did that they would sell more books," explains Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society. "Some publishers are beginning to see these licenses as a strategy for increasing sales." When asked whether it was hard to convince Penguin Press to adopt this unconventional tactic, Lessig chuckles. "Actually, they raised the idea first. I wrote about it in my book with respect to someone else's book. And during the editing process my editor said to me 'should we do this with your publication?' I was intending to suggest this later in the cycle. But they raised it first and I was excited to do it," recalls Lessig.

The Creative Commons licenses indicate that copyrighted works are free for sharing, but only on certain conditions. In the case of Lessig's book, the license specified that derivative works can be made and distributed, as long as they are for non-commercial purposes and the source is attributed. Within days of the launch of "Free Culture" derivative works and copies had sprung up all over the Internet. "It has produced an extraordinary number of remixes of the book in different forms and formats. There is even an audio MP3 version," says Lessig, who is delighted to see how other people's creativity is helping to bring his work to a wider audience. "People have made a lot of changes that were enabled because of the freedom attached to the license."

"Whether in fact publishers need to control access the way that they control it today is a contestable assertion," notes Lessig. "They don't really know themselves." Lessig admires Penguin Press for having the guts to experiment with the new license. "The fact that they needed to experiment with it signals that there is a lot of learning to be done. So far the experiment has been very successful. But we need a lot more data and a lot more time to get a better sense of how well it works. I can understand that traditional publishers will view this as competition with their model - and my view is that competition is something that we should encourage, so let's have more of it!"

Click here for the full article online.

Click here to visit the Creative Commons website.

Click here to read more about Larry Lessig's book, "Free Culture".

Click here to visit Larry Lessig's website.