Primer: Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture, and Creative Commons

05-14-2008 | 02:03 PM EST

It recently dawned on me how, when you've been researching a topic for a while, the cornerstone ideas, people, and works that are so familiar to you may be completely foreign to others. And, as much as I want to make sure I'm providing people with up-to-date information, I also realize that I've got to start setting aside some posts to mention the history behind so many of the current events and news items I normally write about. So today, I'm going to try to give short answers to the questions: Who's Professor Lawrence Lessig? What's Free Culture? And, what are the Creative Commons?

Professor Lawrence Lessig
Because there's already an incredibly in-depth and lengthy bio of Professor Lessig at Wired as well as a short bio on his personal blog, I'm not going to try to re-invent that wheel. I do want to give you a brief overview of Professor Lessig and his contribution to this debate, though.

Lessig (sometimes listed around the Internet as simply "Larry Lessig"), is currently a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and has also served as a professor at Harvard Law School and the University of Chicago. Outside of his academic career, the short bio on his blog explains that he also "serves on the board of the Free Software Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Public Library of Science, and Public Knowledge." On top of all of that, he's also a distinguished author with four books (Code 2.0, Free Culture, The Future of Ideas, and Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace) and many columns for Wired to his credit. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. To be sure, Lessig has been prolific and he and his work have received many accolades and recognition.

Free Culture
Of all his works, Lessig's book, Free Culture, may be his most significant written contribution to this topic. In it, Lessig examines the concept of intellectual property and how it relates to ownership, piracy, and the law in general. He argues that the practice of making law in this area has been turned into a tool for generating wealth rather than freely exchanging ideas. Free Culture also relates Lessig's prosecution of the Eldred v. Ashcroft case, and gives a nod to other free-as-in-freedom pioneers and proponents, like Richard M. Stallman. Ultimately, Free Culture has been a massive inspiration to numerous individuals and groups who believe that the freedom and liberty to participate actively in creating and expressing culture is a requirement for a healthy society.

Interestingly, in a case of practicing what he preaches, Lessig made Free Culture available to the world under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 1.0 Generic license. In essence, this means that others are free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt the work as they see fit so long as Lessig's contribution is attributed. (You may not, however, use Free Culture for commercial purposes.) Free Culture is now available in a wide array of free-of-cost and free-of-restriction formats — most of which are available on the Free Culture / Derivatives/Remixes page — as well as a complete copy of Free Culture available here.

Creative Commons
I think an explanation of Creative Commons, founded by Lessig in 2001, is probably best handled by the description on the organization's website itself:

"We use private rights to create public goods: creative works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and open-source movements, our ends are cooperative and community-minded, but our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them — to declare 'some rights reserved.'"

Put another way, Creative Commons produces licenses for content creators to apply to their works to let the world know how to interact with the work. For example, a Creative Commons license might tell you whether you're allowed to re-produce or distribute a work. It'll tell you whether you may re-sell the work. It'll even tell you who, if anyone, you have to credit as the creator of the original work. One of the biggest differences between Creative Commons' licenses and other non-restrictive licenses, though, is that Creative Commons tries to offer creators a wide variety of licenses to choose from, ranging from absolutely no restrictions to some restrictions. If it all sounds too confusing, just check out the license choosing tool on the Creative Commons website. There you can answer a simple series of questions that will help you choose and understand the license that's right for you. (While you're there, check out all the other things Creative Commons is up to these days — they do a lot more than just write licenses!)

And, there you have it in a very, very small nutshell. Please keep in mind that thousands of people have written and said countless words over Professor Lessig's work, Free Culture, and the Creative Commons. What I've hopefully created here is a very basic primer for someone who wants to know (in a matter of minutes) the gist of what this person, book, and organization are about. For an in-depth understanding, please visit the links throughout the post.

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