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Transformations of cultural production, free culture and the future of the Internet
Third, widespread access to digital creative tools and global telecommunication
distribution allows authors to create on their own production and distribution
facilities that could previously only be secured by the industrial organization of
cultural production (although only the few could benefit from the cultural industries:
for example, no more than 0.7% of releasing music artists make any money from
record sales 10 ).
To address the three challenges of copyright in the age of digitization and
telecommunication networks, Creative Commons created a set of legal tools,
enabling authors to easily license their works permitting users greater copying and
reuse rights, while helping authors’ works and recognition propagate more easily in
the technological environment of growing access. All Creative Commons licences
allow users free copying and at minimum non-commercial sharing, and some allow
remixing rights, while ensuring authors proper attribution and optional restrictions on
commercial distribution and remixing. Thus they allow authors to minimize legal
obstacles to creative reuse of their works, abolish criminalization of users copying
and sharing their works, and maximize their ability to self-publish and self-distribute
benefiting their reputation and, consequently, principle revenue streams from live
performances, commissions and commercial licensing.
In the environment of widespread access to digital technologies for creativity and
distribution, an increasing number of creators and scientists want to seize the
opportunity for their work to reach the greatest number of people, for other creators
and scientists to be able to re-use it in their work and thus to make them recognized,
popular and in demand. Yet, although many artists will claim that they approve of
their audience sharing their works, their audience will be infringing as long as the
author’s permission is not explicitly stated in writing. Creative Commons licences are
an attempt at private law reform aimed at providing authors with an easy way to
express their permission in the form of a licence. Whoever receives a work under one
of the Creative Commons licences can freely share it without infringing on copyright
and can, should the author allow it, re-use it in their own work.
Since its start in 2003, Creative Commons has helped a global free culture
movement emerge. The culture of sharing, and the principle of open sourcing and
successful collaborative production models have gained traction among creators and
innovators. The most prominent users of Creative Commons licences today include
musicians, video makers, visual artists, institutions of higher learning such as
Massachusetts Institute of Technology with open courseware projects, publishers of
scientific journals, scientific laboratories releasing their data sets, large public media
houses such as the BBC, Wikipedia, numerous blogs and blogging services, other
10 See: http://world-information.org/wio/readme/992007035/1078488174/
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