Creative Commons launches today!

Creative Commons machine-readable licenses will be available to the public free of charge from today. The release will take place at an early-evening reception in San Francisco which includes a chat and screening by DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid (NYC); a multimedia jam by People Like Us (London); and an address by Lawrence Lessig, Chairman of Creative Commons. Learn creative ways to distribute your works and find pointers to all sorts of licensed content you can use right away. It’s at the SomArts Cultural Center, 934 Brannan Street. Wish I was there.

At last — some real insight into file-sharing

Tim O’Reilly has written a terrific essay on the reality of file-sharing. Among other things, it’s a reminder of the importance of not letting the opposition get control of language — e.g. the way the copyright thugs seek to brand everyone who downloads a music file as a ‘pirate’. Piracy is something quite different — the wholesale copying of copyrighted material and its onward sale for profit. Tim structures his essay in terms of a number of ‘lessons’:

Lesson 1: Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.
Lesson 2: Piracy is progressive taxation
Lesson 3: Customers want to do the right thing, if they can.
Lesson 4: Shoplifting is a bigger threat than piracy.
Lesson 5: File sharing networks don’t threaten book, music, or film publishing. They threaten existing publishers.
Lesson 6: “Free” is eventually replaced by a higher-quality paid service.
Lesson 7: There’s more than one way to do it.