Acclaimed musician and artist David Byrne will take the stage with Gilberto Gil, Brazil’s Minister of Culture and pop music legend, at The Town Hall in New York City on September 21st. Byrne and Gil, performing together for the first time, are uniting for a concert presented by WIRED Magazine to benefit Creative Commons, an innovative nonprofit that offers a new approach to creativity and copyright in the digital age ae an approach that respects authors’ rights both to control their work and share it on their own terms. Building on the “all rights reserved” of traditional copyright, Creative Commons has designed a voluntary system of “some rights reserved” protection.

“The understandable legal battle over music file sharing is strangling the creative potential of the Internet,” said Lawrence Lessig, Chair of Creative Commons and WIRED Magazine columnist. “While we should respect the rights of artists who don’t want their work used without permission, we should also make it easier for artists to mark their works with the freedoms they want it to carry, so that other creators can spread their creativity. The support of WIRED and artists such as David Byrne and Gilberto Gil will help us focus attention on this extraordinary opportunity, and encourage other artists to participate.”

Launched in 2002, Creative Commons provides two principal services, both free of charge. First, Creative Commons offers legal tools that help authors and artists explicitly permit certain uses of their work. A photographer might invite noncommercial sharing of an image of the Eiffel Tower, for example. Second, using a unique Web search technology, it helps other people find such artists and their work. For example, a documentary filmmaker might search Creative Commons for “all photographs of the Eiffel Tower free for noncommercial use,” and locate content posted anywhere on the Web meeting those criteria. Together, these tools help free the creative process from unnecessary legal friction and doubt.

“Until now the music industry has had to choose between two poor legal extremes: enforcing restrictive copyright protection or tolerating piracy,” said Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of WIRED Magazine. “The great underexplored middle ground between them is “some rights reserved”, which reflects today’s real-world relationship between artists and consumers, where file sharing can be good marketing and sampling an homage. Many artists recognize this and simply lack an easy legal way to expressly permit it and decriminalize their fans. Creative Commons aims to provide that, and in doing so offers an important step towards an intellectual property rights framework for the 21st century.”

Concert Details
Who: David Byrne (www.davidbyrne.com) and Gilberto Gil (www.gilbertogil.com.br)
What: WIRED presents the Creative Commons benefit concert
When: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 | 8:00 p.m. EST
Where: The Town Hall, New York City [123 West 43rd Street, btw. 6/7th Avenues]
Tickets: Available at Ticketmaster (513) 562-4949 or online via www.ticketmaster.com
Also available at the Town Hall Box Office, www.the-townhall-nyc.org
Orchestra and loge seating tickets are $75.00; Balcony seats are $45.00-$55.00
LIVE Webcast:

The event will be Webcast LIVE 8-11 p.m. EST September 21 via a custom-skinned QuickTime player featuring live audio streamed in high-quality MPEG4/AAC audio, along with a slideshow of photos that will be shot and published via the player as the event occurs. QuickTime player will be available on www.creativecommons.org starting Wednesday, September 15.

About WIRED Magazine

WIRED is a monthly magazine that chronicles the people, companies, technologies, and ideas that are transforming the world around us. Each month, WIRED delivers a glimpse into the future of business, science, entertainment, education, culture, and politics.

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