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Associated Press on Creative Commons

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The AP has a very nice article on recent developments at Creative Commons.

Getting rights OK’d can be frustrating for artists, be they authors seeking to quote an essay or documentary filmmakers who’ve got snippets of pop songs playing in the background of key scenes. Artists and scholars who believe the current copyright system unduly stifles creativity are pushing a less restrictive alternative that they call the Creative Commons.

Driving the movement is the belief that we all benefit when creative minds are free to expand upon others’ work – that public discourse is hurt when too much of it is weighed down by the baggage of commerce.

Adherents of Creative Commons are a varied lot. They include MIT, the Beastie Boys, Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, newspaper columnist Dan Gillmor and the British Broadcasting Corp.

I would take issue with that “baggage of commerce” bit, and re-write it like this: “Public discourse and commerce are hurt when too much is weighed down by the baggage of needless legal friction.” But otherwise it’s a gem.

Posted 10 October 2004

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