Posts by Lawrence Lessig
It’s hard to believe that it was 13 years ago today that we shipped the very first version of the CC license suite. Before then, without the CC licenses, the barriers to collaborating in a global commons were too high. The benefits of shared educational content or scientific research, or paving the way for creators…
Help build the next era of sharing online.Make a donation to Creative Commons. 12 years ago today, we launched the first Creative Commons license suite. The internet was changing the way people share, and changing what it meant to be a creator. But copyright law hadn’t caught up. The Net was making sharing easy; the…
Lawrence Lessig at ETech 2008 / Ed Schipul / CC BY-SA I am thrilled to welcome Ryan Merkley as the incoming CEO of Creative Commons. This is an important moment in the history of the organization. After eleven years, CC licenses are globally recognized as the definitive tool for sharing creative works. Millions across the…
Lawrence Lessig and Aaron Swartz (2002) / Rich Gibson / CC BY Friends and Commoners, It is with incredible sadness that I write to tell you that yesterday, Aaron Swartz took his life. Aaron was one of the early architects of Creative Commons. As a teenager, he helped design the code layer to our licenses,…
Dear Fellow Creative Commoner: A week ago, Japan suffered its most devastating earthquake and tsunami in modern history. This disaster has left thousands of people dead, many others injured and displaced, and an estimated 1.5 million more without access to power. Furthermore, the compounding catastrophe with the country’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant will affect…