The Lawrence Lessig Licenses, Now Say It Three Times Fast

You may or may not have noticed a minor addition to the Klegg blog… far far down the page, at the very bottom, next to the Site Meter, is a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License.

What is a CC License?

A CC License expands and shares people’s work. My specific license allows all users to copy, distribute, perform and derive from my work.

Why bother?

Lawrence Lessig, the founder and chairman of Creative Commons, started the organization as a method of achieving the goals of his Supreme Court case, Eldred v. Ashcroft. (In the 1998 Congress extended the length in time a work may be held after an author’s death with the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA). Eldred v. Ashcroft ruled that that Congress acted within its authority and did not transgress constitutional limitations in placing existing and future copyrights in parity in the CTEA).

Lessig provides free licenses that copyright holders can use when they release their works on the web to encourage sharing and therefore opening up their work for others to draw inspiration from if the work has no market value itself.

Consider adding it to your blog and have an open Creative Commons and an open society.