Common Creative Seeks To Change Dynamics of Web 2.0

I use images from Creative Commons as a resource; it is invaluable...it is an information sharing web 2.0 platform and Joi Ito is its CEO, who is on a mission to ease the 'friction' in sharing and the issues of copyright in the digital world. Ito is an avant-garde entrepreneur and venture capitalist with a particular interest in web 2.0. He was an early investor in Twitter, Technorati, Flickr and Last.fm and two years ago Businessweek named him "one of the 25 most influential people on the web".

Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation with volunteer judges, lawyers and activists in 100 countries, creating software, technical and legal tools that allows people who create content on web 2.0 to mark their works with permissions and restrictions that they would like other people online to adhere to. As a result users don't have to ask each time how they can use the work; and cleverly the search engines, software tools understand and know the intent of the author. This lowers the friction of sharing and encourages open collaboration and a supportive community; enhancing the web 2.0 experience. Common Creative has six different types of licences with different restrictions. For example, one can restrict free sharing to non-commercial use; many professional photographers and musicians opt for this so they can earn an income from commercial users; yet allow their fans and supporters to use their work for free. There are ways to keep a business model as Common Creative is not against making money.

Creative Commons wants to remove lawyers, to open up things, so we can all be more interesting online with copyright, which will impact on innovation in the content-sharing space. Ito says, "I have a very clear position: we're pro-copyright and we work within the constraints of copyright. We believe open is better. But we don't go around telling people they should give things away."

Ito believes that the models currently created around ownership and copyright are outdated and importantly that the idea that information is the same as a thing - so if you give it away, you don't have it anymore. Ito gives the example of an academic, saying, "Your value increases every time someone references one of your papers. If you charged a dollar for everyone to cite your paper, that would increase the friction involved in that transaction. Everyone would rather get paid for their work. There's a tremendous amount of value in getting attention and being cited. You have to make a decision: is it more valuable to get cited or to create a barrier to access and get paid? If you're Madonna and everyone knows who you are and wants your music, then you probably favour strict copyright. But if no one's ever heard of you and some people are happy to cite you but don't really want to pay, then a Creative Commons licence probably makes sense." Common Creative is changing the dynamics of web 2.0...seems open is the only way.

Photo Credit: Common Creative Website