This article forms part of Wired.co.uk's Creative Commons Week, which sees a range of articles published on the topics of CC licensing, as well as the past, present and future of the Creative Commons movement.
Creative Commons is like a social network, claims Joi Ito, the organisation's former CEO and current chairman of the board, "once enough people start to use it, it will start to spread" and spread exponentially.
The adoption curve for the licensing model shows use has doubled every 18 months or so, and this, says Ito, has been steady for the last five years. Creative Commons is now at "critical mass," he claims, but argues that the average person still doesn't know what it is. Success will be marked by Creative Commons content appearing at the top of search results provided by the likes of Google and Yahoo, because that will happen when people know exactly what it is—and want to find it. "We're not there yet but we should be soon," he says.
We caught Ito in between flights. He is now Director of MIT's Media Lab, and sits on the boards of the Mozilla Foundation, WITNESS, and Global Voices. This is alongside being an early investor in Last.fm, Kickstarter, Twitter and Flickr—the latter, which is now a huge repository for Creative Commons imagery. It is with his MIT hat on that he chooses what he believes will be a big growth area for Creative Commons—academic publications. He also has a personal interest in open hardware. "I think what's happening in this area is really similar to what opened with open source. It could really lower the innovation cost of hardware and allow startups to create hardware when, right now, it tends to be dominated by the big companies," he says.
However, even in areas where there has been huge Creative Commons uptake, there are still detractors, he admits. Among photographers, specifically amateur photographers, there is now massive support for the CC licensing model. It is now starting to filter upwards with image library Getty Images starting to look at Creative Commons licenses for non-commercial images. Says Ito: "This seems to be a license that allows photographers to benefit commercially while still using the internet to promote their work. I think the savvier amongst photographers are figuring out that that makes sense."
Some professionals remain skeptical. Ito acknowledges: "More and more photographers are starting to understand the value but there will always be those who believe that for every free photograph that somebody shares, there's one that they're not selling. Photographers who are very pro-Creative Commons tend to be those who are publishing books and tools."
He argues that the model has simply become a scapegoat with photographers blaming it for falling magazine commissions. "There is also a lot of irrational mythology what the real cause of the present copyright difficulties are. I know that the media business, for example, is tough these days and that budgets are getting cut, and it's not just because of Creative Commons licensing. A lot of this is just being caused by the economics of the Internet," he states. And he is confident that education will bring more to Creative Commons across genres.
Some of the organizations that traditionally seemed pitted against Creative Commons are now happy to sit at the table. The Motion Picture Association and Recording Industry Association of America "have become much more moderate," says Ito. "In the recent hearings at the National Academy in the US, both organizations were supportive of the idea that artists should have choice, which is a departure from their original, much more extreme mantra."
But he states that the debate over intellectual copyright can still feel "like the Arab Israeli conflict at some level." He points to two US bills—SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and the Protect IP Act—as forms of "copyright extremism" and claim that their backers are the people coming up with the "somewhat irrational" arguments against Creative Commons.
Although perhaps slightly war-scarred and wary, Ito remains confident and optimistic. "The rational people seem to be at the same table as us and we then work on the extremists on both sides. We're moving forward but every once in a while, there are a few steps back," he concludes.
Listing image by Photograph by Wired.cu.uk
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