At a time when suing internet users guilty of downloading music is still going strong in the US and European governments are tempted to pass laws destined to punish them, Creative Commons licenses have taken a considerable importance in the digital landscape.

They are only six years old though, which tells a lot about the future development of the free sharing of creative works.This evening, in 14 cities around the world, six of them in the US, the Creative Commons Foundation will be celebrating this event.

Lawrence Lessig, the inventor of CC and a law professor at Harvard, had the idea six years ago of approaching copyright in a different way by creating licenses that authorize certain uses of works that were traditionally forbidden by law (for example their free circulation online).

Seeing the importance Creative Commons licenses have taken in the last six years, as well as the considerable crisis industries based on the exploitation of copyright have been experiencing in the last five years or so, it’s pretty easy to imagine on what side the future is brightest.

And now, a video description:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 at 12:22 pm and is filed under English. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.