Free media from the commons to you.

I’ve been wanting to blog about this for a quite a while… I first read about the Public Resource project back in November 2007 when they announced that they were releasing loads of media under the Creative Commons CC-0 license (i.e. signaling that there are no copyrights or other related rights attached to the content). I find this initiative quite gutsy and brilliant. We undoubtedly need more of clever, pro bono and open-minded lawyers like Lawrence Lessig.

http://public.resource.org/
http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7828

More recently, Flickr announced that they are going to release photographic treasures hidden at the gorgeous LOC (Library of Congress) in Washington, D.C. I was fortunate enough to visit this jewel of architecture when I stayed in D.C. over the Thanksgiving 2006 break.

http://www.flickr.com/commons

I’ll end this post with one of my favorite quote by Lessig:

Creativity and innovation always builds on the past.
The past always tries to control the creativity that builds upon it.
Free societies enable the future by limiting this power of the past.
Ours is less and less a free society.