David Kushner, Uncommon Law, IEEE Spectrum, March 2006 (accessible only to subscribers). An interview with Lawrence Lessig. Excerpt:
Since first being released in 2002, Creative Commons licenses have been used more than 50 million times, and the rate of adoption is growing. With the launch this year [PS: it was last year, January 2005] of an offshoot, the Science Commons, Lessig hopes to expand into the world of research. IEEE Spectrum contributing editor David Kushner talked to Lessig about his plans....
[DK] How does a Creative Commons license benefit the copyright holder?
[LL] Well, a lot of copyright holders benefit primarily by having their work made accessible and encouraging others to build on their work. The clearest example of that is the world of scholarship. As a scholar, I'm interested in people reading my article. I don't get paid when people copy the article. I don't get paid by journals that distribute the article. We support the open-access publishing movement in the context of scholarship, especially through our Science Commons project, because this is perfectly consistent with the desires of the author, which are basically to spread his or her work.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/28/2006 04:50:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
