Remixing culture - a 'C' change?

For those of us who are still getting our heads around the concept of 'Creative Commons' and the idea of 'free culture' on the Web, an interesting and illuminating video entitled 'Reticulum Rex' comes highly recommended. The title Reticulum Rex you will discover, is a clever anagram of a phrase that is relevant to the ethos of creative commons! When you watch the video you will understand. Creative Commons, orginally the brainchild of American academic Lawrence Lessig, is a non-profit organisation that aims to bring sense to copyright on the Internet, to clarify the rules of ownership, creativity and legal use of all digital artefacts - 'helping authors and artists to build a body of free culture created in real time' - runs the video commentary.

In their own words, the good people at CC aim to help us all to knock down the walls between writer and reader, composer and listener, culture and creator and change the rules over copyright within social media and technology. Founder's copyright - the rule that after 14 years material can be made available for free use by anyone - is a direct byproduct of the CC project. Sampling licences are another CC outcome - new tools to enable people to use the work of others in part (sampling) to remix and repurpose, thereby creating new content that previously did not exist. And all this without any legal worries or friction. This is a philosophy that goes beyond most people's received wisdom, and yet makes complete sense in our read/write web culture where digital content of all kinds is constantly shifting, changing and merging. Watch the video if you want to get to grips with Creative Commons. (Image from Masternewmedia.org)

A useful site related to this topic is the JISC funded Web2Rights project.