Creative Commons gets new chairman; Lessig to continue as CEO

1126706184toplogovc2 Creative Commons gets new chairman; Lessig to continue as CEO After four successful years of revolutionizing how content is shared in the real world, Lawrence Lessig, founding chairman of Creative Commons, announced his retirement as chairman of the board last week. Lessig passed the CC torch to Joi Ito, a venture capitalist from Japan. Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization and is known for its Creative Commons copyright licenses. “We provide free licenses,” Lessig writes, “that mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share the work, or remix the work, or both share and remix the work, as the author chooses.” On the popularity of CC, Lessig says that, “within a year of launch, there were more than 1,000,000 link-backs to our licenses (meaning at least a million places on the Web where people were linking to our licenses, and presumptively licensing content under those licenses).” In June 2006, this figure had grown to about 140,000,000 link-backs. “We have hit a stride, and more and more of the net marks itself with the freedoms that Creative Commons helps secure,” says Lessig.

Lessig is happy to be replaced by Ito, calling him the “perfect next chairman.” “The key to our success now,” he says, “is to fit this project within an overall economy of creativity. We want to support and protect the sharing economy; we also want to build tools that would help support crossovers into the commercial economy. That will take the sensibility and insight that Joi has demonstrated in his whole career.”

“The decision [for Ito to step up] was made at the last board meeting”, Mia Garlick, general counsel of Creative Commons, says, “so that CC can have the benefit of Joi’s leadership and to lessen Larry’s load whilst still having his vision, insight and involvement as CEO. Joi has already contributed considerably to Creative Commons with his experience and insights on the “sharing economy” and his tech and industry background.”

Ito recaps the growth of the CC licenses since his involvement. “When I joined the board in 2003, the licenses had been launched and the movement already had a great buzz of activity and goodwill around it. At the time, some products like Movable Type had already integrated Creative Commons licenses, but for the most part, CC was a movement of like-minded people with a vision. Since then, Creative Commons … has become a standard feature in major search engines, Web services, software tools and content libraries.” >>>>>