Joi Ito Interview – Creative Commons and Intellectual Property

Howard Greenstein | August 13th, 2009 | Strategic Change, The Changing World, Video

Joi Ito, Chairman of the Creative Commons, describes what Creative Commons is, and how it works. Visiting the Supernova DC Mixer last week, he noted that CC allows creators to license their works with specific freedoms the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination of those things. He also describes companies and government agencies that are using it, and how the use of the Creative Commons license is evolving to enable sets of data to be shared more widely. This is effecting science and education in profound ways.

One of the things I found most profound was when Joi noted that the Creative Commons was looking less like a legal or political movement, and more like a technical standards body, helping enable interaction of previously incompatible things.  Joi is an early stage investor in many popular Web 2.0 companies including Socialtext, Six Apart, and Last.FM, and he’s always worth listening to for his predictions (in this video) of the direction the net is going to take.



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