By Yvette Wohn

Creative Commons held a special panel and fundraiser on Friday featuring Board Chairman James Boyle, Stanford professor and CC founder Larry Lessig, CEO Joichi Ito, and former Executive Director Molly S. Van Houweling. The event kicked off with HLS Dean Elena Kagan announcing Lessig’s return to Harvard (in fall 2009) and an introduction by Charlie Nesson. Jonathan Zittrain- moderating the session- then zoomed in with his first question: where did Creative Commons start?

Everyone seemed to agree that CC was a collaboration of bits of ideas from several people, and that the concept evolved over many meetings. Zittrain insisted that it was Lessig’s obsession with the letters CC, which began as “counter copyright” in the Eldred v. Ashcroft case. Lessig said that for him, the real start of CC was after he lost the Eldred case, which he thought (if won) would create a nationwide movement to change copyright. “We thought we were going to unleash rationality from top down through the Supreme Court but found out that we had to unleash rationality from the bottom up,” he said.

The panelists reflected on milestone moments of the organization. For Van Houweling, it was when Justice Breyer referred to Creative Commons without footnoting it in his dissent for MGM Studios v. Grokster — assuming everyone would know what it was. For Lessig, it was when Hewlett Foundation walked up to them after losing the Eldred case with a million dollars. Boyle said it was when someone in his class looked at a Coco Chanel bag and said, “Oh, Creative Commons.”

Discussing the development of CC, the panelists emphasized that breaking down barriers was an important movement for CC and people who “prevent failed sharing.”

As it turns out, the enemy is near. Lawyers are the enemy of sharing, Lessig said, criticizing that law professors teach their students to give clients absolute power. “Lawyers’ mentality is to build systems which exert as much control as possible– never thinking about the consequences of that way of deploying culture, knowledge, or science,” he said, pointing out that the situation was similar to that of global warming in that in early stages, people deployed technologies without thinking of how it would affect the environment. Part of the objective of CC is to wake up lawyers to the responsibility they have in deploying inobstructive legal tools, he said.

Ito agreed with Lessig, saying that the unintentional bits of legal code that prevent sharing are results of people don’t understanding interoperability. Even if you wanted to created an open license, different licensing systems would clash with one another, he said.

Boyle also brought up the problem of limited open systems that can build self-reinforcing incentive structures. “We know from things like open source software that if you have a community, you can have structures that incentivize this and start to build norms of communities and cultures of sharing that work, and work economically.” Understanding the net and the role that the net has to enable those cultures of sharing is a central influence in thinking of CC, he added.

One of the big futures of CC is the growing international movement. “While we were barely hanging on with our fingernails to launch CC to the US, which has its own set of complicated copyright issues, Larry said that it needs to be global.” Boyle said. “I told him it was impossible, but soon professionals, artists, lawyers, professors from all over the world were coming to us.”

The panelists also hope that CC will provide the necessary framework for people to make their own decisions about sharing. CC doesn’t have the authority to define freedom and speak on behalf of the creators but it encourages people to become involved and argue about what they think freedom should be, Lessig said. He noted that over time, people were seen moving away from the most restrictive licenses, and that CC provides the infrastructure to encourage arguments on what is the appropriate architecture for freedom.

The audience also had various comments and questions for CC– like if there were any lawsuits involving a CC license (there have been: see here and here), or how CC intended to educate people who don’t know a thing about CC or copyright (Ito suggested that future web standards could automatically include licensing data, making it easier to implement).

As a parting message, the panelists strongly solicited donations, saying that the number of individual donors is increasing but corporate sponsors are bailing. Lessig emphasized that money is important; and that ideas can’t be realized without being backed up with resources.

*Watch the forum on Berkman’s YouTube channel