Nonprofit Tech

National Digital Archives Program (NDAP)

The Open Library, Public Domain Wiki, and other Realized Myths of Creative Commons Lore

Five years ago the actual implementation of an accessible worldwide digital library or archive existed in the land of fairytales. With the rise of Free and Open culture, decreased hardware costs, and cheap Internet access in some countries of the world, the ability to actualize these myths on a grand scale on the Internet became possible. Still however, the legal hurdles randomly scattered by copyright in jurisdictions around the world erected a major barricade for accessing knowledge. Copyright law generally has increased confusion around how creative works may be used. With the introduction of Creative Commons in 2003, these issues were addressed with clearly explained copyright licenses, a clear public domain dedication, and a brilliant international community consisting of 46+ International jurisdictions supporting the commons.

This presentation surveys the major digital archiving initiatives, museums, and digital libraries around the world which use Creative Commons licenses. It also presents Creative Commons involvement with the Open Library to create a site where books and other media are edited collaboratively wiki-style by people around the world to help determine the copyright status of these works. The myths of lore are to be debunked.

Audio for this presentation can be found at Google Video. See http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1581751353210348142

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