Zadi interviews Eric Steuer, Creative Director of Creative Commons
The web was built by people sharing content and information. Years ago if you saw something cool in a website's design, you'd view source, copy and paste, and tweak it to make it your own. It was exactly this collective pool of available knowledge that made the web grow quickly and exponentially. The same went for hip-hop music in its early days -- artists regularly sampled other artists like James Brown and Parliament Funkadelic.
The creators and artists who were sampled could benefit by being promoted, even if there was no monetary compensation. But at a certain point, content creators get understandably upset when others take their work without permission, potentially for profit. Unfortunately, the traditional copyright system fails to support the flexibility needed in the digital age where the sharing and proliferation of media is paramount. It's either Public Domain or All Rights Reserved. This is where Creative Commons comes in, offering a spectrum of licensing options for content creators.
