Summary: As a long time supporter of Creative Commons, I was thrilled to get an invitation to the Creative Commons reception last week celebrating Jimmy Wales' joining the board of Creative Commons International. It was only after a couple years of teaching copyright law to business school students that I fully appreciated the power of what they are doing over at Creative Commons. Since the media lobbyists appear to have a solid hold on Capital Hill, thus making copyright reform pretty unlikely, Creative Commons empowers content creators to very simply make their own content freely available for use by others (in such ways as the content owners see fit). Thus, for example, I am able to make all of the content on VentureBlog available to be copied so long as I am appropriately credited as the source by easily adopting a Creative Commons License. On the way up to the Creative Commons party I recorded the preamble to this, my most recent VentureCast. I then caught up with a number of interesting folks -- people like Joi Ito, JD Lasica, Mitch Kapor -- and asked them why they supported Creative Commons. I got a number of interesting answers, some of which I have included in this installment of VentureCast. Give it a listen and see if you find the zealots at the Creative Commons party convincing. I certainly did.
