An information commons? Creative Commons and public access to cultural creations

The website Creative Commons went online in December 2002 to counter shifts towards an ‘intellectual property’ conception of copyright in American law dominant since the 1970s. This conception equates creative work with property per se, eclipsing the previously dominant American framework of copyright as a monopoly limited in duration. This legal shift in turn ties in with a concentration in the American media and fear among media corporations that the internet will undermine their dominant market position. Yet this very media concentration removes such issues from broadcast debates, a fact that combines with the complex technical nature of Creative Commons’ arguments to undermine public understanding of their position. By presenting a social history of the site and an overview of how it operates, the relation of the site’s work to media concentration and the future of representative democracy is clarified.