It had been a while since I’d talked to Larry Lessig, or heard him talk about Creative Commons. I’ve always embraced his vision, but it’s been hard to get people to understand that re-thinking copyright is a critical element of the evolution of content on the web.

But at this year’s TED conference, Lessig presented an 18 min talk that was breathtaking in it’s simplicity and it’s power. Using a fast paced slide show of words and pictures, he took the Audience back to the days of John Phillip Sussa. Sussa was staunch opponent of electronic recording of music – fearing that we could go from being a socity of music makes to a society of passive music listeners. Or, as Lessig put it from a Read /Write Culture to a Read Only Culture. Well, turns out that Sussa was right - and the devices that recorded music resulted in a society that used to sing on the front porch evolving into a society that now listens. But, says Lessig – the remix culture that is now evolving around mash-ups and re-mixes is changing that. He played 3 videos from YouTube - including this one:

and this:

Lessig’s point is simple, and resonates with me. He said - “We are raising a generation of kids who are being told that to be creative, they have to break the law.”

I sat in the audience, and thought back to how man times my older son has asked me about how he can use music in his films, how he can address the creative calling he has to remix and edit to music, without breaking the law. I didn’t have a good answer for him… and we should have one.

But at Magnify.net, we default all of our uploads to a Creative Commons License, so maybe that's a start.