Get Downloaded

By Kristina Dell

Even as the recording and movie industries sue hundreds of college students for illegally swapping files, popular musicians such as David Byrne, the Beastie Boys, and Chuck D. and Fine Arts Militia are encouraging the very behavior the industry is trying to stop: sampling, copying, remixing and circulating their songs online for free. Under a novel licensing scheme called Creative Commons (CC), developed by Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, artists can publish their work under middle-ground protection as "some rights reserved" instead of "all rights reserved." That way, others can listen to or remix the work--usually for noncommercial purposes. "Technology gives us opportunity, and I wanted to make sure the law wasn't stopping people from creating," says Lessig. Although there are six different CC licenses, most artists choose from the noncommercial ones, preserving their rights for uses like advertising. Currently, more than 12 million works use CC licenses, including the movie Outfoxed and the BBC's news footage. Chuck D. and Fine Arts Militia were so satisfied with the fans gained from their single No Meaning No under a CC license that they will distribute an entire album the same way in July, the first major musicians to do so. Seventy countries are adapting or looking into CC licenses, while Mozilla Firefox and Yahoo! Search browsers have launched designs so users can search the Web for CC works. --By Kristina Dell