The ASKME meeting night before last featured Neeru Paharia, Executive Director of Creative Commons. I thought I understood this from Larry Lessig's presentations but my memories were fuzzy.

Creative Commons bridges the gap between copyrighted material and public domain. Its standards (attribution required or no commercial use, for example) enable a copyright holder to give rights to others without an intermediary. It's a legal hack.

As remixing becomes more important, Creative Commons will become more important, too.

Some of the outgrowth thus far: Soundclick, Magnatune, Public LIbrary of Science, MIT Opencourseware, and Rice Connexions.

During the reception after the presentation, someone from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation brought me up to date on the MIT Opencourseware project. China and India are proving to be major users. Students from all over the world are taking advantage of online MIT.