Creative Commons, hit by reduced corporate gifts due to the recession, is looking for more donations from individuals. Check out Andy Oram’s post on CC‘s usefulness.
Meanwhile here’s an example of the goodies that CC has helped spread—After the Deluge: A Novel of Post-Economic San Francisco, by Chris Carlsson (photo below). This highly praised CC-licensed work has drawn more than 15,000 downloads since October 2004. Summary:
“A teenage arsonist threatens a partially submerged mid-22nd century San Francisco. As a Public Investigator ‘tryout’ seeks evidence across the utopian city full of canals and veloways, political and social conflicts erupt. When there is no such thing as property, what is crime, and how does a utopian society protect itself from bad behavior? Should scientists be as free as artists to create? What is a ‘free market’ for work without and money and commodities?”
The challenges of a CC-licensed writer: Carlsson is asking for voluntary donations of $2-4—and, from what I gather, he is still worried whether enough people will pay. I remain skeptical about this approach, but would urge his fans to give. Or buy the p-book, which costs about $13 from AK Press or Last Gasp.
The optimal scenario would be a mix of business models, with a robust CC system as well as a well-stocked national digital library system in the TeleRead vein, in addition to the existing private sector. People want “free” when possible. But how to pay creators? Carlsson understandably will cut back on his fiction if insufficient money comes.
Other CC news: Congratulations to founder Lawrence Lessig on his new appointment at Harvard Law School (photo immediately above).
And speaking of ecology-related fiction: The novel that predicted Portland, in the New York Times. It’s about the cult novel Ecotopia (Wikipedia page here). Major publishers rejected Ecotopia, forcing Ernest Callenbach to put the book out originally on his own in 1975. As best I can determine, the first book and successors aren’t available in E, not even in Kindle format! So a few extra trees will be cut down to promote ecology.
(After the Deluge discovered via Finding Free eBooks.)
