When the Creative Commons foundation started their fund raiser, they had one goal – to raise $300,000 by the end of 2006.
Note: This is an article I wrote that was published elsewhere first. It has been republished here for archival purposes
While today is no longer 2006, the foundation did raise $497,120.16 – nearly half a million dollars.
Creative Commons utilized the video sharing site Revver to help with raising the funds. While Revver normally gives the creator half of the revenue made on the video, Revver chose to donate the other half to the foundation to help with their fund raiser.
The money received will help maintain the 4 year old license network as well as other side projects such as the termination tool, where an author that sold the rights to his or her content can terminate the license and return the rights to the author (in the US).
“We will have bested our goal of $300,000 by some $200,000 — raising over $500,000 in total.” Lawrence Lessig noted in his blog, “Stay tuned for some interesting surprises.”
“The support we have received is vital to extending the work that we’ve already begun and initiating new projects that will help grow this vital movement.” Wrote the staff on the Creative Commons official blog, “We want to take this opportunity to reiterate how much we appreciate all of our communities past support and how excited we are about the future.”
As noted earlier, it would seem that Creative Commons are already in exciting times. This is especially apparent when it comes to music. While there is no real telling how big the movement has grown, the signs of growth are there. With doubts spreading over the use of things like DRM (Digital Rights Management), it may only serve to help fuel the movement.
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
