I believe it was Lawrence Lessig who started the Creative Commons, something I very much support given the role I've taken on in the last couple of years.
Headquartered in San Francisco, Creative Commons was officially launched in 2001. Lawrence Lessig, the founder and chairman, started the organization as an additional method of achieving the goals of his Supreme Court case, Eldred v. Ashcroft. The initial set of Creative Commons licenses was published on December 16, 2002 <5>. The project itself was honored in 2004 with the Golden Nica Award at the Prix Ars Electronica, for the category "Net Vision".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_commons#HistoryI have not heard about David Byrne's support for the CC but I would not be surprised to hear he favors it. Coopyright law has become nonsensical in the United States and is badly wanting of reform.
If organizations like Time and Newsweek were smart they would offer deals to sites like Democratic Underground that would allow their users to view subscription content for free but force them to sit through a Salon type flashvertisement or deliver ads on the content page. This could be pretty easily done by looking at referrer information in the HTTP requests and could be a way to generate more ad revenue than the subscribers bring in. Of course if someone subscribed they would bypass the ads altogether just as it's done with dKos or Slashdot. I'm considering something similar for Neural Gourmet once I move it over to the 4.7 codebase.