John Buckman voted in to Creative Commons Board of Directors

This past Thursday, November 9th John Buckman officially accepted an invitation to join Creative Commons board of directors. His appointment reflects Creative Commons’ growing interest in commercial applications of CC principles. As many readers of this blog are aware, Buckman’s business—Magnatune Records—is an Internet based record label that uses CC licensing to gain wider audiences for the label's catalog. Magnatune currently represents over 220 recording artists and released its 500th album in October.

Says John: “I’m thrilled that Creative Commons feels that I have something to contribute at this level. Through Magnatune I’ve been trying to show how the commons can help businesses succeed commercially. I have something to say about how CC principles can be applied successfully to the for-profit world.”

Discussion of Buckman’s appointment to the Creative Commons board came on the heels of a recent visit to Tokyo for the New Context conference, where John and Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig met to discuss in depth how Creative Commons licensing models could be applied to commercial ventures.

John also recently created and launched Bookmooch.com, an online community for exchanging used books. The site allows people to exchange their used books via snail mail, and Buckman is currently working on ways to reward authors when their book is traded. In a recent blog post about Bookmooch, Larry Lessig recently wrote that: “The next challenge for commoners is to figure out how sharing economy interacts with a traditional commercial economy."

Both Magnatune and Bookmooch reflect John's deep commitment to the open culture movement, and the appointment to the CC board is expected to present lots of great new opportunities to grow the movement and promote its next stage of development.