Bledsoe, Elliott. "Lessig's Use of Flickr Photos: is Creative Commons Really a Community?" Creative Commons Through the Looking Glass.

          Bledsoe's blog was inspired by a comment Lessig made on his own blog about how, after using a photograph from Flickr in a post, the photographer actually came up to him in Hong Kong. According to Lessig, it was "the most amazing fact of the day". This led Bledsoe to question how, or even if, Creative Commons functions as a community since it relies not only on legal permission but on the idea of sharing and the relationships that sharing facilitates. What makes CC different is that things are not directly shared like they would be in the real world. He compares CC to borrowing a cup of sugar from your neighbor, which involves a direction need and interaction. Using a CC license, however, preempts sharing. Even though someone may not need or want to use the work, permission has been granted anyway without any direction interaction between parties. CC also lacks direct membership which even other online communities have. The point here is that with no central hub and no obvious boundaries in the community, it's actually likely that "members" (those using CC licenses) will feel very isolated. CC then becomes a community only in the fact that it facilitates smaller subcommunities which have come to use it.

        This article emphasizes this idea that Creative Commons facilitates communities and, in turn, the commons. Some of the examples of subcommunities that Bledsoe mentions are Flickr and DeviantArt, places that my project hopes to emphasize as models of the value of the commons online and how Creative Commons plays a role in it. Both of them are made possible, at least in part, but the larger CC community. However, the article points out an important distinction. CC itself is not (at least not yet) a community in the same way that Flickr and DeviantArt are. No one has to sign up or login to use CC licenses. No one discriminates against who can and cannot use these licenses and therefore little is shared among users except for their willingness to share. But smaller communities that embrace CC licenses offer the boundaries and distinctions necessary for a community to really flourish.