BzzAgent Forms Partnership With Creative Commons

(PRWEB via PR Web Direct) April 28, 2005 -- BzzAgent Inc. today launched a word-of-mouth marketing campaign in partnership with Creative Commons, an international organization devoted to promoting free culture. The 12-week program will engage the efforts of 3,000 volunteer brand evangelists in the United States and Canada to raise awareness of Creative Commons at the grassroots level.

Cyberlaw and intellectual property experts James Boyle, Michael Carroll, and Lawrence Lessig, MIT computer science professor Hal Abelson, lawyer-turned-documentary filmmaker-turned-cyberlaw expert Eric Saltzman, and public domain Web publisher Eric Eldred founded Creative Commons in 2001, in order to provide an alternative to an increasingly restrictive copyright policy. “People understand the implications of something like pollution,” said Creative Commons Executive Director Neeru Paharia, “but they don’t understand how we suffer or benefit as a community due to the inflexibility of copyright that doesn’t truly match producers’ or consumers’ preferences. We want to build a similar consciousness in society around copyright.”

BzzAgent founder and president Dave Balter felt compelled to approach Creative Commons about doing a pro bono campaign for them. “A lot of us at BzzAgent are big admirers of Creative Commons! We love the idea of open-sourcing copyright distribution,” he said. “It puts more power in the hands of people who want to be able to share and co-create. We want to do whatever we can to get the word out about Creative Commons to a broader audience, and to help them better understand how people talk about the organization and how people use the tools that Creative Commons provides.”

This is the second year of BzzAgent's GoodBzz Partnership, which provides three cause-related organizations annually with the capability to engage the BzzAgent evangelist community, currently numbering 85,000, in a 12-week word-of-mouth campaign at no charge. To become a BzzAgent and help support Creative Commons in this BzzCampaign, visit BzzAgent.com.

About BzzAgent, Inc.
BzzAgent Inc. is a word-of-mouth marketing and research firm located in Boston, Mass., whose network of volunteer brand evangelists shares their honest opinions about products and services with other consumers. The company’s proprietary process and system, the BzzEngine, allows them to provide diligent, systematized and measurable word-of-mouth marketing campaigns. Clients include Penguin Putnam Publishing, Ralph Lauren, SC Johnson, Kellogg’s and Anheuser-Busch. Find more information, or sign up to become a BzzAgent, at BzzAgent.com.

About Creative Commons
A 501(c)3 nonprofit founded in early 2002, Creative Commons promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works—whether owned or in the public domain—by empowering authors and audiences. It is sustained by the generous support of the Center for the Public Domain, the John D. and Catherine T. Mac Arthur Foundation, the Omidyar Network, and the Hewlett Foundation. For general information, visit http://creativecommons.org.

Contact:
Kelly Hulme
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BzzAgent Inc.
617-451-2280