Lawrence Lessig, the leading expert on copyright issues in the digital era, was in Hong Kong this weekend for the launch of Creative Commons, Hong Kong. He delivered a great lecture yesterday at Hong Kong University’s Journalism and Media Studies Center in which he spoke about the evolution of digital culture.

His timeline:

Phase 1: 2000 Digitization extends Read Only culture
Digital technology allows the radical extension of distribution through models such as Apple’s iPod. The technology does little more than digitize music stores to make it easier for people to consume what they are fed by big corporations.

Phase 2: 2004 Revival of Read/Write culture
Wikipedia is prime example of the digital culture where people contribute and participate in new forms of remix culture online. Other examples include Machinima films that remix video games into short films, a remix political video such as Obama’s Yes We Can and Lessig’s favorite, the hilarious “Endless Love” video of Bush and Blair looking deeply into each others’ eyes.

Phase 3: 2008 Hybrid Business models
This is the phase of digital culture where companies begin to make money by leveraging value out of communities remixing. While there are no perfect examples, Lessig highlighted Flickr, Second Life and YouTube as top contenders.

There are many hurdles until the hybrid business models can work, but implementation of Creative Commons would clearly help both artists and companies move into phase 3.