Flexible copyright licenses for creative works
With all the talk about people helping themselves (without permission) to other folks web content, blogs, manuals etc., perhaps we should take a look at the Creative Commons organization, and their attempts to bring some sanity to the wild-west that the web has become, while still cultivating the Internet’s unique nature.
According to their web site, Creative Commons is a way for folks to have some control over their creative works and (hopefully) some say about what is done with it by offering varying levels of distribution rights, with accompanying restrictions and provisos. It’s also aimed at helping publishers avoid some ’spotty’ copyright issues, especially when ’sharing’ material with others. Quoting their site:
Creative Commons is a new system, built within current copyright law, that allows you to share your creations with others and use music, movies, images, and text online that’s been marked with a Creative Commons license.
When publishing your own work, you can choose from a variety of licenses including the following (as found on Creative Commons’ “Meet our Licenses page:
Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd): This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, allowing redistribution. This license is often called the “free advertising” license because it allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.
Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa): This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. Others can download and redistribute your work just like the by-nc-nd license, but they can also translate, make remixes, and produce new stories based on your work. All new work based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also be non-commercial in nature.
Attribution Non-commercial (by-nc): This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
Attribution No Derivatives (by-nd): This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
Attribution Share Alike (by-sa): This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.
Attribution (by): This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered, in terms of what others can do with your works licensed under Attribution.
Now, this is obviously not for everybody (for example - many folks don’t want their material being ’shared’) and it is not intended for works such as logo design (which can be protected under copyright and trademark), but it certainly seems (on first inspection anyway) to fit the bill for self-publishing (your own blog for example) and for folks interested in getting exposure for their work, while still maintaining control over the ownership. You can publish your work (along with the appropriate Creative Commons license) on the Our Media website. Not everyone is ‘pro’ the Creative Commons approach. For example, PC Mag ran a blistering crtique of the concept with their Creative Commons Humbug column in which author John C. Dvorak had this to say:
Creative Commons actually seems to be a dangerous system with almost zero benefits to the public, copyright holders, or those of us who would like a return to a shorter-length copyright law.
It should also be noted that Creative Commons does not supercede current copyright law.
Copyleft perhaps?
