CSC 379:Week 2, Group 4

Creative Commons

Overview

Creative Commons is a non-profit corporation designed to create a flexible, easy-to-use system of copyrights that may allow for some public use of the creative work. Users choose which restrictions they wish to place on their work, such as allowing or disallowing commercial use of their work or modifications of their work, and Creative Commons will generate a license to their specifications. In this way a Creative Commons license for a work can fall on a spectrum of possibilities between full copyright and public domain.

One of the main advantages of Creative Commons is how easy it is to generate and use a license for any work that falls under the domain of copyrights. This extends to works such as books, scripts, lesson plans, websites, blogs, photographs, films, video games, sound recordings, and many other forms of media. A simple tool on the website streamlines the process of picking the right license based on the restrictions (or lack thereof) users wish to place on their work. This allows many non-professional creators to license their work without a lawyer, and encourages users to adopt a license allowing some public use of their work.

Use of Creative Commons

Use of Creative Commons licenses is becoming increasingly widespread. It has been adopted by projects ranging from Massachusetts Institute of Technology's OpenCourseWare, the Public Library of Science, Flickr online photo management and sharing, and many record labels.

Creative Commons made the news recently when several influential figures, including presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama, called for the release of all presidential debates under Creative Commons. News service CNN shortly announced plans to release all debate footage it broadcasts under a Creative Commons type license, explaining in a statement that “Due to the historical nature of presidential debates and the significance of these forums to the American public, CNN debate coverage will be made available without restrictions at the conclusion of each live debate.” This is a major step forward in the direction of the free distribution for historic news footage. Because of the enormous volume of news footage generated each day and the copyright restrictions placed upon it by news services, much of it is lost to full public use as soon as it is published. By adopting unrestrictive licenses for some of its footage, CNN helps ensure the access to and preservation of important historical media.

Creative Commons has a good variety of licenses that can accommodate to any intentions that any creative work owner may have regarding the distribution of the work that they may want to may public. They have a range of choices that go from most restrictive to less restrictive. Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd) allows distribution as long as credit is granted, work is not modified, and there is no commercial use. Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa) allows for modification and non-commercial distribution of the work as long as credit is granted and the new works are released under the same license. Attribution Non-commercial (by-nc) is the same as by-nc-sa except that new releases do not have to be under the same license. Attribution No Derivatives (by-nd) allows for commercial and non-commercial redistribution as long as the work is passed as identical. Attribution Share Alike (by-sa) allows for modification and redistribution with commercial purposes as long as long as new works are released under the same license. Attribution (by) allows any modification an distribution for commercial and non-commercial purposes as long as credit is given for the original work. Added to this, there are other licenses that may accommodate to more specific cases. As we can see, creative commons are a flexible way of approaching share of knowledge, and since they are voluntary, as long as the owner wants to do it, it is a very viable way of releasing different material.

Drawbacks of Creative Commons

Some people feel that Creative Commons licenses are too restrictive and therefore not suitable for a variety of uses. The non-commercial use only option, which is used by 70% of works licensed under Creative Commons according to the Creative Commons Monitor Project, may be part of the problem.

This option prevents others from using the licensed work “in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or private monetary compensation.” This is certainly a reasonable stipulation authors may place on the use of their work. However, it does rule out certain common means of distribution. Many websites use advertising to help pay for their web hosting costs, but under the terms of this license, hosting a work licensed for non-commercial use on a site with advertising may be illegal. A third party charging a small fee for a DVD of media would also violate the license if the DVD included one video clip or mp3 licensed for non-commercial use, even if the only intention of the fee was to recoup the costs of publishing. This limits the distribution of a work the author may wish to see spread widely. Because of problems like this, some sites disallow the use of non-commercial licenses entirely. Wikimedia Commons, the media repository branch of the Wikipedia Foundation, does not allow the upload of any work licensed with a non-commercial use only restriction.

Other problems exist with the use of Creative Commons licenses and licenses similar to it. Since these licenses do not allow for the claiming of royalties or other forms of payment for creative works, they are unlikely to ever be widely adopted by professionals who rely on their creative work for their livelihood. Some people believe that because of this, Creative Commons undervalues creativity. A spokesman from the Australian Copyright Council explains how widespread use of Creative Commons licenses could lead to altered expectations for creative works:

‘If CC licenses become widely adopted, it is likely that an expectation will arise that – unlike, say, lawyers, accountants and IT consultants – creative people should give away their work for free. The long-term effect could be that corporations and other big organisations like universities and governments will be less willing to pay for copyright material or to see that the people who create it have much value. Meanwhile, it’s likely that real creators will have to keep doing their music, photography, film-making, art or writing as a hobby only, subsidized by their day jobs.’

International Creative Commons

International copyrights systems have several complicated ethical issues to challenge. This is true because of the cultural diversity that the world has; however, today world's drive for globalization are making it both easier and necessary to deal with copyright issues but establishing standards and agreements. It is a common belief that what a man creates on his own as a result of his own labor is his own and he is free to do whatever he wants with it limited only to the point to which his society or community lets him. So identifying the guidelines to which each society abides to give rights to the owner of a good, is a crucial step to find a consensus among communities.

Creative commons is a tool designed to increase number of creative material online and to make cheaper and easier to access. Creative commons could be a good alternative to international agreements, since it aims for the practice of "some rights" reserved, instead of "all rights" reserved. This practice, and the fact that is voluntary, makes it easier to reach a consensus among countries, because of its flexibility. However, creative commons would be an alternative that will be mostly limited to creative material such as websites, scholarships, music, film, photography, etc. as this is what it was designed for. iCommons is a Creative Commons supported organization whose aim is to develop a united global commons front through the collaboration with education, access to knowledge, free software, open access publishing and free culture communities around the world. This organization sets an example of some of the project that can be launched internationally through the use of creative commons.