Do You Really Understand Creative Commons?

Image made with photos from mikeblogs and drewbaldwin

I had a fuzzy grasp of Creative Commons. It was that license that allowed me to use certain Flickr photos on my blog post. That logo that started popping up on e-books and MP3s.

A bit of googling showed me that Creative Commons licenses allow users to reserve certain rights on their digital content — to require attribution or only non-commercial use, for example. I believe that standard copyright laws undoubtedly need to be offered alongside a revolutionary alternative, so I dug a bit further to see if Creative Commons was that alternative.

While researching, I unearthed an ongoing debate about the value of Creative Commons. For all the hype it was getting in certain arenas, there were also plenty of naysayers. The CC licenses were developed to counter what is seen by many as the stifling nature of traditional copyrights. But the CC licenses come with their own set of problems, including questions of enforceability, need, and transparency.

Although Creative Commons is a step in the right direction, it is essentially a modified license based on the standard copyright law.

After reading several negative articles, I decided to ask the people from Creative Commons for their perspective. Fred Benenson, outreach manager at Creative Commons, graciously agreed to an interview, which I’ve posted below.

Interview with Fred Benenson

Was the Creative Commons license developed primarily with professional artists in mind, or more for hobbyists?

I don’t want to dodge your question, but I don’t think that dichotomy was really part of our thinking when developing the licenses. The CC licenses were developed primarily to help update copyright law in light of digital media, whether it is created by professionals or amateurs. Due to the nature of the migration of work online, the early adopters of CC licenses were indeed amateurs looking to spread their content leveraging the character of the Internet. But we also had a slew of professional musicians and creators using CC from day one. Check out the Wired Mix CD for more of that.

While the clear benefits to professionals are still falling out (as are the the business models) from the tectonic shift the Internet has caused in their respective industries, I’m positive CC can play a role in most of those new spaces.

How do you think creativity has been stifled in recent years? How does the CC license combat that issue?

Specifically, I think it is abundantly clear that copyright and licensing questions frequently threaten interesting and new cultural works from existing. This is changing, but it is a slow change. More generally, however, I think the public’s notion of a public domain has been damaged by the constant reminders from mainstream media that culture is owned and is property to be owned in perpetuity. No one thinks about the public domain any more and this is a loss for creativity in general. This mindset is a relatively new one that has gained momentum because it enjoys the support of bad laws.

CC licenses combat these harms by encouraging people to think about culture as necessarily shared; not after permission is asked, but before — creativity is meant to be built upon and shared by communities.

What are some uses of the CC license that have impressed or inspired you?

The recent Jonathan Coulton jump drive promotion we did was really inspiring. Not only did Jonathan write a fantastic letter describing how CC has helped him as a musician, but his fans have really understood CC from day one and were very excited to get their hands on the source audio from his music.

Aside from that, the Barack Obama transition team’s use of CC’s liberal Attribution license for Change.gov really blew us away — not only did they choose the least restrictive license, but they made it default for all content on the site.

One of the other examples of a musician using CC impressively is NIN’s recent albums. He’s released the audio files for free, but offered much more valuable products at different levels. He knew he had fans that would pay $300 for a limited edition box set, so it was no surprise that they sold out immediately. NIN and Coulton’s examples demonstrate that musicians can still make plenty of money on selling their music while encouraging their fans to share it and remix it.

What is the advantage of having an actual, literal license (such as CC) instead of simply telling people they are free to use/distribute your work?

There are a couple of reasons why it is important to use CC instead of just telling people that it is alright to use your work.

First, CC licenses are drafted by qualified lawyers and have, for lack of a better phrase, stood the test of time.
They also have a reputation of being well written and useful for lawyers and courts to interpret. If you write your own license, or worse, simply state that others can freely use your work, there are open questions as to whether those terms will be enforceable down the road. By using a CC license you are leveraging our legal work, research and reputation to share your work in a meaningful way.

The non-legal reason is that our name now means something to millions of people, and the pool of compatibly licensed CC works is growing every day. In other words, when someone sees that work is licensed under Creative Commons, they know that they can use it with other work licensed in the same fashion.

Finally, CC licenses are also expressed using machine readable code which allows for the works to be indexed by major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and us. This means that others can search and discover your work using machines instead of searching by hand (or eye).

Why is a CC license irrevocable?

CC licenses, like all public licenses (GPL, BSD, etc.) are irrevocable because the basic functionality of the license would be broken if users could break their promise to the public. Suppose, for example, you were to release a photograph under our Attribution license and TIME magazine were to use it for a cover. If at this point you could break the terms under which TIME acquired your image, you could then sue them for copyright infringement, which would put TIME in a bad position.

Furthermore, it would mean that CC licenses were basically meaningless to potential users of CC licensed work, and that would also be a bad thing.

You, can, however, cease distributing works under a CC license — anyone who comes across it at that point won’t be granted the license, but anyone who came across it previously would be.

The term “non-commercial” is debatable in many circles. In the case of an alleged CC license misuse, how likely is enforcement? Is there a history of it?

People tend to make more of a fuss about our Non-Commercial licenses than I think is necessary. For one, if you’re uncomfortable with the haziness surrounding the defintion of Non-Commercial, then simply avoid NC licensed work and do not use the license yourself. It is as simple as that.

For two, despite there being grey areas with the definition of NC, there are far more black and white cases, and there have also been cases of enforcement of NC terms. Here are two:

http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5823

and

http://www.lessig.org/blog/2006/09/autoweek_on_come_on.html

The first is interesting because it shows how a court of law enforced NC (i.e., tabloids violate the NC stipulation) and the second is how a community enforced it. Both are good examples of how NC plays out in the real world rather than in definitional battles on blogs and e-mail lists.

What do you think?

Would you license any of your work under Creative Commons?

Do you think the CC license is an effective means of promoting creativity?

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Tagged as: Barack Obama, blogs, CC, community, Copyright, create, Creative Commons, Creative Commons License, creativity, Flickr, Jonathan Coulton