Creative Commons Clarifies Community Collaboration

The technology that enables "media on demand" is far ahead of the legal system that protects ownership and copyright. Piracy and unauthorized use of copyrighted material is a widespread and serious problem. Copyright laws are being violated left and right. Many artists and distributors are leaking revenue from illegal use of their intellectual property. But there are many creative people out there who would be happy to have people pass along their work, as they benefit from the buzz that follows. The web is opening doors for talented musicians, artists, writers, and developers that might not ever have opened without it. These creative people are generally quite happy to have their work passed along and shared as long as their authorship is respected properly attributed. But copyright law, as it stands now, legally prevents this. Every work at the moment of creation is given a legal copyright whether it's registered or not. So if an artist or musician posts an image or song - it is protected by copyright by default. To use it, play it, share it, include it or otherwise make use of it, permission must be asked for and granted - whether the use is commercial or not. That's the law.

The current climate of participation sharing and re-use is formally illegal. Yet clearly there is a realm of intention in which all this file sharing, downloading, printing, mashing, or other use of such works is actually intended and encouraged by the creators themselves, but even so, legally, such uses are an infringement of their copyright. Determining the lines of demarcation between the world of sharing and the world of protected property is not clear at all, and everyone must make their own judgments. It would be impractical, even impossible, for the culture of content sharing to make explicit requests and grants of permission for every download or inclusion of every work.

In 2001, a group of lawyers and intellectual property experts began the process of creating a new kind of copyright law - it's called Creative Commons.

Suppose a creator of a work wants to retain ownership but allow some use of their work. That's where Creative Commons comes in. Creative Commons has established legal deeds that define exactly what kind of use is permitted of a work. As the Creative Commons website puts it - if copyright means "all rights reserved," Creative Commons means "some rights reserved." Utilizing a Creative Commons license allows creators to explicitly grant some rights of use without the need for requesting permission first.

There are a handful of Creative Commons Licenses to choose from. Each grants more or less permission for using a work under a few different conditions.

[Since the Creative Commons website itself has used its attribution license for its content, I will simply copy and paste their explanation of each type of license - since they've already given me permission to do so as long as I attribute the following content to Creative Commons.]

Attribution. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work ... and derivative works based upon it ... but only if they give credit the way you request.

Example: Jane publishes her photograph with an Attribution license, because she wants the world to use her pictures provided they give her credit. Bob finds her photograph online and wants to display it on the front page of his website. Bob puts Jane's picture on his site, and clearly indicates Jane's authorship.

Our core licensing suite will also let you mix and match conditions from the list of options below. There are a total of six Creative Commons licenses to choose from our core licensing suite.

Noncommercial. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work ... and derivative works based upon it ... but for noncommercial purposes only.

Examples: Gus publishes his photograph on his website with a Noncommercial license. Camille prints Gus' photograph. Camille is not allowed to sell the print photograph without Gus's permission.

No Derivative Works. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

Example: Sara licenses a recording of her song with a No Derivative Works license. Joe would like to cut Sara's track and mix it with his own to produce an entirely new song. Joe cannot do this without Sara's permission (unless his song amounts to fair use).

Share Alike. You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

Note: A license cannot feature both the Share Alike and No Derivative Works options. The Share Alike requirement applies only to derivative works.

Example: Gus's online photo is licensed under the Noncommercial and Share Alike terms. Camille is an amateur collage artist, and she takes Gus's photo and puts it into one of her collages. This Share Alike language requires Camille to make her collage available on a Noncommercial plus Share Alike license. It makes her offer her work back to the world on the same terms Gus gave her.

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License

The law is a good thing, and copyright law is a very good thing. But Creative Commons has made a way for a new form of copyright law to change what was a hazy, usually illegal, yet common practice of using copyrighted works into a legal, clearly defined and mutually beneficial practice. In fact, part of the Creative Commons licenses include a common English version of the license that anyone can understand. Of course there is formal language too, so lawyers and judges can enforce the protected aspects of the work. Creative Commons also has a digital version that can be added to a webpage so that various systems which help to find Creative Commons materials can identify works that are offered under CC licenses.

To get a taste of what's available under Creative Commons you can find examples in a few different places.

Google and Yahoo!: Both Google and Yahoo have advanced search options that provide an option for usage rights. Search results can be filtered to list only items offered under licenses that allow re-use under the Creative Commons deeds.

Flickr: We reviewed the Web 2.0 photo sharing site Flickr in our Newsletter Wikis and Swikis and Blogs. Oh My! Flickr also has a search option to find photos that have been assigned with a Creative Commons license.

Creative Commons: The Creative Commons website lists many sites that offer CC licensed content. They highlight various artists who are releasing work under Creative Commons like Pearl Jam's latest video and David Byrne and Brian Eno's sampling website for their "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts" project.

Wikipedia: The Creative Commons entry in the Wikipedia has a long list of websites that provide categories for Creative Commons licensed content (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_commons).

Hollywood and Nashville have a ways to go to figure out how to effectively and legally take advantage of the peer to peer nature of marketing and distribution on the web. But for the rest of the world there is now a clear and legal way to collaborate, participate, share, integrate, alter, mashup, join, sample, chip in, and otherwise work with each others creative works. And that's a good thing.