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.