Much of the world's stuff, especially digital stuff, is online. Music, books, opinions, news, photos, illustrations, movies, videos, data, software - it's all there to be had. A natural result of everyone having access to all this stuff is the act of sharing. Mashups, derivative works, and re-use of everything from music samples to photographs have created an altogether new genre of content. Marketers are only beginning to learn how to use trendsetting and viral campaigns to build a cultural "buzz." Generating talk can often be more effective than broadcasting to the mass market.
But what about copyrights? All creative works are automatically assigned a legal copyright which gives the creator exclusive control over how their creations may be used. Permission must be granted case-by-case if a work is to be used by someone else.
But what if we want to allow some use of our work to be used in ways that would benefit us and the world at large?
Enter Creative Commons.
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.
