Copyright Talk

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization set up to provide tools to help authors who want people to have some right to use their work without asking permission each time, and to help users find works that have pre-granted permission to use it in various ways. Their literature talks about how easy and wonderful getting permission to use things is when the user and author talk directly, without those pesky “intermediaries.” Intermediary, as used by Creative Commons, seems to mostly mean “attorney.”

On the surface, Creative Commons and it’s pre-written boilerplate licenses seem like a fine idea. But I’ve been puzzling since it’s inception in 2004 over what it actually does that is new and different and useful. After all, any copyright owner has always had the ability to set out blanket grants of rights in the copyright notice placed on the work. And attorneys don’t make decisions for their clients, they merely make sure, as best they can, that the actual decision their client wants to make is carried out in the way they want. Sometimes a deal is reached, sometimes it’s not, but that’s based on the decisions of the parties, not the attorneys.

Anyway, so if authors and users can already talk, and if authors can already grant blanket permissions in advance, what is the point of having Creative Commons? Creative Commons itself clearly says that it is not a replacement for or an alternative to copyright.

I finally arrived at this, although my thinking may change. I believe Creative Commons is primarily useful as a new type of marketing model. They provide another database for authors works to appear in, another way for potential users to discover that they exist. The hook for users is that all the items they find can be reproduced or modified without having to take any more steps to locate and negotiate with the author. That’s a good hook for users. For authors, the only real benefit I can see is that additional potential visibility in the database.

I’ll end with this - Creative Commons IS NOT a rebellious attempt to free authors from the chains of copyright. More importantly, using a creative commons license DOES NOT mean your work will be used any more than it would be used if you didn’t have the creative commons license. But for some authors, it may be a good marketing decision for them to put some of their works under a creative commons license.