Category Archives: cc

There’s a very cool new featured commoner at the Creative Commons site. Continue reading →

Who kindly email to ask whether they can link to my content on my blog: The permissions for my site are expressed in (1) human readable form, (2) lawyer readable form, and (3) machine readable form in the Creative Commons license linked at the bottom of the page. The whole point of this is to enable people to build upon other peoples’ work without signing a contract. (Here’s a nice flash to make the point.) So please excuse me if in response to your request, all you get is a link back to this post. If you need express permission, then I’m sorry: CC-express is the best I will do, because a world that better expresses freedom is the space we are trying to build. Continue reading →

Doc has a great post pushing public domain dedications of content. But on the way to his valuable recommendation, Doc writes,

“I believe what Userland and the Creative Commons people have made here is, literally, a DRM � digital rights management � system, in the best possible sense of the acronym.”

I think it is useful and important to distinguish between DRM and DRE — digital rights management vs. digital rights expression. DRE is a technology simply (1) to express rights. The “management” in DRM implies a technology — code — both (1) to express rights and (2) to enforce it.

But for all of the reasons that the DMCA debate has made clear, there are lots of problems with DRM systems precisely because code is used to enforce copyright rights. Code can never accurately map fair use, it can never reserve a right to criticize the existing expanse of control, etc.

DRE is therefore DRM minus the management. A DRE system simply enables an efficient way for people to say what freedoms they are enabling. In a world where the default is “all rights reserved,” CC DRE enables a simple way for people to say “My content is free in the following ways.”

That CC freedom is of course in addition to the freedoms guaranteed by “fair use.” But “fair use” is not, in our view, enough. The Commons needs a richer range of freedoms than the freedoms guaranteed by “fair use.” CC thus enables people voluntarily to increase the freedom around their content.

We believe saying CC-free is an important step for many reasons. But we also think it is importantly different from technologies that would make computers the enforcers of the limits on that freedom. DRE is therefore not DRM.

Finally, one technical point: Our CC licenses expressly state that you can’t use our technology with a DRM system that does not adequately protect “fair use.” As I’ve not seen a DRM system that adequately protects “fair use” yet, imho, that means you are not allowed to use a CC licenses with a DRM system yet. At least that is so if you take seriously the commitments the CC license imposes. Continue reading →

Doc has an interesting post about CC licenses and the public domain. As he rightly notes, we have no direct license that you can link to so as to place your material in the public domain. This is not because we wouldn’t like to offer such a license. It is instead because the law does not make such simplicity possible. While for most of our history, there were a thousand ways to move creative material into the public domain, most lawyers today are puzzled about whether there is any way to move work into the public domain.

We have tried to build a way, but it is not automatic. If you follow this link, there are a number of steps you can take to put material into the public domain. We believe that if you follow these steps, then your work is in the public domain. Again, there’s no way to be certain about this. But this is our best guess, given the murky state of the law.

Again, this can’t be automatic. But you can automatically license your content under an Attribution only license. The only requirement that an Attribution licenses imposes is that a subsequent adopters give credit. This is an important, but slight burden. And because our licenses are perpetual, this is quite close to a public domain dedication. Continue reading →

Dave has posted instructions for placing a Creative Commons license in the RSS feed generated from a Manila weblog.

This is great news. We have launched a campaign to build a layer of reasonable copyright law in a world increasingly defined by the extremes. CC tags — marks expressing freedom beyond fair use — is an important first step. Web logs have been the most important early adopters. With Movabletype, and now Userland, the most active and vibrant community on the web is beginning to show the rest something between the extremes. Continue reading →

Thanks to Scott Lazerwith and Murry Chapman for sending along this bit of good news: Alan Greenspan has signaled what other smart economists have been saying for a long time: That this race to protectionism in the field of intellectual property is not without cost. As Greenspan said,

“If our objective is to maximize economic growth, are we striking the right balance in our protection of intellectual property rights? Are the protections sufficiently broad to encourage innovation but not so broad as to shut down follow-on innovation?“

This is good news for all things happy and light, for it helps a meme that we should be pressing hard: IP is of course good; but it does not follow that more IP is better. Continue reading →

David Sifry has built many great things at Technorati. As Joi notes, his new breakingnews is fantastic — and not just because it is made free under a Creative Commons license. Continue reading →

We are in the process of versioning the CreativeCommons licenses, so check out the discussion and please participate. Continue reading →

I am very proud that Public Campaign (a beltway non-profit focusing on campaign finance reform) yesterday released this poster under a CC license. If this case has taught us anything, it is the importance of their battle. Continue reading →