How Creative Commons licensing benefits industry
Creative Commons Licensing is a free set of licenses which can be used to make it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright (creativecommons.org).
Creative Commons video. License: CC-BY (2.5)
Below are some examples of how Creative Commons licensing can be used to benefit industries such as:
Entertainment: Creative Commons licensing assists medium to large media groups by allowing them to share their work under restrictions that are suitable to the author to substantially gain an increased awareness. For example music artists have shared their work under creative commons on web sites such as YouTube to gain exposure which in some cases has lead them on to successful careers such as Zoe Leela who used Creative Commons licensing to promote and distribute her music. Pro-choice artists like Zoe – and soon, perhaps, many more like them – would rather have people share their work than steal it (Wired).
Creative commons also allows artists to control/restrict what people can do with their material so they can feel secure that they material can be freely distributed without being changed or remixed. A Creative Commons license also puts hard to read and understand legal jargon into friendlier layman’s terms so that it is easier for people to understand what can and can not be done.
Business: Large corporate entities can use Creative Commons licensing to sharing knowledge, be more innovative and build better products and services such as in Eric Raymond’s “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”, who argue that the case for openness is not only moral but also practical – open systems work to produce a better mouse trap, than closed, controlled and centralized systems of knowledge development and innovation. Also Creative Commons can help businesses build an audience of loyal customers by sharing knowledge and learning’s that add value to the existing products and services that their customers currently pay for. An example is the web 2.0 poster company 37signals who have built a very successful business by sharing knowledge and being open with their customers.
Education: In Australia Creative Commons is increasingly being implemented by educational organisations wishing to establish legal frameworks for collaboration both within and beyond the classroom. Creative Commons empowers teachers and students to give their work and materials a life beyond the classroom such as the Ipswich-based edgeX project. The Queensland University of Technology (QUT), also uses Creative Commons to allow students to develop skills for collaboration and ethical reuse of content (Creative Commons Australia Education Case Studies). Creative Commons enables people who are studying to further their education to collaborate with each other without the fear that their work will be used improperly or without acknowledgment. Creative Commons is also a great way for students to create a presence, especially an online one, by publishing their works and gaining recognition.
As Michael Eisen eloquently explains ‘Scientific works don’t have an isolated meaning; they exist only in reference to the broader scientific community, and the whole reason you publish them is so that other people will read and use them.’ Michael Eisen, Co-Founder, Public, Library of Science
Government: Creative Commons can be used to allow others to build upon existing knowledge and works (Flew T 2005). Here people can take existing information provided by Governments and add to or remix it in a way that produces new and innovative services that help the community, such as the recent Government 2.0 Taskforce MachUpAustralia contest which highlighted the benefits of open access to Government information using Government data which is released under Creative Commons licenses.
With the emergence of digital technologies that enable dissemination of government material at low cost, copyright law is now the last significant barrier to truly open government. Where large amounts of publicly-funded creative, educational and scientific materials are owned by government institutions, there exists an enormous opportunity to unlock this material for re-use in the name of innovation and education (Creative Commons Australia Government Case Studies).
References:
CreativeCommons.org, About, viewed 20 Jun 2010, http://creativecommons.org/about/
Baldi G 2010, Case Study: When Creative Commons lead to commercial success, Music 4.5, 23 May 2010, viewed 25 Jun 2010, http://www.music4point5.com/blog/case-study-when-creative-commons-lead-to-commercial-success/
Goetz T 2004, Sample the future, Wired, Nov 2004, viewed 14 Jun 2010, http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/sample.html
Raymond E 2001, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, O’Reilly and Associates, California, USA.
Creative Commons Australia Case Studies, Beyond the Classroom, Creative Commons Education and Research (BAAC_education_cluster.pdf)
Brown G 2005, Public library of science, CreativeCommons.org, 1 Sep 2005, viewed 16 Jun 2010, http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/7038
Flew T 2005, Creative Commons and the Creative Industries, Media and Arts Law Review, Vol. 10, No. 4, December 2005.
MashupAustralia.org Contest, viewed 25 Jun 2010, http://mashupaustralia.org/
Creative Commons Australia Case Studies, Archives Alive, Creative Commons, Government & Institutions (BAAC_government_cluster.pdf)
