Copyright vs. Copyleft

Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organisation which offers six different licences which allow creators to easily and freely share their work with others. To put it simply: it is a way to encourage creativity among ‘the commons’. It allows free and legal sharing, use, repurposing and remixing.

There are four conditions which creators may choose which will apply to their work:

-Attribution (by): You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.

-Share Alike (sa): You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

-Non-Commercial (nc): You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for non-commercial purposes only.

- No Derivative Works (nd): You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

To view the six licences on offer, click here.

“Some Rights Reserved” good or bad?

The Creative Commons slogan has brought about much debate, when comparing it with Copyrights’ “All Rights Reserved” slogan. Some argue that copyright already provide what CC provides and that over time, CC will erode away the copyright system. However, it needs to be stressed that CC is not an alternative to Copyright. They offer the same services, copyright is just more exclusive about their rights.

Others argue that the original artists are not fully benefiting from using CC instead of Copyright; benefits such as recognition and compensation. Artists may be warded off by a system that does not allow the author to obtain a reward for their creations.

However, CC does allow free and easy access to creative material which users have chosen to put online and to share.

Ironic?

CC recommends and uses free and open source licenses for software, namely under the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public Licence. However, some CC licences do not meet the standards of the FSF such as the CC Non-Commercial licence, which has been denounced by the FSF because “it denies users a basic freedom to reuse materials as they see fit”.