Computerworld - Listen to the Computerworld TechCast: Creative Commons
If data is the fundamental currency of the Information Age, then the concept of intellectual property is the wallet that protects it from theft or misappropriation. Ensuring that protection -- safeguarding the rights of content creators -- is the purpose of copyright and patent laws, but in practice, their implementations can leave much to be desired.
Copyright law is so convoluted that it's sometimes hard to understand. In brief, copyright means that a work can't be used without the explicit permission -- or license -- of the copyright owner, with certain defined exceptions. After a specified period of time after creation or publication, a copyright expires and the work enters the public domain, meaning it is available to everyone to do with as they wish.
Under most countries' current copyright laws, almost anything written, photographed or drawn is automatically copyrighted simply by being created, unless the creator has given those rights to someone else, created it as a "work for hire" or released it into the public domain. This copyright applies to rights for reuse, sale, adaptation, display, performance, remixing and publication in other media, although the development of new types of media unforeseen in the language of current laws has created opportunities for disseminating information but problems in protecting it.
Copyright protection has been widely, even wildly, extended in response to a world in which even proprietary information moves fairly freely. In an effort to improve copyright protection, Congress has made U.S. copyright law preemptive and very restrictive.
Some Rights Reserved
Copyright gives such blanket protection that virtually any subsequent legal use by someone else requires specific permission from the copyright holder. While authors or artists are free to grant rights as they see fit, doing so on a case-by-case basis may be impractical or undesirable. In any event, a license is a legal document that is likely to require drafting or review by a lawyer if the protection is to be enforceable in a court of law.
One response to this situation is Creative Commons (CC), a set of boilerplate templates in the form of identifiable and readable license statements that make it easy for a creator to release particular rights under clearly specified conditions. This allows a creator to protect his basic rights while notifying potential users of what they can and can't do with the author's intellectual property. Depending on the conditions -- allowing unlimited use for noncommercial purposes, for example - a third party may be able to legally use the work without having to contact the owner for permission each time.
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