Copyright law has become more of an issue with the universality of the Internet. Designed to protect the originators of intellectual property, the laws can be restrictive. The Creative Commons license for copyrighted material now offers flexibility for both the originator and the potential user. A non-profit organization founded in 2001 with support from the Center for the Public Domain, Creative Commons offers free licenses designed to bridge the gap between a standard copyright and the public domain.

What if you want to share what you created, but still want to control how your material is used? That’s where a Creative Commons license comes in. This type of protection isn’t a substitute for a copyright, but does allow you to determine use restrictions. Instead of “all rights reserved” it’s “some rights reserved.”

For instance, you can allow your work to be shared, copied and distributed, but under your terms. These licenses include:

• Attribution. With this license, you let others distribute, remix, tweak and build on your work as long as they credit you as the original creator. Attribution Share Alike uses attribution as a basis, but user must credit you and license their new creations under identical terms. Both licenses allow commercial use.
• The Attribution Non-Commercial license allows others to remix, change and build on your work for non-commercial purposes, but again that new work must acknowledge you. The user doesn’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
• Attribution No Derivatives. With this license you allow the user to re-distribute material for commercial and non-commercial use. However, the material may not be changed and must be used as a whole, and credited to you.
• If you choose a Creative Commons license, there are other sub-category licenses available. You have the freedom to decide how generous you wish to be and still get your work out there for recognition.

In addition to individuals, many large companies have a Creative Commons license of some form for selected sharing.  Google allows CC-search capabilities and allows users to CC license their content on Picasa, Google Knol and documentation at Google Code. Flickr also incorporates CC licensing options while the band Nine Inch Nails used CC to release Grammy nominated Ghosts I-IV as an Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike license. The band offered tiered purchases and eventually landed the #1 paid MP3 Amazon download in 2008.

CC licensing has helped to dissuade online illegal and inappropriate use of creative material, but the best avenue is to obtain a copyright from the United States Copyright Office. The standard copyright will help much more in case legal issues arise.

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