Creative Commons Followup

Liz Lawley wonders why people find the propagation potential of the Creative Commons license so alarming.

But the CC licensing does not restrict you from profiting from your works. It allows others to distribute your copyrighted work—typically with attribution, and not for commercial use (that appears to be the version most folks choose).

If my weblog content is broadly distributed, with attribution, it helps me. It extends my reputation, makes me recognizable. And if I later choose to write a book that draws from my weblog material, I think it’s that much more likely to have buyers.

She's got a good point. I don't know what Cory Doctorow's decision to release Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom has done to his and his publisher's sales, but it probably hasn't hurt them, and it may have helped. Meanwhile, it did increase his overall circulation, and bought him -- to use his own concept -- massive whuffie. Would that very idea have had the same circulation had he released the book with ordinary distribution? I doubt it.

I don't fall into any sort of 'camp' as to whether one should or should not select Creative Commons licensing. I'll be adjusting the next revision of my piece on the impact of Creative Commons licensing to reflect that better. I do believe that the licensing decision should not be a casual one, but I believe that for any legal decision. Once the discussion has gone a little further, I also want to add a section discussing the kinds of reasons one might want to choose a Creative Commons license or some other license. Maybe once that's in there I can call it version "1.0."

Liz asks, "Can someone point me to an example of specific harm—past or anticipated—that they see resulting from these licenses?" It's good to remind ourselves that Creative Commons licensing is an experiment. We don't know what the long term effects will be in any case. The very nature of experimenting involves undertaking some degree of risk in order to discover how great the reward may be, and under what circumstances that reward will arise. Some people releasing work under the Creative Commons license will experience a net reward. Some will not. It will often be hard to tell, because a fair proportion of the reward coming from a Creative Commons license will likely be noneconomic, or at least nonmonetary.

Phil notes, "Suppose you write a heartfelt and deeply personal post about the difficulties of academic life. If someone from academic-challenges.com asks to republish it, you would probably say yes. If someone from whiney-pointyheads.com asked, you would probably say no, if it wasn't for the fact that you've already said yes by virtue of your CC license." Right now one can limit those uses for one's own work. Whether that reason alone is a good one to choose not to offer a general license is a matter for separate argument. The fact remains that under ordinary copyright one has a degree of control over that kind of use, while one does not under the Creative Commons license.

Liz also points out,

Jonathon, in his post today, says that CC “does a shithouse job of explaining why people might choose not to use their license … But that’s less of an issue, now that Tim Hadley has done the job properly.” But I don’t see that in Tim’s analysis. It’s not a discussion of why you wouldn’t want to use the license—it’s a discussion of what the legal boundaries of that license are.

She's right about that. Like I said, I would like to add a section that can help people organize their own reasons for choosing licenses. Perhaps that would even have to be a different article. But what I wrote on Sunday does not do that, though it may break the deal for some people and close it for others. Before I start writing that new section, I think I want to watch the conversation play out a bit more. The topic might turn out to be too much to try to add to the current piece.

In the end, people will have their own reasons for their licensing decisions. I want simply to explain what I think is the most likely legal interpretation of the license so that people can better imagine how it might or might not work for them. [As always, I have to add the remark that people who have a lot riding on the licensing decision or want to talk about the quirks in a particular licensing scenario should consult an attorney.]