Creative Commons is a term you've probably heard, but like me, might have been a little fuzzy around the edges about. The organisation, and the licenses they've produced, actually have applications that can be especially useful to anyone operating in the online space. Not being experts ourselves, we thought it would be useful to chat to someone who is. It's for this reason that I set up an interview with Paul Jacobson.

Credit : Paul Jacobson

Paul specialises in new media law, which he defines as the “law pertaining to the flow of content and ideas on the Web”. He has a firm called Jacobson Attorneys, and works as General Council to the iCommons team (who are an incredible resource in this area). He's a new media lover, and also has a few blogs, but you can check out PaulJacobson.org here. Suffice to say, he knows what’s potting when it comes to Creative Commons (CC) Licenses, and was kind enough to answer some questions for me over a Skype conversation. 

“Just to put it into a bit of context, CC licenses work in the context of copyright. Copyright is a bundle of rights which enable you to do a whole range of things from making copies of the work to selling it to changing it, and creating adaptations of it.

..often… to license something properly … people wind up going to lawyers and it becomes an expensive and complicated process.”

What the Creative Commons organisation did, was to get together and create 6 different and specialised licenses that facilitate and enable us to protect ourselves while allowing the sharing and, if we choose, adaptation of our work. These licenses are free, and easy for us to use. They range from stipulating that your work can be used, but not for any commercial purpose, to allowing adaptations only if these are again released under the same license. All you have to do to use them is apply a notice on or accompanying the work advising people that the work is licensed under a specific Creative Commons license.

Paul pointed out that the licenses “cover different uses of content under copyright… all creative commons licenses have certain features built into them, so the one thing you have to do with all licenses is you have to acknowledge the source of the content.”

When I asked Paul whether there are any downsides to CC license use, or if it gets abused, he answered that while “It has this sort of hippy Web 2.0 sharing thing to it… these licenses are proper legal documents.” He also later pointed out that educating the people about their use is a big challenge.

Underneath the human readable code (the icons you see below) “there is a very serious, well thought out, carefully planned license.”

Creative Commons licenses thus get enforced through the same procedures as traditional copyright law.

Paul has also found that CC awareness is growing. “Once the hand-full of companies I’ve worked with see how it works they see the potential for it”. 

Some well publicised applications of CC he could list have been in the music industry, with bands like Nine Inch Nails releasing albums under Creative Commons licenses (their album Ghosts made 1.6 million Dollars in its first week). Another example is the musician John Coulton who releases his music online under CC, and carved out a niche living comfortably off his earnings and has become something of an online celebrity.

I was interested in whether more traditional businesses have been applying Creative Commons licenses to their benefit, and whether Paul could think of any examples. He said that there are.

“You’re going to see it in the next week or two. First National Bank (FNB) has just launched a site called Shine 2010.” This site, with the intention of promoting positivity about South Africa, will have a range of content in the form of photos, videos, news articles and podcasts that will be released under CC licenses. This relative freedom should encourage user involvement. This should really build the CC profile, especially given that FNB is “a major corporate in South Africa, which is using and has embraced this new paradigm to build an awareness of what it’s trying to achieve”

Another example Paul listed was a site called JoziKids.co.za that uses CC to make it easier for businesses to list events and photos on the site, without having to give up ownership or control of the way that content is used.

It seems then that Creative Commons licenses can both allow one to set content completely free online, and in more nuanced cases just make certain processes easier.

What really put this all in context for me is when Paul explained that traditional copyright “was meant to be a tool to facilitate creativity. The state said we will give you protection, you will be safe as an author…but now copyright is synonymous with control, it’s restrictive and doesn’t cover the needs that people have.”

His advice to any company wanting to explore CC licenses is thus that while the “hippie in him would love to say that everyone should be under CC,”  the most permissive licence may not be the right choice for your business, while a more restrictive one could be.  As with most things, a business should take the time to understand CC licenses and apply them where they are relevant and can really make a difference to business processes.

The major thing I learned from this conversation is that Creative Commons is not a replacement for traditional copyright, but rather an evolution and refinement for situations where it is relevant to and benefits the person or organisations wanting to share their work or ideas.

Paul made an audio recording of the interview, which you can check out here. There's tons of great stuff that I couldn't fit into a post, so if you are interested in more detail it's definitely worth a listen.

P.S. A question we ask everyone we interview is what blogs they like to read, Paul mentioned the following, (although he did point out that he currently subscribes to over 200 feeds):

• RSS Meme - Which is a great aggregator if you don't have lots of time.
• Mac World
• Apple Insider
• ReadWriteWeb
• SA Rocks - An optimistic perspective on what’s going on.
• Vincent Maher
• Max Kaizen
• Dave Duarte - Who is also the country lead for Creative Commons South Africa.