The third version of Creative Commons launched last week with some updated licenses.
For those unfamiliar with Creative Commons, it is a non-profit who licenses works through a system built into copyright law. It allows you to share your creations with others, mix and mash music, movies, text, and so on.
The different licenses let you choose whether or not you allow commercial use of your work, allow modifications, etc. This is all being done to encourage creativity and lessen the digital divide.
To put it in open source terms, CC is basically applying a GPL to text or music. The difference being the GPL can be cusomized to fit the creator’s expectations of the work he/she created.
Living in a digital era, the thought is to make everything mashable or editable. If I write an article, but am completely wrong in my assumptions, you have every right to republish my article and point out the differences or mistakes I made. If you have made legitimate claims, it is assumed that it ‘further enhances’ the work. Your additions make it better or more complete.
The same thing can be seen on YouTube or any of the countless video sharing sites. How many mashups have you seen of Bush presentations? I doubt all of the footage was created using only film under the creative commons licenses, but you get the idea.
The point is we live in a mashup culture. One wreaking with user generated content.
Our young innovators aren’t finding ways to write better books or chisel a better sculpture, they are honing their talents digitally by hacking everyone else’s work. In that sense, copyrights are killing the creativity of younger generations.
It is well known that less and less kids are spending time on playgrounds and more time messing around on the computer. What happens to their creativity if you leash it by laws pertaining to the last century?
From where I stand, I see Creative Commons having a siginificant impact on the way we perceive content in the future. Who legitimately has a right to license user generated content?
Copyrights do indeed have their place and will still be prevalent. In terms of lessening a digital divide among generations and guaranteeing creativity, lesser restrictions need to be implied across the board.
