There has been a lot of debate about the Creative Commons Licences recently, with a fair number of people voicing their objections and concerns. While some of these have been fairly shallow attacks by the recording industry and other organisations, some legitimate concerns have been raised. Corante has published some articles from IndiCare expressing concerns...
I can't comment on the debate of the legality of the CC licenses (except to say that there are several aspects that don't appear to be legal in some jurisdictions) one important thing to realise is that the Creative Commons license is based on copyright, and as such is not really an "alternative".
In my opinion the strength of CC licenses is that they express clearly the rights that creators are prepared to extend to everyone automatically without requiring individual permission. The main problem with copyright is that it's reasonably difficult and time-consuming to find out what the copyright holder is willing to let you do with their work. CC licenses make it easy to communicate that information between the copyright holder and prospective users.
The important thing is to understand the licenses if you wish to release your work under them. There have been stories of people releasing works under CC licenses and then complaining when other people use them...which is pretty silly.
I can't comment on the debate of the legality of the CC licenses (except to say that there are several aspects that don't appear to be legal in some jurisdictions) one important thing to realise is that the Creative Commons license is based on copyright, and as such is not really an "alternative".
In my opinion the strength of CC licenses is that they express clearly the rights that creators are prepared to extend to everyone automatically without requiring individual permission. The main problem with copyright is that it's reasonably difficult and time-consuming to find out what the copyright holder is willing to let you do with their work. CC licenses make it easy to communicate that information between the copyright holder and prospective users.
The important thing is to understand the licenses if you wish to release your work under them. There have been stories of people releasing works under CC licenses and then complaining when other people use them...which is pretty silly.
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