Tag Archive for 'ianal'

Yes, Use CC to Free Your Stuff IANAL

Yes, I do get paid by Creative Commons, but I’m speaking in a personal capacity in response to the post on i, quaid about using CC licenses.

My answer is yes, using CC is better than using nothing where anyone would have to ask you for permission to use your work which is locked by default in many jurisdictions, including U-S-of-A. And, if you want to contribute to the solution you and others seek, use something like CC Attribution or the CC Public Domain dedication. New things like CC Zero coming down the pipe are good to with a system in place to encourage social solutions per community (called “social norms”) rather than legal solutions, like the NC, SA, ND conditions, which I have been super excited about for some time and pushing hard, because that is what we have been doing with Open Clip Art Library for ages by using PD and encouraging attribution.

I shouldn’t tell you what to use, but I do personally think that the NC condition is a gateway into the free universe. Without it, you will get a situation where less people will use more free licenses. And, in my experience as well, individuals are the ones using the NC condition more than businesses, which often times select the CC Attribution or the CC Public Domain dedication for all content submitted to their site, like Digg.com (look at the bottom of the page). Please do conjecture about why this is, as I’m curious to why others might think this is the case.

With that being said, IANAL :)