When Larry Lessig and co. coded the Creative Commons (CC) alternative licensing terms they made a best effort to codify usage terms that are completely within the U.S. legal code, as well as the inalienable rights of content creators. The primary benefits of CC licenses are: content creators can mark their work without having to labor thought the corporate-focused legal processes of the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO); content creators can offer a much wider set of reuse terms beyond the standard ‘all rights reserved’; users of CC content can simply use (if they abide the terms) the creator does not need to be contacted for each use; CC licenses are machine ‘readable’ such that remote devices (think 3rd party website) can reuse CC licensed art in volumes never possible before. (See my previous entry about Schmap for more on this last benefit.)

The big shortcoming for the CC licenses is that they have not been hammered away by hundreds of legal proceedings which is what ultimately gives laws and norms their ‘teeth.’ There will be dozens if not hundreds of cases in the coming decade that will sort out the legitimacy of the terms or possibly undermine them and leave some license holders with less assurity of their control of their work.

Last week, however, a Dutch court upheld one of the CC licenses in it’s entirety. A magazine reprinted a photo whose creator marked is as the CC term of “free to reuse, but author must be credited.” The magazine printed the photo but did not credit the photographer, and was subsequently found in breach of terms. This is excellent news. On behalf of creative people everywhere the more these terms are considered legitimate the more creatives will have the opportunity to share and distribute their works without having to worry about having to retain lawyers and pay $500-$5000 to copyright, trademark, and/or wordmark all their creative property. Thanks Mary for getting this case on my radar.

Looking beyond the clear primary CC terms I suspect there are going to be tangential actions that are going to require either extended terms or legal proceedings to sort out what the exact laws will be. One concern I have is if someone submits an artwork under CC terms and then later formally copyrights it, what does that mean for people that had already legally used the art. If I made a video montage using parts of a estwhile CC-termed video, do I have to stop using it immediately? What if I’ve already released it far and wide? How will the reuser know about the change in terms? My gut feeling is that once placed in the creative commons a creator will not be able to revoke that license. I have, however, on more than one occasion heard of CC users changing their tune. It’s funny because at first they are unknown and go CC to help spread their waork much farther than if they copyrighted it. Then when they are famous they no longer want to share the same content anymore. In my mind such creators have no choice but to release new items on stricter terms and let the older ones remain under their existing open terms. I’m sure the bright minds at CC and the Electronic Fronteir Foundation have much more to say on such issues.

So there’s a lot ot watch on this front. The Creative Commons license is a great boon to artists and people that enjoy being entertained. If anyone does not agree or understand why this is a good thing please contact me. No one thinks copyright and trademark are necessarily bad things, we just think that there should be more options to ensure creativity can have more outlets than corporate law had made it.