Friday, October 01, 2004
Canadian Creative Commons license now available!
Following the lead of numerous other countries, Canada finally has a creative Commons license for public use. The CC license provides artists, authors, programmers and other content creators with an easy and efficient set of rules to encourage maximum distribution of their work, while maintaining control over economic exploitation.
Over at the Boing, Cory Doctorow notes that the waiver of moral rights is not mandatory, and could make some potential users think twice before making use of a work and creating directly derivative content. Moral rights in copyright law are a tricky thing, both policy-wise and in terms of clear definitions as to what may impugn an author's moral prerogative and what may not-- The language is all about reputation, etc., highly subjective terms, especially given intense personal connections to artistic works. Canadian copyright law stands somewhere between continental Europe's intense focus upon the rights of authors and the United States' (supposedly!) single-minded Pursuit of economic and scientific progress, and it seems somewhat inevitable that our creative Commons license import both the good and bad from our hybrid legislation.
At any rate, regardless of what one may think of the license terms itself, congratulations to CIPPIC and the University of Ottawa for providing Canadian content creators with another legal mechanism for getting their work out there.
LINK: creativecommons.org
Following the lead of numerous other countries, Canada finally has a creative Commons license for public use. The CC license provides artists, authors, programmers and other content creators with an easy and efficient set of rules to encourage maximum distribution of their work, while maintaining control over economic exploitation.
Over at the Boing, Cory Doctorow notes that the waiver of moral rights is not mandatory, and could make some potential users think twice before making use of a work and creating directly derivative content. Moral rights in copyright law are a tricky thing, both policy-wise and in terms of clear definitions as to what may impugn an author's moral prerogative and what may not-- The language is all about reputation, etc., highly subjective terms, especially given intense personal connections to artistic works. Canadian copyright law stands somewhere between continental Europe's intense focus upon the rights of authors and the United States' (supposedly!) single-minded Pursuit of economic and scientific progress, and it seems somewhat inevitable that our creative Commons license import both the good and bad from our hybrid legislation.
At any rate, regardless of what one may think of the license terms itself, congratulations to CIPPIC and the University of Ottawa for providing Canadian content creators with another legal mechanism for getting their work out there.
LINK: creativecommons.org
