Blog: New Creative Commons License "Frees Creativity Across the Digital Divide" http://edwebproject.org/andy/blog/ Interesting news from the folks who run the Creative Commons initiative: they've just announced a Developing Nations Copyright License that can be used by content developers to encourage free use of their content in the developing world. http://creativecommons.org/license/devnations As I reported last December from the World Summit on the Information Society, Lawrence Lessig and his colleagues have been developing this idea "so content may be tagged as being freely available for people in the developing world." Thanks to the work of Jamie Love, they now have the first release of the license, which became available last week. So what's the big deal about this copyright license stuff? Well, it's a big deal to two groups of people: people who create content and people who want to use content. For people who create content, copyright licenses are a way of protecting their work, making sure that the work is used in ways that are acceptable to them -- picture songwriters, authors, filmmakers, bloggers, anyone who likes to follow their creative muse. And for people who want to use content - pretty much everyone in the known universe -- a copyright license tells them when they're using someone's content in a fair, reasonable way. So if I'm a guy creating a website about dolphins and I find a nice picture of a bottlenose dolphin in someone's website, the polite thing to do would be to find out from them if I've got permission to use it. Not to mention the fact I could get sued for using it without permission, particularly if I took the picture from someone who sells pictures of dolphins for a living. Creative Commons makes all of this easier by creating a user-friendly way for content producers to assign copyright licenses to their work. For example, if you look on the left-hand side of my blog's homepage (http://www.edwebproject.org/andy/blog/), you'll see a button saying that my blog is published under a Creative Commons license that allows anyone to republish my stuff as long as it's for noncommercial purposes and that they pass along the same copyright privileges I've set up for myself. Anyone who's got content they'd like to share publicly while preserving their ownership of it can go to www.creativecommons.org and design a license for themselves -- a bit of computer code they insert on their website. Once you've placed it on your website, everyone who visits your site will have access to an easy-to-read explanation of the license, plus a legal deed written for all you lawyers out there. Even better, the computer code added to the Web page means that your license can be read by search engines and the like, so they'll note the copyright status for your content. So now comes along this new Developing Nations license. What this license means is that you, as a content producer, can differentiate how your content gets used by others based on whether they live in a developed or developing country. By creating a Developing Nations license for your website -- or for your video, song, photo collection, what have you -- you grant anyone living in one of the qualifying countries the right to copy, distribute, display and perform your work, as well as make derivative works (ie, works based on your original content), as long as they give you credit for the work, and pass along the same license rules if they redistribute it. So if a person from Uganda visits your website, they can use this license to copy your work freely, redistribute it, etc, while someone from the United States would need to get your permission first. I've been wondering since last December when this new license would come out, and am really curious to see how it gets used. Will content owners embrace the idea? Will Internet users in less-developed countries take advantage of it? In some of the discussions on the Creative Commons website, some people have described the idea as "paternalistic" and "throwing scraps to those third world types..." Others are cynical from the perspective that people with Internet access in the developing world are already "elites" within their nations and don't need this kind of assistance. I think these positions insult both the thousands of people who use Creative Commons licenses and don't see their work as "scraps," and are eager to work with people from the rest of the world who have an interest in accessing a greater diversity of knowledge and creating new knowledge in the process. Perhaps I'm just being naive, but I'm hopeful about this new license. Only time will tell to see if it's used in ways that are truly beneficial to promoting knowledge sharing and development. Meanwhile, below is a list of countries that *don't* qualify for getting access to content through the Developing Nations license: Andorra, Aruba, Australia, Austria, Bahamas, Bahrain, Belgium, Bermuda, Brunei, Canada, Cayman Islands, Channel Islands, Cyprus, Denmark, Faeroe Islands, Finland, France, French Polynesia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Greenland, Guam, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Macao, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, San Marino, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, US Virgin Islands The list comes from the World Bank's list of high-income economies (http://www.worldbank.org/data/countryclass/classgroups.htm#High_income), which the Creative Commons folks are using as the basis for saying who can't take advantage of the license. If you're residing in any other country not listed here, you can take advantage of the rights defined by the Developing Nations License. Have any interesting examples of how this license might be put to good use? I'd love to hear about it.... -andy Andy Carvin Program Director, EDC Center for Media & Community acarvin at edc.org