Free Licences Make Sharing Intellectual Works Easier

Creative Commons is a US-based non-profit organization that promotes the sharing of intellectual works. To support this goal, Creative Commons makes available to creators free pre-made forms of licence. Using these licences, a creator can make works available to the public without charge, but can limit the ways in which the work can be used under the licence. There are currently 11 Creative Commons licences available featuring different conditions and limitations on the rights granted. Some common licence limitations include restrictions on the creation of derivative works and use of the work for commercial purposes. The organization provides copyright licences specific to the laws of Austria, Brazil, Holland, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, USA, Taiwan, Canada and Spain. The Canadian licences were introduced in October, 2004 (see E-TIPSâ„¢ Vol 3 No 9, October 13, 2004). So far, more than 10 million creations – ranging from movies and songs to the BBC news footage and books – have been distributed using these licences. To promote the sharing and use of intellectual works, Creative Commons has introduced a search engine to locate works that have adopted the Creative Commons licence. The search engine is included in the Firefox Internet browser. When an author affixes the specific Creative Commons copyright notice (available on the Creative Commons web site) to a webpage or MP3 or image file, it is automatically marked with Creative Commons "metadata" which is used by the search engine to locate the work. It is expected that the use of the search engine will result in much wider exposure for the creators of the works. The beta search engine indexes just under one million web pages, but Creative Commons expects it will soon index the full five million pages known to carry Creative Commons licences today. (In a late development on March 24, 2005, Creative Commons and Yahoo! announced a dedicated interface for searches of Creative Commons material, which Yahoo! said will link users to millions of web pages featuring Creative Commons' content-licensing agreements. For more information on this development, visit: http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5633649.html) For information about Creative Commons licences in Canada, visit: http://creativecommons.org/worldwide/ca/ Summary by: Sue Diaz