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I chose the Creative Commons license because it opens interactions between people’s creative works under the over-protected new copyright law and it protects creative works properly from copyleft.

CC poster. From creativecommons.org

Creative Commons (CC) allows openness to creative works under the extended copyright law set by bureaucracy. By the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, copyright is extended for an additional twenty years. And thus an estimated 400,000 books are prevented from entering the public domain until 2019 (Steitfeld, 2002). The Act is against the tendency of open access brought by Web 2.0. And in fact, it’s merely favoring some large media companies. By early 2000s in America, there is only six major conglomerates dominate 90% of distribution in media market (Garcelon, 2009: 1309). While Web 2.0 has freed some creative works from hidden behind the copyright law, users and small companies are able to access them without paying those companies. Thus the large companies are trying to maintain their oligopolistic control over the creative works by advocating the copyright’s extension. To against this monopoly, CC was created to give copyright holders the option of making creative works available for copying and distribution by granting various exceptions to the rights.

CC poster. From aulados.net.

By providing the options, CC has clarified the distinctions between “rivalrous” and “nonrivalrous” resources. Web 2.0 has the nonrivalrous nature which is given by the easy copy and distribution through the technologies. However CC holds the view of that some of the creative works are rivalrous. So it provides a control to ensure that those resources are produced and not overused (Garcelon, 2009: 1309). But the large media companies neglected such distinctions and assume that all the creative works online is intellectual properties. The false concept which stems from their self interests needs to be corrected by the voluntary organization such as CC.

When the distinction of rivalrous and nonrivalrous is neglected by big media companies, some copyleft organizations also falsely assume that all creative works online should be nonrivalrous. Such organizations include Free Software Foundation founded by Richard Stallman. The site provides software whose code remains accessible for manipulation by any users without restrictions (Garcelon, 2009: 1314). Free Software Foundation clearly takes the wrong concept that the software resource online is nonrivalrous and needs no control once after they are produced. This wrong concept shows no respects to the professionals who devote their whole lives to create and modify software. Plus, such openness may lead to commercial abuses. “That’s not possible or desirable,” commented by CC founder Lawrence Lessig. While under the license of CC, once some creative works are used for profit, it could revert to function legally as a standard copyright. Thus CC provides the creative works proper legal protections.

The relevance of CC is quite important. For creative works, CC developed a perspective relating non-commercial and commercial uses. And thus it allows small companies to challenge major media companies (Garcelon, 2009: 1315) For instances, small music companies can download the music pieces of large music companies and then make their own music remix. For science, CC has helped the exchange of ideas and research projects without weird licensing arrangements and intellectual property agreements. It drives the explosion of scientific knowledge in several countries (Garcelon, 2009: 1311). In conclusion, under CC license, people like me can enjoy the interactions and communications of different creative works without worrying about the copyrights.

Reference

Marc Garcelon, ‘An Information Commons? Creative Commons and Public Access to Cultural Creations’, New Media &Society 11.8(2009)

Steitfeld, David (2002) ‘The Culture Anarchist vs Hollywood Police State’, Los Angeles Times (22 Sep.)

http://www. Grailwerk.com/docs/latimes.html