Would you ever recommend a Creative Commons license?

Kimberlee G. Weatherall, University of Melbourne, Australia

Abstract

The phrase sympathetic scepticism may be oxymoronic, but it captures something of the attitude with which I approach Creative Commons. I share Creative Commons’s concern regarding the expansion of copyright and the risks such expansion poses to innovation and liberty, and the belief that a great deal of copyright-protected material can and should be made generally accessible and useable, where its restrictions do not serve the objectives we associate with copyright: incentives for creativity; remuneration to creators, and a degree of control over the outputs of the creative soul. However I am also somewhat sceptical of the particular strategies of Creative Commons. Something feels wrong. This paper seeks to identify, in a preliminary and exploratory way, where the wrongness comes from. I examine the most frequently raised criticisms of Creative Commons as a movement and as a licensing system. The purpose of this examination is to judge how compelling each of these critiques is, and how they might be answered. Should we ever be seriously recommending Creative Commons? If so, when? If not, what changes would need to be made before we could make that recommendation? And are the issues different for institutional users? The preliminary argument is that many of the major critiques of Creative Commons can be answered, but that concerns should remain, particularly for institutional or public sector users proposing to adopt these licenses.