Essay topic 5

Topic: Creative Commons is both a solution and yet another failure to deal with authorship and copyright on the internet. Discuss and give examples

Background
The communication technological has been developing rapidly, the “print copyright” becoming to “digital copyright”. Literary works, videos, music and software can be downloaded conveniently and free. It is a new challenge to the traditional model of intellectual property protection. To consider this tort act, it will break the copyright of authors when people do noninterference. However, based over care about this problem, it will put a barrier on the way of academic research communicate.

Introduction
In this essay, there will be an introduction of what is Creative Commons (CC), how it works, why it has been sited up then the discussion of the relationship between Creative Commons and the authorship and copyright.

The Creative Commons (CC) was offered by the professor of Stanford University, Lawrence Lessig in 2001. The purpose of Creative Commons is to offer a license which sets on the idea of knowledge sharing and complies with the law to protect the copyright and authorship issues on internet.

There are 6 major licenses and 4 conditions of Creative Commons; authors can depend on their needs to choose the best type to allow others to share their creations. There is a large number of websites suing the CC license to help them to control the recourse sharing when they manage their web. Such as Wikipedia, Flicker, Public Library of science.

According to the famous copyright cases: “Mickey copyright” and “IBM Linux copyright” limited the spreading of resource, the insights realize that the idea “All Rights Reserved” that should be improve; then the ideas “Some Rights Reserved” and “No Rights Reserved” are gone up to the stage. Just like the words of the professor of law, Zhao Xiaoli at Tsinghua University, “In the copyright of the idea ‘All Rights Reserved’, to use it properly is impossible.” Zhao xiaoli 2004.

Moreover, this idea provides a large rang of useful information recourses to the creation. It has made the knowledge which created by one people then share and re-create by others in practice, thus, the Creative Commons license is popular.

It clearly shows that the CC license helps the author to protect their works and make people to share more resources legally and it promotes the community of academic community. However, if the CC is the solution of the authorship and copyright on the internet, we can consider this question which requires thinking about how the CC license works in the practical application and whether has the ability of practicability.

The CC license ensures the author to release some parts of the works copyright, while keeping other parts; people can download and copy the recourses or amend some part legally. Depend on how much rights they would like to grant, the CC licenses offers a system to help authors choose which license to use in the 6 major licenses. When authors get into the CC license official website, there is a quiz area, the author answers three questions; the website will help them to choose the most appropriate license. After deciding which license to use, the problem comes.

Authors need to cut and past a digital-code of CC license which they decide to use into their file, but for many author, it is difficult to write or just past the digital-code for their work. Moreover, the digital-code is not fit for the binary files and difficult to embed into it. In addition, some of the search engines are unable to find those binary flies with CC license. That means that the CC license can not very convenient to be used by every author and it is not so reliable to publics search their recourse needs.

"The law adjusts to the technologies of the time. And as it adjusts, it changes. Ideas which were as solid as rock in one age crumble in another." Lessing 2004

The other problem is that the CC license is not fit for all copyright around the world because different country has its different system of law. The CC license offered which is based on the US law system; therefore, it can not suit for other countries’ law completely, so that the CC license can not be performed.

Even though there is a Creative Commons International project to amend the license to fit into other law system, it is still not enough. At the present time there are just 52 countries sign this license.

If this situation means the other countries which not sign into the CC license are unable to share more recourse on the internet? In fact those countries can still find resources and use them over freedom. The manager of China Creative Commons International Corporation Gao Han said “there is a blind spot in those countries which are not sign in and for the people in blind spot, the free recourse means they can use them without engagement.” Gao Han 2004
Those people can share others works and there is just some local laws to engagement their behavior, it is possible make the internet copyright into a situation of chaos.

Conclusion
The CC license offers a solution for the internet copyright and authorship, it helps authors to protect their rights of works while other people can copy, share and re-create the recourse from the internet legally. However, the CC license also has problems when it works for the authorship and copyright on internet. It seems that the CC license is a really useful way to solve the internet copyright problem. However if people can not use it in a correct way, it will cause big problem to the order of the copyright issues.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io3BrAQl3so

Reference
Creative Commons http://www.creativecommons.org/

Wei, ‘The balance between creative commons and copyright’ (n.d.).7th April 2006 intellectual property of shaan’xi viewed 3rd October , 2009
http://www.snipo.gov.cn/ReadNews.asp?NewsID=2879&BigClassName=%D5%BD%C2%D4%D1%D0%BE%BF&SmallClassName=%B0%CB%B7%BD%CC%B8&SpecialID=0

Lawrence Lessig Wikipedia viewed 3re October 2009
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig

Alan Wexelblat, September 15, 2008. ‘Disney and the Copyright on Mickey Mouse’ Corante viewed 10th October 2009
http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2008/09/15/disney_and_the_copyright_on_mickey_mouse.php

Lawrence Lessig Free Culture
http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/)

Gao Han, ‘An international effort to Creative Commons’ (n.d.) Renmin University of China law school viewed 5th October 2009
http://www.law.ruc.edu.cn/Article/ShowClass.asp?ClassID=795


Zhao xiaoli, ‘Some Rights Reserved’ Internet Law Newsletter vol 3 Republic Press China pp.3

Ling Jie, P2005 ‘Creative Commons New Concept of Copyright Protection in Digital Age’ People’s Court News vol 199