A customisable form of copyright license will soon be available internationally through the Creative Commons, a non-profit organisation based in the US. The organisation already offers US artists a way build their own copyright agreement.
Each custom-made license is also designed to incorporate an identifying piece of code that can be stored on a central database operated by the Creative Commons. This tag should make it simple for other artists to search for a piece of music or video that they can legally incorporate in their own work.
The latest Creative Commons initiative is to create versions of the licenses for the UK, Japan, Brazil, Finland and Norway by the end of 2003, says assistant director Neeru Paharia. This will involve translating the US licenses into local legal parlance.
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Paharia says this should greatly expand the reach of the licenses, which she says are more flexible and reasonable than conventional licences. 鈥淚t鈥檚 tremendously important,鈥� she told 快猫短视频. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 want to be restricted to the US 鈥� there鈥檚 a whole world out there.鈥�
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In the UK, Paharia says the licences will be organised with the help of the BBC, a public service broadcaster. The BBC also plans to release large amounts of its audio and video archive under a customised copyright license. But Paharia did not elaborate on the type of licence envisaged.
Through the Creative Commons web site, artists can generate a license for a piece of work that suits their own requirements. The customisable conditions include allowing a work to be used only non-commercially, used to make derivative works or freely used, but only if credited.
Such licences may be one way to tackle the issue of distribution of fully copyrighted material over the internet. So far, technological attempts to prevent this activity, such as CD copy prevention systems, have proved unsuccessful.
鈥淭he idea is to put introduce some granularity between public domain and full copyright,鈥� Paharia says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to get a full spectrum of rights.鈥� She says there are currently 400,000 web sites linking to individual US licenses.
On Wednesday, at the O鈥橰eilly Emerging Technology conference in Santa Clara, US, the Creative Commons and book publisher O鈥橰eilly announced that hundreds of US works will be released under a type of licence announced in December 2002. Called the Founders license, this is similar to a full copyright agreement, but expires after 14 years.