Creative Commons

[Edelweiss]

My Picasa Photo Gallery allows me to create my own perameters for sharing photos on the web. I am referred to "Creative Commons" http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/ which gives me several choices with explanations:

All rights reserved
Attribution
Attribution-NoDerivs
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
Attribution-NonCommercial
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Attribution-ShareAlike

Questions:
1. Are these copyright designations universal or only used by Picasa?

2. Are there any advantages or disadvantages to using the less restrictive permissions? (I have always used the most restrictive - all rights reserved.)

Thanks for your insights!

Joanne

 

[bikehikeskifish]

Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_commons for some insight.

(being Wikipedia, it is only "so definitive", of course!)

Tim

 

[nartreb]

These have nothing to do with Picasa, except that Picasa is offering to make it easy for you to choose one of these licenses. As the copyright holder, you can choose any license you like, or none. (Offering no license is the same as reserving all rights to yourself.)

If you do choose to offer your work under license to the public, it makes sense to choose a well-known license that users may be familiar with; that's why I use one of the Creative Commons licenses for my own work, even though there are some technical aspects I don't like. (Notably, their "plain English" versions don't always do a good enough job, IMHO, of describing what the actual license (in Legalese) really means.)

"Advantages" depend on what you're trying to achieve. If you want to make it easy for people to share and re-use your work (perhaps under conditions, like giving you credit), choose a license that does that. If not, don't.

 

[w7xman]

I think the disadvantage of creative commons licenses is loss of control. When you allow others to use your photos without contacting you first, your photos can be used in association with well, anything, and by anyone. Add the requirement that credit must be given, and who knows what you inadvertantly endorse.

I keep my photos all rights reserve, and am happy to negotiate fair use parameters (and often fees).

Not a huge fan of the commons...