Creative Commons’ Licences: Symptom or Cause?

Abstract

Digital technology presents ongoing challenges to the traditional copyright model. This paper discusses and critiques one response to these challenges: Creative Commons licences. Although there are many positive features of Creative Commons licences, certain aspects have attracted criticism. This paper describes the positive features of the licences, considers some of the more contentious issues and concludes that until community norms and expectations in relation to digital creative works align more with the current legal environment for those works provided by copyright law, any attempt to reconceptualise that legal environment by working within its constraints is unlikely to be successful. In other words, the perceived failures of Creative Commons licences may be a symptom of a broader problem - the failure of the copyright system itself to engage with the community.