New report looks at suitability of Creative Commons for UK public sector

The study, undertaken for the CIE by Intrallect and the AHRC Research Centre for Studies in
Intellectual Property & Technology Law at the University of
Edinburgh, was commissioned to investigate the potential for Creative
Commons licenses to clarify and simplify the process of making digital
resources available for re-use. 

Creative Commons is a
licensing system under which authors or producers of a work offer some of
their rights to others to re-use their work, but only under certain
specified conditions. Creative Commons is seen to have various advantages,
including ease of use, widespread adoption, choice and flexibility,
human-readable, machine-readable and symbolic representations of the
licences, and a direct link between the resource and its licencse. However,
there have been questions asked about its suitability for widespread
adoption by the UK public sector. 

Dr Paul Miller, outgoing Director of the Common Information Environment, a
grouping of UK public sector information organisations, including Jisc,
said: “People have talked for a number of years about the potential role of
Creative Commons licences in our space, and these discussions tend to
become both partisan and heated. With this work, the team have succeeded in
offering a balanced and informed view of the pros and cons of such an
approach, and they clearly demonstrate that there are a number of
situations in which such a licensing model would improve the experience of
the end user, which must be a good thing." 

The report is licensed with a Creative Commons Attribution
licence to encourage dissemination and reuse of the findings, and is
available for download, along with a comprehensive set
of appendices. 

The CIE members are currently considering the report's
recommendations. 

For more information on the Common
Information Environment