New licensing scheme re-writing traditional law

The licenses are the brainchild of online theorist Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor, who argues that the current system of copyright laws provides little flexibility. His proposal is a set of copyright licences that would allow artists to choose to keep ‘some rights reserved’ rather than ‘all rights reserved’. Artists could, for instance, choose to allow their works to be enjoyed and copied by others for any purposes, restrict such activity to non-commercial use or allow use of portions of the work rather than all of it. Lessig, who co-founded the non-profit Creative Commons, says the aim is to ‘help artists and authors give others the freedom to build upon their creativity – without calling a lawyer first’. So far, more than 10 million creations have been distributed using these licences. Fritz Attaway, Washington general counsel for the Motion Picture Association of America, said work licensed under Creative Commons licenses and those released under traditional copyright restrictions can co-exist. But, he doubts that major movie studios or record labels would ever license large quantities of their work for distribution using Creative Commons licenses because they make plenty of money off the current system. Full report in The Washington Post