Case 3: IPR and Creative Commons

The following discussion questions are based on the primary reading below:

Questions

1. Why was Creative Commons created in the first place ?
   [ie what was its intent and what was the context for its creation]
2. What does Creative Commons change about copyright ?
   (and what variations of rights are there under Creative Commons ?)
3. Why would an author, like Cory Doctorow, intent on selling books, wish to place their intellectual property in to the public domain in the manner that Creative Commons allows (and why would their publisher let them) ?
   (what business model implications are there ?)
4. What factors might professional photographers wish to take into account in considering Creative Commons as the basis for the image rights of their work ?

Primary reading

• Read pages 179-184 of chapter 8 of James Boyle’s The Public Domain (available as a full text pdf). You may wish to read more of the chapter too, but this is the minimum.
  [note the page references are to the page numbers that are on the pages in the document, not the pdf page numbering]
• Have a look at the case studies on the Creative Commons wiki, epecially the Cory Doctorow one, and read the Digital Photo Pro (2008) article on Creative Commons that the photography case page links to.