Creative Commons Licenses Allow for Intelligent Management of Authors’ Rights

Juan Manuel Puertas, Teacher-Researcher at the Private Technical University of Loja (UTPL), gave the opening speech of the third Latin American Forum on New Technologies at the Virtual Educa Caribe 2009 Summit.

Mr. Puertas’ keynote speech, given on Friday March 6, was titled “Free Online Content: The Creative Commons Case.”

He pointed out that the growing new networks and the subsequent new digital culture
has essentially put everyone in the entire world in touch with everyone else, creating an extreme need for collaboration and sharing.

Puertas explained that the limit of authors’ rights is the right to collective knowledge and that we all have the need to access knowledge in order to bridge the gap that now separates us. For that reason, we should look for alternatives to publish our work in a safe way and in such a way that the public can utilize it without
changing or transferring the author’s privileges.

“In the digital environment, authors’ rights have become less flexible and constitute a legal barrier in the face of technical reality,” he pointed out.

The Case of Creative Commons (CC)

The Creative Commons (CC) licenses are a creative way to negotiate authors’ rights; they allow the creators to communicate
which rights they preserve and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators.

They are pre-written and flexible and, through a standard form contract, grant an intelligent management of the author’s rights while respecting certain norms. This allows for the production of online resources to be distributed for free, legally and safely without changing them; content can be taken from audio files, video and even images and text.

CC represents advantages for the creator as well as the user. The creator defines and clarifies up to what point he/she is prepared to share and the user then knows what he/she can or not do with the file or the work in question. 

Well-known companies and personalities share their digital content, protecting it with this type of service provided by CC.  Among them are the BBC, President Barack Obama and President Correa of Ecuador, concluded
Puertas.