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46 IDEA 391 (2005-2006)
Pitfalls of Open Licensing: An Analysis of Creative Commons Licensing

handle is hein.journals/idea46 and id is 401 raw text is: PITFALLS OF OPEN LICENSING: AN ANALYSIS OF CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSING ZACHARY KATZ* ABSTRACT The explosive growth of Creative Commons licenses, an innovative set of legal tools that facilitate the open licensing of copyrighted works, is one of the most significant recent phenomena related to the production and distribution of culture. More than fifty million web pages currently link to Creative Commons licenses, and usage of these licenses continues to increase rapidly. This Article analyzes the legal implications of Creative Commons licenses, both statically-as applied to a single copyrighted work-and dynamically-as the rights and restrictions these licenses grant and impose on today's works shape the production and distribution of future works. By modeling the effects of particular Creative Commons licenses, the Article offers an understanding of how these increasingly popular legal tools may shape our cultural environment, particularly with respect to digital works. It concludes, among other things, that incompatibilities between certain Creative Commons licenses may limit the future production and distribution of creative works in ways that today's creators may not intend. I. INTRODUCTION In its brief existence, Creative Commons (CC) has become a major player shaping the production and distribution of creative works. A nonprofit organization founded by Larry Lessig and others in 2001, CC began with a simple goal: to offer free licenses that creators of written, audio, and video content could use to facilitate large-scale sharing of their copyrighted works. Thanks to James Grimmelmann, Rob Schuwerk, and Yochai Benkler for extraordinarily helpful comments. This Article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ or write to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California, 94305, USA. Any use under this license must carry the notation First published in IDEA, Vol. 46, pp. 391 to 413. Volume 46 - Number 3

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