kidmercuryblog

By Kid Mercury

For content professionals, CC-BY is the license of the future (or something similar, like OEL). Here's why:

CC-BY-NC is impossible. Google makes money just by linking to your content. In the attention economy, who can put together the big list of links is a way of lot of value and money can be captured, as Google is proving. So, if you license your content as NC, does that mean we shouldn't link to it?

For content professionals, it's a pointless license.

CC-BY-ND is not consistent with what the Internet is designed for. The Internet is designed for copying and pasting; it's designed for mashups and remixes.

The Big Issue: Money

Obviously, the big issue is money. Content producers want to be compensated for their work. This also ties greatly into their value system; in other words, psychologically, many content producers are more interested in the market acknowledging their worth rather than the actual money itself (although both are needed and appreciated).

An ad network that profits from enabling syndication and remixing of media is the solution here. Such an ad network would incentivize CC-BY licensing. Given that such an ad network is inherently responsible for paying content producers and Internet publishers, it is implicitly responsible for license enforcement (license enforcement could be a basis of competition if the ad networks slack off in this regard).

So next time you see someone using a ND license to publish something online, let them know the truth about where the game is headed.