Creative Commons license success in the UK and Finland

By EDRi · June 2, 2004

On 25 May 2004 the Creative Commons licensing scheme gained a major victory in Europe. The BBC announced it will apply a CC-license to the content of its Creative Archive, thus offering free public access to some of their audio and video programming. The CC model turns copyright on its head by explaining the ways that the content can be used rather than saying it cannot – or Some Rights Reserved as they put it. By applying a CC-type license to the content, the BBC will enable individuals in the UK to download released content to their computers, share it, edit it and create new content. Commercial reuse of the content will not be allowed.

Professor Lawrence Lessig, chair of the Creative Commons project and advisor of the BBC was clearly excited: “The announcement by the BBC of its intent to develop a Creative Archive has been the single most important event in getting people to understand the potential for digital creativity, and to see how such potential actually supports artists and artistic creativity.”

The Creative Commons and the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology launched the Finnish Creative Commons licenses. Finland is the third country after the US and Japan to go ahead with full-fledged CC licences. After several months of legal deliberation the Finnish project leader Herkko Hietanen felt able to clear the licence draft and present it to the Finnish public on 31 May 2004, thus marking a major milestone in the development of iCommons. Professor Lawrence Lessig and a group of CC-license users gave a speech at the launch.

BBC Creative Archive licensing to be based on Creative Commons (26.05.2004) http://digital-lifestyles.info/display_page.asp?section=distribution&id=%0A1254

Open Content Licensing. Working paper Herkko Hietanen (01.12.2003) http://www.hiit.fi/de/creativecommons/OpenContenCase_CC.pdf

Overview international adaptions Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/projects/international/overview

(Thanks to Herkko Hietanen, Creative Commons Finland)