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Creative Commons License (CCL) in South Korea- a new way of respecting content owner’s rights
On 26 February, Naver (www.naver.com), the largest Internet search engine and a portal service provider in South Korea (5th in the world), announced that it officially introduce Creative Commons License(CCL) to its blogs and café services (web community service) and began a grand campaign for promoting CCL with cartoons, videos and so on. As for the largest portal service provider in user size at home, Naver has been struggling with copyright infringements, content and blog posting piracy activities of users. With this announcement, Naver becomes the third next to Daum (www.daum.net), which has already adopted CCL to its blog and café (community) services in 2005, and Paran (www.paran.com) in 2007. In addition, the largest social networking service provider, Cyworld (www.cyworld.com) also decided to adopt CCL as its official license and copywrite protecting method, starting in May 2008 (creativecommons.or.kr).
![[Naver’s CCL page including CCL introduction cartoon, movie, FAQ]](http://www.jayyoon.com/attach/1/1214319862.jpg)
[Naver’s CCL page including CCL introduction cartoon, movie, FAQ]
What is CCL?
Creative Commons is a Massachusetts-chartered 501(c) (3) tax-exempt charitable corporation. Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright — all rights reserved — and the public domain — no rights reserved. Their licenses help content owners keep their copyright while inviting certain uses of their work — a “some rights reserved” copyright (creativecommons.org).Using a Creative Commons License (CCL) means offering some of individual’s right to any member of the public but only on certain conditions.
[conditions that a content uploader need to select before post a content, source: creativecommons.org, 2008]Conditions are symbolised and easily attachable to contents. There are four conditions when a content creator can use on a post:
Attribution. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.
Non-commercial. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only
No Derivative Works. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.
Share Alike. You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.
‘Free Cultural approved for works’ seal. Creative Commons recently added the seal to Creative Commons Licenses that qualify as Free Culture Licenses according to the definition of Free Cultural Works — Attribution and Attribution-ShareAlike. According to Wikipedia, Free Cultural Work is defined as works or expressions which can be freely studied, applied, copied and/or modified, by anyone, for any purpose. It also describes certain permissible restrictions that respect or protect these essential freedoms, but it distinguishes between free works, and free licenses which can be used to legally protect the status of a free work. The definition itself is not a license; it is a tool to determine whether a work or license should be considered “free.” When CCL is added on content, it means the owner of the content will get the appropriate license expressed in three ways such as: a. Commons Deed. A simple, plain-language summary of the license, complete
with the relevant icons.
For example,
means it allows others to download the content owner’s works and share them with others as long as they mention the content owner and link back to the original content page, but they cannot change the content in any way or use them commercially. shows the content is downloadable and redistributes the original content, and they also translate, make remixes and produce new stories based on the original work. However the content needs to be non-commercial in nature. means the content is allowed for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to the content owner.b. Legal Code. The fine print that you need to be sure the license will stand up in court (an example of the legal code is available to view at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode).c. Digital Code. A machine-readable translation of the license that helps search engines and other applications identify your work by its terms of use. (creativecommons.org)
How it works
Examples below show how CCL works in a South Korean community portal site Daum.
When someone writes a post, CCL information will be shown at the bottom of the content uploading tool, and the content uploader can select CCL conditions. When the post is uploaded, CCL is displayed at the right-bottom of the post, showing what the condition of this content is.
[The content upload is completed and CCL is displayed within the content]
It has been three years since the introduction of Creative Commons License in Korea. So far, Korea has emerged as the third or the fourth of CCL user country in the world except USA. Additionally, Naver’s CCL policies were expected more to invigorate CCL in the near future. On the other hand, Naver’s announcement about CCL has triggered enormous concerns in Korean blogosphere. Some of them were worried about possible side effects of unintended commercialisation of CCL, which could lead to emphasising the role of CCL as stirring up people’s sense of copyright orderliness rather than real Open Culture. But most bloggers were for it in view of CCL promotion in Korea and expected its impact on spreading CCL in Korea (creativecommons.or.kr).The United Kingdom and CCL
CCL has not been widely adopted or well-known among the UK Internet users yet. However the UK: England and Wales license has now been integrated into the Creative Commons Licensing process, so it is able to license one’s works under the jurisdiction’s law. Scotland has its one way of integrating Creative Commons License but it is provided by Creative Commons’ UK also under the Scotland’s jurisdiction’s law (www.creativecommons.org.uk).
Reference: www.creativecommons.org, www.naver.com, www.daum.net
