So what´s the deal with Creative Commons?

Question

Does it really work in a legal way? Or is it more like a symbolic thing?

If I have a blog published from Mexico... is there any difference if I apply the Mexican Creative Commons version or the global one... or is it the same thing?

It is not so clear to me...

Thanks! Have a nice day!

Answer 1

it is up to you which version to use.

yes it is real - the org is headed up by Larry Lessig of Stanford, one of the finest legal minds of our time, who has a deep interest in the issues surrounding intellectual property in the internet era.

I highly recommend all of his books, some of which are available online for free under his license.

As explained on creativecommons.org, the licenses are predicated on keeping your copyright and making clear what rights you assert and what you grant to others.

this strategy has worked for decades now in software with the GNU license (see fsf.org) and has never been successfully challenged. This is the underlying reasoning of the CC licenses.

Answer 2

Creative Commons is a *legal* copyright, but there are several different versions of the copyright and you must make it clear which parameters you are allowing.

You can choose an attribution-only (by) license, in which anyone can use your work as long as they credit you as the author.  You can also choose to add to that any of the following parameters:

(nc) - Non-commercial, which means that your work may not be used for commercial purposes.

(nd) - No derivatives, which means that your work cannot be used and modified by someone else.

(sa) - ShareAlike, which means that any modifications of your work must be licensed under a license identical to your original license.

There are, however, some dissenters that believe that Creative Commons does not do a thorough enough job of protecting intellectual property-- especially in the case of photography.  It's ultimately up to you the extent to which you want to protect or limit usage of your work.

As to the different between CC and CC Global-- CC is based upon U.S. Intellectual Property laws.  If you are living in Mexico or publishing from Mexico, you will probably want to opt for the CC Global Mexican version, as it will hold to Mexican laws better than something transferred from U.S. law.