There is little doubt that there are hundreds of thousands of Creative Commons works in existence today.
Note: This is an article I wrote that was published elsewhere first. It has been republished here for archival purposes
Sites like SoundClick, Open Source Movies, Flickr, and Creative Commons – Books are just a tiny piece of the Creative Commons content pie. Creative Commons has allowed content creators to essentially take copyright into their own hands and lay out the laws of their works.
Generally speaking, an overwhelming majority of Creative Commons works are available online for free. While this has numerous positive effects for the distribution of the works, this does carry the connotation that putting content online for free means sacrificing compensation. Compensation is often a sticky subject in the online community, though most would agree that creators should have a right to be compensated for their work. So, does giving away content for free under Creative Commons licenses mean creators have to wave goodbye to compensation? Not if 60sox, a new website, can help it.
On the heals of a recent announcement that Dutch copyright collectives are compensating artists who use Creative Commons licenses to distribute their work, a website devoted to Australian content creators promises to allow the creators to post their work online for free under a Creative Commons license which allows feedback from other users. The kicker is that major industry professionals will also have access to the same content, thereby increasing exposure in many ways that would easily help the content creators in their careers.
The content is organized much the same way Digg organizes news articles. The more a community rates a particular work and the work then floats to the top of a large list of different kinds of works. While this feature seems run-of-the-mill today, another feature on the site is something called the 2bobmob. The 2BobMob is a collection of ‘mobsters’ which have professional backgrounds in the various fields. One such mobster in the music category is Simon Cahill of Sony/BMG, a senior manager of Red Label.
“We here at CCAU are always excited to hear about new concepts designed to help Australian/Kiwi creators get paid for what they do, especially when CC licences are involved.” The Creative Commons Australian blog said, “So we’re very happy to call attention to the launch of 60Sox, a new initiative coming out of the Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation.”
60Sox describes the paying aspect with the following, “On one hand there’s a lot of people in Aust/NZ who want to earn money through their creativity. On the other, industry is constantly on the look out for great new creative talent. It’s in the middle that 60Sox sits.” Presumably, creators can get hired if industry experts like the content creators work.
The site is created by ICI (Institute of Creative Industries and Innovation)
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Google+.
