Net Results: Maybe you have a personal website and you're happy to have people quote from it or use resources on your site, but you'd like such use to be acknowledged.
Perhaps you've developed a nice little software application and you're happy to have people download and use it, but with certain restrictions - private use is fine but you want to be paid for commercial use.
Or you might be an academic with a website that has content used in your classes, and you'd like to make sure there's a clear statement of how the site's content can be used by students or others.
Maybe you are just tired of reading about the increasing tendency for businesses to copyright and restrict the use of everything, and the unfortunate trend in which national governments keep redefining and expanding the definition of copyright.
If so, the Creative Commons licence is for you. Creative Commons is an international effort to create what its members call "reasonable copyright" - copyright that does not depend on extremes of all rights reserved or no rights reserved, but a more moderate point in between.
As the Creative Commons website states: "We use private rights to create public goods: creative works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and open-source movements, our ends are co-operative and community-minded, but our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them - to declare 'some rights reserved'." The site (http://creativecommons.org/) is full of helpful background on the larger copyright issue - all explained in accessible language rather than confusing legalese.
Getting a licence is both free and easy. You just go to the website and generate one by clicking the boxes that offer the elements you want to incorporate into your personal licence. Voilà, you're done.
You are also issued with a bit of code that you can pop onto your website. This produces a little Creative Commons icon that visitors can click to read the terms of your licence.
You might think the Creative Commons approach is anti-copyright, but the site stresses that this is not the case: "Our licences help you retain your copyright while allowing certain exceptions to it, upon certain conditions. In fact, our licences rely upon copyright for their enforcement."
The system has been around since the end of 2002 in the US, originating at Stanford University under the guidance of well-known cyber-rights Prof Lawrence Lessig. But Creative Commons has been eager to have the licence used worldwide.
To be legally recognised in other jurisdictions, the licence sometimes needs tweaking. And that's where two members of the law faculty at University College Cork, Dr Darius Whelan and Ms Louise Crowley, come into the picture.
They're busy reworking the licence to take account of Irish law - but with "a minimalist approach", says Dr Whelan. "There are great similarities regarding the basics" of copyright law in both countries, he says, but a bit of fine-tuning is still needed.
He points to such differences as differences in how "fair use" is provided for under US and Irish law.
Fair use is the term given to cases in which a work or parts of it can be copied or used without that being considered a violation of copyright. Irish law allows for more instances in which fair use would apply, he says.
Keeping an eye on such differences, they've drafted a first version of an Irish Creative Commons licence, which now goes through a public discussion phase, at which point it will be redrafted and should be ready for downloading by summer.
You can read more about the project here: http://creativecommons.org/ projects/international/ie.
You'll also find a link to a discussion area for comments and questions, which will be open for the coming month.
Dr Whelan says he got involved with the project because of his dismay at the heavy commercialisation of what was once a more open medium built by community - and primarily non-commercial - effort.
His and Ms Crowley's efforts have a certain ironic tinge to them however, because you don't have to look far to see how fraught the whole area of commercial copyright remains.
The EU is in the midst of attempting to finalise a draft copyright directive - a process that has been controversial and often full of bitter argument.
The draft directive that emerged recently was an attempt to strike a balance between often starkly oppositional views. But there are holes and badly crafted sections - something the Commission has recognised, acknowledging that, at the very least, parts will need rewriting.
Expect a battle royal over what happens next. If you want to find out more, go to: www.fipr.org/ copyright/ draft-ipr-enforce.html.
