In preparation for a move to the Pine Tree Legal Assistance Mobile Web development site I just finished reviewing the websites of all 253 legal aid and support organizations that Pine Tree links to. While I was looking, I decided to see how many use the Creative Commons copyright. Two of them do – Pine Tree and NTAP (look at the bottom of the page).
I've always thought Creative Commons, like open source, is a perfect fit with legal services, particularly our client education and self-help material. What is our purpose in publishing this stuff unless it’s to get it into the hands of as much of our client population and the people who work with them as possible? Licensing under Creative Commons has the potential to expand our reach and impact. Insisting on traditional copyright limits the use of our work in ways I don't think any of us really care about.
Creative Commons offers six flavors of copyright. NTAP chose the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike version which allows its works to be freely copied, distributed, transmitted and adapted, but requires that the work be attributed to NTAP and not used for commercial purposes. If the work is changed or adapted, it can only be distributed under a similar license. Pine Tree’s license is similar, but allows derivative works only with permission. Traditional copyright prohibits all use of the material without prior permission. (As I understand copyright law, having no copyright mark or statement still makes the work subject to traditional copyright laws.)
Pine Tree Legal Assistance has been very aggressive in protecting its name, its website and its published materials from commercial exploitation. Link However, we also know that allowing open non-commercial use of the client education materials has greatly expanded the number of people who are helped by the material. In fact, Pine Tree tries to make all of its client ed material available both in web format and pdf format which can be easily copied and distributed by others.
Creative Commons estimates that more than 250 million works worldwide now cary a CC license. Why not more works from legal services programs?
