CC license - entirely unnecessary

In my opinion, I think CC licenses are unnecessary.

Copyright, as everyone knows, provides copyright holders rights to exclude others from performing particular activities - such copying, distributing, etc. CC licenses, according to Wikipedia, "allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators." In other words, CC licenses allow a copyright holder to waive some of their rights.

Assumably, a copyright holder uses a CC license as a mechanism to license away their right to exclude others from doing x, y, or z. However, the copyright holder needs not enter into a license to achieve this goal. Rather, the copyright holder can achieve this goal by simply not enforcing their rights when others do x, y, or z.

The only value I see in CC licenses is in their notification characteristic. In particular, they notify third parties that a copyright holder has given up particular rights. However, this assumes that the third parties recognize what the CC symbol represents. I am not so confident that many people yet understand exactly what the CC symbol – and thus a CC license – actually entails. Accordingly, CC licenses likely cause more detriment than benefit due to consumer confusion.

In the case that a copyright holder seeks to license away their rights, the easiest and most efficient mechanism I see is for the copyright holder to simply not enforce their rights. For those consumers that are sophisticated enough to seek guarantees from suit, they may enter into license agreements (whether it’s deemed “CC” or something else is irrelevant) with the copyright holder to suit their needs.