"Network Externality"--the critical success factor of Creative Commons

Due to the features of digital technology—ease of reproduction and distribution, traditional copyright license phrase—such as “All Rights Reserved”, is practically infeasible in an online world. Under this circumstance, Creative Commons mechanism is set up as part of the solutions.

In my opinion, the license mechanism of Creative Commons is consistent with the spirits of Copyright Act and the Internet. First of all, according to the Constitution Copyright Clause, the purpose of Copyright Act is to promote culture. Creative Commons mechanism provides the Internet creators with a reasonable and flexible path to put their works partly into public domain rather than reserve all the rights in private sector. In other words, with the assistance of Creative Commons, Information finds its way to diffuse to the public. Further, the initial concept of the Internet is free (or cheap) sharing. Today the culture of remixing and reusing content prevails on the Internet. Creative Commons mechanism encourages this kind of creating and sharing based on good faith.

However, whether Creative Commons could be a successful solution is still questionable. I think the critical success factor of Creative Commons mechanism is so-called “network externality.” If there are more creators willing to adopt Creative Commons, the function of the mechanism will be more powerful. By contrast, if not so many creators intend to adopt it, the expected function will be very limited. For example, since 2003 Taiwan has also started to promote the concept of Creative Commons, which is called “CC Taiwan”, but the adoption of the mechanism by Taiwan’s Internet users is still not popular enough to produce significant benefits.

If you would like to understand more details about the development of Creative Commons in Taiwan, please see the article below:
http://www.iis.sinica.edu.tw/~trc/public/publications/iCommonsAtTheDigitalAge04/iCommonsAtTheDigitalAge04ChenChuangHuangLin.pdf