Advance note: Nowadays it doesn't have to be all or nothing when it comes to copyright. A non-profit company called Creative Commons offers a way to make some of your work available to some of the people some of the time.

In the early days of the USA, we adopted the British system of inches, feet, and yards. Now in the 21^st century, such measurements are cumbersome in the global community of meters and centimeters. The same with pounds and ounces. Grams would be preferable.

Copyright has a similar problem.

The original builders of our U.S. Constitution wanted to guarantee protection for composers, painters, writers, and other artists to ensure that they could benefit from their work. They passed legislation that offered 14 years of copyright. After that time, in a democratic society, the public could benefit by the work, also. As the country grew, so did the copyright protection, from 14 years, to 50 years, and eventually 70 years. The U.S. Supreme court recently agreed to uphold the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA), which extended copyright 20 years, from life plus 50 years to life plus 70, and from 75 to 95 years for corporations and other entities.

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"...by the inch it's a cinch; by the yard it is hard."

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This extension of time has benefited companies like Disney Inc., who want to sell the rights of Mickey Mouse on coffee cups and T-shirts twenty extra years. But it has backfired for companies like PBS (Public Broadcasting System), that wants to air a Jimmy Stewart WWII film, or an early Louis Armstrong recording.

There has never been an in-between. Copyright protects for a determined time span. And it protects all rights. Period. As the saying goes, "...by the inch it's a cinch; by the yard it is hard."

In the Digital Age, however, authors, composers, artists, and photographers can modify the copyright protection so that both the public and the author or artist can benefit by it.

IT'S FREE

At Stanford Law School a group called Creative Commons has developed a free copyright licensing scheme that will allow the public to use a work on a limited basis. A composer might wish to allow public dissemination of a song to youth groups but not to label companies, without payment. The organization plans to eventually offer conditions/restrictions that will let authors restrict uses to certain media, e.g. newspapers or on the Internet.

PERMITTED USE OF YOUR PHOTO

A stock photographer might want to allow a photo showing poverty, to be published in non-profit magazines without payment, but still require payment in commercial magazines. A nature photographer might wish to allow free rights to environmental publishing houses to use a photo of a mismanaged waste dump, but require payment for commercial use.

In the past, it might have taken a stadium filled with accountants to track such varying copyright protections, but today, the computer makes this sort of thing possible. Up until now, such modifications have not been possible under copyright law without extensive legalese accompanying the image. It was all or nothing.

Creative Commons has built machine-readable licenses that will help tell others that your works in certain cases are free for copying and other uses - only on certain conditions. If you use the license and Creative Commons logo along with your image, instead of saying the familiar "all rights reserved," you'll be saying, in effect, "Some rights reserved."

If you wish to dedicate your photo to the public domain (as are most federal and some state-owned photos) you are in effect saying "no rights reserved."

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USING THE LICENSE

Note: Creative Commons does not provide legal advice or services. They provide form legal documents; the rest is up to you, the photographer.

Offering your work under a Creative Commons machine-readable license does not mean giving up your copyright. It means offering some of your rights to any taker, and only on certain conditions.

The Creative Commons site will let you mix and match. There are eleven Creative Commons licenses to choose from. Here are a few examples:

Attribution. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give you credit.

Example: Jane publishes her photograph with an Attribution license, because she wants the world to use her pictures provided they give her credit. Bob finds her photograph online and wants to display it on the front page of his website. Bob puts Jane's picture on his site, and clearly indicates Jane's authorship.

Noncommercial. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work— and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only.

Examples: Gus publishes his photograph with a Noncommercial license. Camille incorporates a piece of Gus's image into a collage poster. Camille is not allowed to sell her collage poster without Gus's permission.

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No Derivative Works. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only exact copies of your photo, not derivative works such as with an altered sky or tree.

Example: Sara licenses a photo with a "No Derivative Works" license. Delightful Designs would like to use a section of Sara's photo to produce an entirely new image. They cannot do this without Sara's permission (unless Delightful Design's image conforms to "fair use" criteria).

Share Alike. You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

Example: Gus's online photo is licensed under the Noncommercial and Share Alike terms. Camille is an amateur collage artist, and she takes Gus's photo and puts it into one of her collages. This Share Alike language requires Camille to make her collage available on a Noncommercial plus Share Alike license. It makes her offer her work back to the world on the same terms Gus gave her.

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Many photographers are concerned that search engines such as Google and others are infringing on their rights. The Creative Commons license includes a "digital code," a machine-readable translation of the license that helps search engines and other applications identify your work by its terms of use.

Other important provisos: A legal code: this is in the fine print that captures the legal nitty – gritty; and a "Commons Deed," a simple, plain-language summary of the license, complete with the relevant icons.

CAN YOU STILL SUE?

If you include a Creative Commons "Some Rights Reserved" button on your site, near your work, it will help protect it. The button will link back to the Creative Commons Deed, so that visitors to your website would learn of your license terms. If you find that your license is being violated, you may have grounds to sue under copyright infringement.