Nice post. as an artist myself, I have a slightly different viewpoint. I place no barriers on my work in terms of copyright, How else is the world to learn what true art is? And if people copy my stuff, then the world can only get better.

Have fun in library school, I have about 5 months left….and the headache grows exponentially every day.

When I said I don’t use CC:NC works, I am mainly refferring to anyhting I might later monetize on. I try not to use them in slides, because I reuse slides, and it’s not outside the realm of possibilty that I could get paid for a talk (Actually, I just did my first paid talk this last Tuesday.) Also, if I put a lot of stuff out there, I might not know which works I can monetize on later. If something covered by a non commercial license becomes something I can monetize on, I have to track down permission. But, if I can’t find the original author, or if they don’t want to let me use it for a commercial purpose, then I am out of luck. Easier all around to stick to licenses that don’t have that restriction - then all I have to keep in regards to the image is the original authors name and a link, and I’ve upheld my part of the agreement.

This brings up another interesting point, though- if an artist is a prolific user of CC images, it can get damn hard to keep track of all the people you have to credit. I have started keeping this kind of information in a jpeg’s EXIF data, so I am fairly sure it will not become detached from the image. With physical artworks, I might just write the proper attributions on the back or something. It would be interesting to see how people use the CC licenses and keep track of them.

Also, just as an aside- I have not been making much in the way of art lately (unless you call my snapshots and doodles art.) So a lot of this, for me, is academic. After I am done with school, I may sell artwork again, and I reserve the right to review the terms I have set for myself.

(OK, that brings up ANOTHER interesting possibility- what if a creator changes or revokes a license later on? Do you have to adhere to the new license? Hmm.)

I generally use non-commercial for a couple of reasons that may or may not be applicable in regards to your reasoning, but I may need to rethink this in some cases. Much of my output (artistic?) is text, although I do put a lot of pictures in Flickr. Rarely do my photos approach the level of art, imo.

But several of them have been used, non-commercially and with attribution. Some folks have asked in advance–especially the free newspapers and travel guides, some have just linked. I adore this!

But I have a question about what you said here: “I don’t begrudge others decision to put that restriction on their content, however, I try not to use noncommercial licenses in case I want to sell something later on.”

Not sure if this was poor phrasing on your part or if one of us misunderstands the NC clause. My understanding is that these are default rights that you are granting others. And while it would be real hard to “toughen” your license on previously licensed work (say, going from By to By-NC-SA) the creator always has the right to loosen their restrictions and for individual cases. Thus, you could always sell your own work, no matter what you licensed it. And if you had used NC you could still authorize any particular person/corporate body to sell your work under whatever conditions you can negotiate.

Just like people with regular copyright can grant someone the right to use that which they control, with or without payment.

Maybe I am wrong, but my understanding that if anyone wanted to use one of my “works” in a commercial manner that all they have to do is ask and I get to decide whether or not to license the use in that case.

Is this different than what you believe it to say?