MTB130 - Reflective Journal Topic 2

Entertainment Industry

Internet is a powerful medium that the entertainment industry has very strong associations with. Creative common licensing can help artists such as song-writers to share their work and use others work ‘legally free’ to create new content without having to go through the hassle of copyright laws.

For example a budding musician who needs to build awareness and reputation may release his/her music under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia licence.

An established music director in the USA may come across the budding musician’s work (say on YouTube) and reproduce the work and include in a new release album. The music director by law must give credit to the budding musician in his new work (say on his web site and music albums) and this can open up huge opportunities to our young talent.

Creative Commons licence not only provides opportunities for new talent, but also helps the entertainment industry as a whole to develop exciting new content and remove unnecessary barriers.

Just imagine an Aboriginal artist mixing their music with a South African tribal music without having to go through all the red tape of international licensing laws. This may create totally new music with huge commercial potential for all parties involved.

By using CC licensing, the process of creating, releasing and sharing within the public domain becomes quick, helping artists to do what do they best, and contribute to the improvements of the industry.


Business (Large Corporate Entities)

Creative Commons provides the legal framework to protect a creator’s rights while sharing the knowledge to improve business activities.

Let’s assume a multinational biomedical research company has developed a new method of identifying a certain type of cancer cells in half the time compared to current practices. And another publicly funded research body such as the anti-cancer council of Australia with extensive amount of experience in cancer research, than the bio medical company that created the new method of identification of cancer cell can immediately benefit from this new creation.

If the bio medical company licence the new technique under a CC licence, the cancer reaserch organisation can immediately commence using this new technique. According to the law, the research organisation has to identify the bio-med organisation as the creator. Both the invention and the organisation (and the team) will receive immediate recognition and this action may even lead to some cure for a certain type of a cancer and the development of a new drug.

In this scenario it is possible that all parties involved commercially benefit from the sale of new drug across the World. It would be a win-win situation for everyone, and CC license has allowed this to happen in no time compared to dealing with traditional licensing methods.

Large organisations can benefit from multiple ways than one. Moral obligation of returning to the larger community is also achieved without losing rightfully due recognition.


Education (Higher Education & Corporate)

Creative Commons licensing allows the education community to share their work effectively within the community as well as with corporate education/ training arenas.

Let’s assume a PHD student at a leading university has developed a new flow chart to identify potential human resources issues within a large organisation, such as a university or a large business. The PHD student decides to release his work with a Creative Commons Attribution, Non Commercial License. This allows the education community to use the creator’s theory in educational material so that millions of other students can possibly immediately benefit from the new flow chart.

If an organisation needs this material to use or enhance further to develop new material for handling human resources issues within its business, then the organisation needs to contact the licence holder and receive necessary approval by an agreement; that may or may not involve financial transactions.

In this scenario, the licence holder gains immediate recognition as the top educators in the World use the new theory, free of charge and immediately. This awareness allows generating possible commercial gain by allowing commercial users to use the invention by agreement with the inventor. Overall, a positive outcome for all parties is achieved.


Government (Local & Federal)

Government departments are at top of the list among the bodies that can benefit from Creative Common licensing which removes ‘red tape’ that is inherent in most of the processes.

For example, let’s assume a regional local government (council) has carried out research on water quality downstream on a river that the locals use as the primary water supply. The Council has collected data for 20 years and from basic data analysis it has identified that amount of Phosphorus in the water has increased by 20% in the last 3 years. Local government decides to publish the raw survey data under a Creative Commons Attribution + Share Alike licence.

Since there are no restrictions to use the data, Federal Government’s environmental agency immediately accesses this raw data and decides to carry out further research as to where the Phosphorous is added to water stream. Now that they have reference data, it makes the environmental agency much less time to act and test the water upstream to establish the cause and take necessary action.

New data on findings from further research by the Environmental Agency which was also published under CC, now can be immediately accessed by the local government health department which decide to carry out health checks of the locals, especially as the families in the region (across multiple Councils) rely on the water from the river as no running water supply in some parts of the town.

In this scenario, once again all forms of Government and residents of all Councils gain immediate to benefit – a win-win solution for all.