Creative Commons Launches “Zero” License

Creative Commons has released their newest license, the CC Zero license, which allows you to waive copyright and related rights to your work. According to their public domain dedication page, this means that your work, if associated with the license, could be “freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used, modified, or built upon by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial.”

While this may seem unusable in music terms, there already exist many rich communities of musicians (check out Tryad) who remix each other’s work, and freely contribute to databases of samples and music. The launch of this license might finally give origin to a Wikipedia-like repository of music, which anyone can access and take advantage of, making music, and thus culture, available to anyone on the planet.

Let’s imagine that you’re an independent musician who really doesn’t care whether your music makes money, or if it’s used for commercial use. This license would allow you to not only distribute your work freely, but ease the legal pains of filmmakers looking for music, streaming sites, music services and social networking platforms wanting to publish your songs.

Public domain is growing fast, and the efforts of thousands of contributors will eventually pay off by providing easy access to the different cultures of the world. For those who aren’t striving towards a career in music, this new solution is as close as one can get to Wikipedia’s “free, editable content” mantra.

Could you find use in this type of license? Will it benefit mankind?

Source: Slashdot