Gatehouse Media earlier this week started rolling out Creative Commons for many of its newspapers. CC is basically a flexible, customizable copyright (or “copyleft” as some call it). CC “provides free tools for authors, artists, and educators to mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry,” according to Creative Commons. Writer Lisa Williams posted an entry on Jay Rosen’s Pressthink blog early Friday about Gatehouse Media’s decision and what it means for the online newspaper industry.
“I don’t know of any other newspaper.com, or any MSM site for that matter, publishing under CC,” Gatehouse Media’s Howard Owens wrote in a blog comment on Town Online. “It’s also way to draw attention to: feel free to redistribute our content in non-commercial ways, please just be sure to link back to the originating site.”
Wednesday’s Digital Edge Blog post discussed how using Creative Commons can generate revenue and Web traffic for license holders.