Creative accounting (creativecommons.org)

Member Name: davidbuttery

Product:	creativecommons.org
Date:	09/11/09 (39 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Clear, clean layout, informative

Disadvantages: Rather lacking in sparkle

The Creative Commons idea, like most of the best ideas, is very simple: you create a piece of work, then use a standardised template to make it clear what others may do with it. You can specify whether you merely want your work to be acknowledged by others, or whether you wish to impose stricter conditions such as not allowing commercial use of your work or not allowing it to be changed, merely redistributed as is. The simple yet distinctive Creative Commons logo - the letters "CC" in a circle - is now quite a common sight on the web.

Although there have been questions about whether the CC licences are strong enough to stand up in court, they are undoubtedly extremely useful in a slightly more informal way to give clear guidance to others about the text, photos and so on you publish online. The photo-sharing site Flickr, for example, gives uploaders the choice of licensing the pictures they upload under an (admittedly slightly outdated) CC licence, and the music remix site ccMixter is founded entirely on the CC philosophy.

The official website of the CC project is at creativecommons.org, and although there is a UK-specific site at creativecommons.org.uk, that is little more than a holding page, with nothing there at the time of writing other than a Twitter feed. The main (.org) site presents a pleasingly clean and simple appearance on first glance: no clashing colours, no annoying pop-ups, no pointless Java or Flash to slow things down. What is obvious is a large, clear version of the CC logo; this is another plus point, as a surprising number of websites don't actually make their branding very clear.

The most prominent thing on the homepage is - as is usually the case for non-commercial projects - a big appeal for donations, sponsored by Canonical (the people behind Ubuntu Linux). It's a simple static image, though, which I'm quite happy with. Clicking on it brings you to a page explaining quite clearly how to "Donate to [their] Fall Campaign" and what gifts (if any) are offered in exchange for certain levels of monetary support. Oddly, although both here and on the homepage we're told that "Canonical wants to double your donation", we're not told in either place exactly what this means: "wants to" sounds uncomfortably like an aspiration, not a firm commitment.

Back on the homepage, across the top are simple text links to eight sections of the site: About, News, Donate, FAQ, Wiki, Projects, Store and International, which are available from nearly all pages throughout the site. The first two are self-explanatory, and we've just looked at the Donate section. The FAQ link goes in the first instance to a simple "FFAQ" (ie Frequently Frequently Asked Questions!) page, though there's an easily-found link to a much more detailed - and as such, rather denser - page which answers almost every question you might want to ask.

The Wiki link does *not* go to Wikipedia, in spite of the fact that the word "wiki" is sometimes (rather misleadingly) used to refer to the online encyclopedia, which has fairly recently (and not without a struggle) adopted a CC licence for its own content. Instead, it leads to CC's own wiki, wherein you can read or collaborate in writing information about CC projects, add information for developers or promote CC-related events around the world. The Projects link, meanwhile, includes such things as information on metrics, "CC0" (a licence intended to be more legally robust than "public domain") and advice on how best to mark your projects so as to make their licensing conditions clear.

The Store link goes, as you would expect, to a store, though it's not the most well-stocked one you'll ever see. You can buy T-shirts, stickers and "buttons" (what we'd call badges). Be warned, though: the prices are fairly steep, and shipping from the US increases them further; you'll be looking at a total of almost $30 just for a T-shirt. You can pay only by credit card or PayPal. Finally, the International link takes you to a page showing those jurisdictions for which localised CC licences are available: they include England & Wales and Scotland.

A little lower down the site's homepage is a "Find" link. This is a meta-search engine - in other words, one that does not do its own searching but instead utilises the CC search options of sites such as Google, Yahoo and Flickr. As a bold warning points out, you will still need to do your own checking of any material your search turns up in order to check that it really is under a CC licence. It works adequately, and having a central location for several search engines can be handy, but it does perhaps lack the clean, obvious interface of most of the rest of the CC site.

Back to the CC homepage yet again, and near the bottom an area is set aside for news headlines, each of which links to a fuller description. And - hurrah! - here at last we finally discover what that comment from Canonical actually meant: it turns out that they will indeed match, dollar for dollar, any contributions made to the appeal... but only for one week, and only up to a total of $3,000. Elsewhere there are both general and international news links; at the time of writing there were stories from Japan, Israel, Canada, the Czech Republic and Germany, so quite a spread!

Down near the bottom are several more text links, this time much smaller. As with most sites, this is where you find the boring-but-necessary stuff such as the site's privacy policy, site map and contact details. However, there's also a link to the official CC blog. This is a rather corporate and sometimes fairly dry publication, and you shouldn't go expecting any amusing stunts or hilarious jokes. In truth it's not worth more than the very occasional look unless you have an interest in things like "Polish Ministry Creates Incentives for Sharing".

Oh, and to answer the obvious outstanding question: yes, creativecommons.org does practise what it preaches, in that it licenses its own content under a CC licence! Overall, this is a pretty good site: not one for thrill seekers, but one which gives a good account of itself and makes the basic information that most visitors will actually want easily accessible.

Summary: A useful reference rather than a true home