Update (12/08/2008): The survey deadline has been extended to December 14th.
Just noticed this from Creative Commons — due to a recent high profile use of the CC-BY license Creative Commons is looking to better understand how people define noncommercial use. They’ve put up a lengthy survey, the first part of which defines the type of sharing you engage in, and the second part of which asks you a series of questions about what you think is commercial vs. non-commercial.
The idea here is to see what misconceptions exist, and among which populations.
The survey takes about 15 minutes. It’s is a bit of a chore to fill out, but the flip side of that it makes input into it much more important.
I know a lot of us are well-versed in this stuff, but if you can fill it out, and particularly if you can convince your less IP-aware freinds to fill it out, it should really help CC.
As Joi Ito explains:
“The study has direct relevance to Creative Commonsâ mission of providing free, flexible copyright licenses that are easy to understand and simple to use,â said Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito. âThe NC term is a popular option for creators choosing a Creative Commons license, and that tells us the term meets a need. However, as exponentially increasing numbers of works are made available under CC licenses, we want to provide additional information for creators about the contexts in which the NC term may further or impede their intentions with respect to the works they choose to share, and we want to make sure that users clearly understand those intentions. We expect the study findings will help us do a better job of explaining the licenses and to improve them, where possible. We also hope the findings, which will be made publicly available, will contribute to better understanding of some of the complexities of digital distribution of content.”
The survey is here: http://ur1.ca/y41
At the end of the survey you are given a chance to say what changes you think might improve NC, so keep going through it — it is a long survey…