Community Created Content. Law, Business and Policy

Community Created Content. Law, Business and Policy is a new scholarly book from Finnish copyfighters Herkko Hietanen, Ville Oksanen and Mikko Valimaki. It tries to bridge the distance between law and commerce, talking about where the law is and where it's going -- and how you can apply that in your business.

I came to know Herkko and Ville as hard-brawling copyfighters from Electronic Frontiers Finland and Creative Commons Finland, people who were equally comfortable putting on a suit and going to a UN copyright treaty meeting or hacking in their pajamas, exposing Finland's corrupt copyright minister as she called copyright activists terrorists.

It's a rare person who can bridge policy debates and the board room, and these folks are among the best.

The text of the book is available as a free PDF, too.

This book presents an overview of the complex legal, business and policy issues in community created content. First, the book briefly treats the major doctrines in copyright law as well other (Finnish and international) laws regulating community created content services. Anyone wishing to start a new service should have a general understanding of the most relevant laws that affect community created content services.

Then, the book turns to open content licensing. Creative Commons is a leading but somewhat controversial project. However, Creative Commons copyright licenses are tested and can be recommended for most community content services – with the general reservations that apply to all licensing decisions.

From law the book switches to business. It is subject to wild guesses what is the real business impact of community created content in the long term. In fact, the impact is already difficult to measure as the boundaries between community content and traditionally produced content blur. One scenario is that what one can today label as “community created content” will be just “content” in the future.

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