To be honest, I've never known quite what to think about Creative Commons, a "non-profit that offers a flexible copyright for creative work." I've never given any of my personal work a Creative Commons license, nor has Firewheel ever issued anything with a Creative Commons license. I guess I've always felt that it's either mine, I own the copyright, don't use it unless you get permission—or, it's free... use it and distribute it how you will.
On that note, John Dvorak jumped into the discussion with a scathing write-up for PC Mag about Creative Commons. Personally, I have to say that I largely agree with him. This is not to say that I disrespect a work distributed under a Creative Commons license. It's just that uh, copyright is copyright. You can tell people how they can and can't use your work without a Creative Commons license.
In some situations I understand the Creative Commons gives content owners a formatted copyright notice without having to invest the time of creating your own, but uh, how hard is that? Creative Commons is simply a gray-area crutch in what is already a black and white issue. Instead of licensing our works through Creative Commons, we've simply chosen to the make use of the protection that copyright law already affords us for our work. There is no need for somebody else's "brand" of copyright.
