Herkko Hietanen, project lead for CC Finland, has finished his PhD dissertation and it’s online (CC BY-NC-ND). The work is called The Pursuit of Efficient Copyright Licensing — How Some Rights Reserved Attempts to Solve the Problems of All Rights Reserved. Here are some extracts from the blurb:
This dissertation analyses the growing pool of copyrighted works, which are offered to the public using Creative Commons licensing. The study consist of analysis of the novel licensing system, the licensors, and the changes of the “all rights reserved” —paradigm of copyright law.
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The study finds that the innovative Creative Commons licensing scheme is well suited for low value – high volume licensing. It helps to reduce transaction costs on several le¬vels. However, CC licensing is not a “silver bullet”. Privacy, moral rights, the problems of license interpretation and license compatibility with other open licenses and collecting societies remain unsolved.
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The dissertation contributes to the existing literature in several ways. There is a wide range of prior research on open source licensing. However, there is an urgent need for an extensive study of the Creative Commons licensing and its actual and potential impact on the creative ecosystem.
This should be interesting and well worth reading.