Here is a good example “Alex Miroshnichenko and the Santiago Fires” from the Creative Commomns blog of how content creators can achieve the needed flexibility with respect to licensing the use of their copyright protected work by using the customizable CC licenses

In the words of photographer Alex Miroshnichenko:

I realized, that, like me, these people also were emotionally involved. These images and this story were important to them on a very deep level.

Flickr was the obvious choice to distribute these fire images to family and friends. Little did I know that images of the Southern Calif. wildfires were starting to have a big impact on Flickr. I soon realized how important and compelling this story was to the online community, and around the world.

Still thinking with my heart, I changed the license for all my wildfire photos to Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic, rather than a standard ‘all rights reserved’ copyright notice. This authorizes anyone to share these images or create derivative works as long as attribution to me is provided.

Even though I sell news photos to media organizations, this time my intent was to share my experience and feelings; to share what it’s like to have tragedy hit your hometown. Making a profit on these pictures would be cheating my own heart.

Alex Miroshnichenko does not want to give his work away for free. He makes a living by charging people af fee, if they want to use his photos. But in this particular instance he needed a flexible tool to provide for an exception.

(Via Creative Commons.)

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