The Benefits of Using a Creative Commons License

Establishing and maintaining an online presence has become a must for public relations practitioners. With that being said, there are many tools that a PR can use to help with this daunting task, one of which being a CC-license (Creative Commons License).

As stated on the official website, Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization who works to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in “the commons” — the body of work that is available to the public for free and legal sharing, use, repurposing, and remixing, by providing free, easy-to-use legal tools that give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work.

Aside from the fact that a CC-license is an easy way for people to change their copyright terms from the default of “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved,” there are many other reasons as to why a PR should at least consider the use of a Creative Commons license for content they distribute. Three in particular being:

1. Encourages Influential Professionals to Use Work
2. Search Engine Benefit
3. Attraction to “Free Stories” by Different Medias

1. In a field where reputation and credibility are imperative, a CC-license would help a PR attract both trustworthy and influential professionals who are more cautious of the consequences of copyright infringement. Also, attracting reputable persons may also lead to more quoting from the work of a public relations practitioner, which may result in more talk about a client or organization among various audiences, as well as more linkage to a PR’s content.

2. Although it has not yet been proven that having a Creative Commons license will get a PR’s work or site into a higher rank in Google, getting content into a CC-oriented search engine, such as Yahoo, will definitely prove to be helpful in getting any work done by a PR noticed by a great deal of new audiences.

3. Adding a CC-license to work encourages sharing and the spread of news by word of mouth—both of which are the most organic forms of public relations that exists. Though in the past, there has been a mass amount of resistance when it comes to the sharing of high quality work, many business writers, traditional media, and bloggers are interested in gripping stories for free—a concept that has become a hot and growing new trend.