Creative Commons License: A Standardized Instrument for Copyright Protection.

E080917Y3 Oct. 2008（E107）

Seeing the wide-spreading infringement on blogs, the Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) invited four major blog platforms in Taiwan, namely wretch, yam, Xuite.net, and PIXNET, to speak up for copyright protection and make all-out effort to encourage copyright holders to use Creative Commons licenses to halt infringement.

According to “2007 Report on the Investigation of the Digital Divide”, more than 13 million of Taiwan population have access to the Internet, near 30% of which has personal blogs and over 70% of which has navigated blogs of others.

Also, according to the statistics released by the Intellectual Property Rights Police Team (IPRP), the IPRP had uncovered 342 cases of copyright infringement on blogs between January and August 2008, which comprises 41% of the 842 cases of infringement on the Internet and represents a 19% increase from that of 2007. The statistics shows that blogging has posed serious problem that is desperate for a solution.

In view of climbing number of infringement cases on blogs, TIPO re-introduces the “Creative Commons” that has been adopted for a period of time to copyright holders for protection of their creative works. Each icon of Creative Commons licenses stands for different condition (see table below) and can be used alone or in combination with others. Any creator is able to make a selection of various license options to standardize how users may use his/her creative works, such as, whether others may copy his/her works and how to copy them.

Definition of Creative Commons Licenses
CC Icons	Condition	Description
	Attribution	Licensee must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor, but not in any way that suggests that they endorse the licensee or the licensee’s use of the work
	Non-commercial	Licensee may use the work only for non-commercial purposes.
	Share Alike	If licensee alters, transforms, or builds upon this work, the licensee may distribute derivative works only under a license identical or similar to the license that governs the original work.
	No Derivative Works	Licensee may not alter, transofrm, or build upon this work.
Source: http://creativecommons.org.tw/