BMW promotes Creative Commons licenses

The BMW 1 Series promotion has just launched and two aspects of the promotion really stand out for me. The first is BMW’s partnership with local video sharing site, Zoopy.com which is where entrants will submit their video and/or image entries. The second is the application of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 license to all entries (Disclosure: I assisted BMW with certain aspects of the terms and conditions for the competition including the Creative Commons license). What the use of this license means is that entrants retain copyright over their entries and allow their entries to be published for general non-commercial consumption and with a suitable attribution of those entries to the people who submitted them.

In real terms this is a great way for people to share their content without the risk of a third party misappropriating those entries for commercial gain. At the same time the entrants receive credit for their entries and could find themselves doing more, similar work for their benefit.

Of course Zoopy.com deserves their share of credit for their participation in this promotion and their application of the Creative Commons license to these entries published on their site. This is an excellent way to help people promote their works in a more open environment than would normally be possible under copyright while retaining a degree of control over how their content is to be exploited.

(Take a look at Scott Gray’s post too while you are at it)

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