My opinion

i believe that copyright is there for a reason, otherwise people would not make money for their hard work. However, i think that sometimes the default copyright laws are too restrictive for no good reason and people should be more open to sharing their work.

Unfortunately there is a mentality in some people where they believe that if they have created something then the must get every penny out of its worth, not what it is worth to them but what it is worth to other people. This is why the copyright law is so strict by default.

Creative commons have the right idea, where there is much more freedom when sharing work, even the Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives option, which allows for distribution as long as the author is credited and the work is not altered at all (which i believe is the idea behind youtube and flickr licenses). Obviously this cannot work for everything, where the company relies on the sale of its product, such as books and movies, but there really shouldn't be restrictions if, for example, a student wants to use something in his work as there is no commercial gain involved. In particular i think that the most interesting option put forward by the creative commons is share alike, where anybody can use your work in their work as long as they use the same license for theirs much like open-source computer programs.

Before writing this blog, I was only vaguely aware of the creative commons movement but it is really good idea and more people need to be aware of it to give the option to designers.