Creative Commons is the brainchild of US lawyer, Lawrence Lessig.

In Lessig's vision, the "Creative Commons" is a public space - analogous to our public parks - where people have legal access to creative works which they can use for non-commercial and sometimes even commercial purposes, for free.

Contrary to popular belief, Creative Commons is not a radical alternative to the existing system of copyright. In fact, Creative Commons works on the basis of existing copyright law by encouraging individual creators to sign specially drafted copyright licences (found on the Creative Commons website) in order to donate their work to the "commons".

The first thing to say is that before signing any of the Creative Commons licences, creators should seek expert legal advice. Creators should be clear that Creative Commons licences offer no remuneration, run for the entire duration of copyright in their work, apply to the whole world and cannot be revoked. In effect, by entering into a Creative Commons licence, you are signing away your rights irrevocably, in perpetuity, for the whole world, for free.

Furthermore it is not clear how Creative Commons licences fit with licensing arrangements already used by thousands of creators in the music industry. Most writers, from the most famous to those just starting their careers, have already assigned some rights to collecting societies. All these creators would not then be in a position to sign the Creative Commons licences which give away these rights.

Creative Commons is a users' charter, offering considerable benefits to internet users wanting to use creators' works without having to seek permission but offering very little to the creative community.

Forbes magazine has gone further, commenting "For all his talk about creativity, Lessig isn't any true creator's friend. His assault on copyright largely helps a ragtag bunch of gleaners who claim that copying is 'creativity' because they can't create anything without directly reusing copyrighted material."

In fact, there are likely to be just two groups, at opposite ends of the music spectrum, who may want to sign up to Creative Commons - hobbyists with no interest in making a living from their music, and top selling artists with established careers who can afford to donate their work to the public.

Creative Commons supporters from the music sector who fall into the second of these groups include David Byrne from Talking Heads, and Gilberto Gil (currently Brazil's Minister of Culture) but even they are few and far between.

Byrne and Gil both contributed tracks to a CD of Creative Commons licensed material recently distributed by Wired magazine. It took the magazine over 12 months to gather the 16 songs for the CD and when asked why, Wired's editor said: "People make their livelihood through their music. They had to want to sacrifice that".

For the huge tranche of writers falling between the extremes of hobbyist versus big time, Creative Commons fails to deliver any real benefits, yet some may be lured into it by its often seductive rhetoric.

For example, an unsigned writer might look to Creative Commons as a way to create a fan base. If he has career ambitions he may consider reserving the commercial rights to his music by choosing a Creative Commons Non-Commercial licence (see below). He may not be aware that this could undermine his ability to enter into an exclusive publishing or recording deal. Since the Creative Commons licences are all irrevocable it is not clear how he would get around this.

Creative Commons is due to launch in the UK in 2005.

The basic elements of Creative Commons licences:

• Attribution - permits any use of your work - including commercial - of your work provided only that you are attributed as author.
• No Derivs - you authorise the copying and distribution of your work but not its use in a derivative work.
• Non-Commercial - limits the licensed uses to those which are not money making.
• Share Alike - anyone who samples your work in a further work may only distribute that work under an identical licence to the one you chose - this is in order to build an open source like sharing community.