Contrary to popular belief, Creative Commons is not a radical alternative to the existing system of copyright. In fact, Creative Commons merely offers some model copyright licences on the basis of existing copyright law. Creative Commons encourages individual creators to use their model copyright licences (to be found on their website) to donate their work to the "commons". The "Commons" being defined as 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.

Whilst we can envisage that Creative Commons models licenses are potentially of value for academics / amateurs which do not depend on income for the use of their works because they are paid for their works by a different method, e.g. a salary in the case of academics or day time jobs in the case of mere amateurs.

There are serious questions concerning the applicability of these licences to the music industry. So far, these reservations have been inadequately addressed. What is the incentive of the creative commons model licenses from the point of view of a creator who tries to earn his living from his creativity?

There are specific issues to briefly concentrate on.

Firstly, there should be a requirement for creators to seek legal advice before signing any copyright licence including the creative commons licences; this requirement has been established to protect creators from blindly giving away their rights without knowing the legal and factual consequences of signing a licence.

Reference to independent legal advice should be included in the licence to ensure that creators do not rely on the 'human readable' version of the licence. These summaries are at best selective with the information imparted about the content of the creative commons model licence.

Which leads on to the second serious issues of inadequate labelling on the Creative Commons licences.

We believe that the proponents of Creative Commons need to appropriately label their licences in plain English in order to make it as transparent as possible what the creator is entering into when signing any of the creative commons model licenses.

Creators should be informed in an easy understandable and straight-forward way that Creative Commons licences offer no remuneration, run for the entire duration of copyright in the work at hand, apply to the whole world and generally cannot be revoked.

Essentially, 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 return to the creative community.

In practice you will never be able to make money from the work since publishers or record companies are unlikely to pay for a licence if the work is already available for free, even if only for non-commercial uses.

There are substantive issues within the text of the Creative Commons licences as well. The discussions in the last 18 months have highlighted that creative commons model licences (in particular 'share-alike') do not fit easily with the creator moral right that their creation is not subjected to derogatory treatment.

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.

So do these Creative Commons licences have any use? Well, let us not be absolutely negative about the application of Creative Commons licences. There are two groups, at opposite ends of the music spectrum, who may want to sign up. Firstly, hobbyists with no interest in making a living from their music (such as lawyers who earn their living amongst others from advising creators on their rights vis a vis of large user groups). Secondly, top selling artists with established careers who can afford to donate their work to the public for free.

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.