My last post looked at the different types of Creative Commons licences that copyright owners may wish to use.

Lawrence Lessig has subsequently drawn a simple matrix to distinguish commercial and sharing uses on the one side and Read Only and Read/write on the other.

In respect of RO v. RW environments he says there is a distinction between the primary use intended for creative work that the site makes available. It answers the question:
“What can you do with the content on this site?”

In respect of Commercial v. Sharing environments he says there is distinction between the objectives of the site. Is it intended to make money?

He acknowledges these distinctions are not clear, there are hybrids.

Denise Howell at Lawgarithms says "non-commercial means non-commercial" and then gives an example of how even Microsoft has difficulty in applying that term. There is a fuzzy line between commercial and non-commercial (is use of something on every site operated by a business commercial even if it is not designed to generate income?) and between business, personal and educational.

The copyright owner has to be clear about his or her restrictions on use and a user of someone else’s creation needs to be cautious (especially if it has potential commercial value).