Legal Tags (notes on taking blogs.law.harvard.edu for a test drive)

Being a lawyer, the first link I clicked in Manila's "Prefs" menu was of course the "legal tags" option. As will be obvious to the non-lawyers, that was a listing of the HTML tags acceptable in the blog layout. As I backed out from that menu item, however, I saw that the blog also features the kind of "legal tags" I was looking for -- a Creative Commons license.

To me that default choice, and the ease with which I could alter it, highlights what Creative Commons adds to the mix. It tells me that copyright isn't just for the movie studios' lawyers, and it isn't always set on "high" -- it's something that the smaller-scale publisher can use to indicate willingness to share, as well as right to control.

The choice that Creative Commons licenses offer brings copyright back to its original basic purpose: to serve as incentive to creative expression. If exclusivity is important to motivate you, take it; but if you'd prefer to see what others can do with your work (add it to a movie, send it to new audiences, reinterpret it in rap or chorale), use a CC license to tell them that.

HTML tags tell your web browser what to do with the stream of data it receives. CC licenses tell you, the human reader on the other side of the web browser, what you may do with what you read and experience there. That's much more important than the font size or paragraph indentation, and so I'm pleased to see copyright status taking its place among the weblogger's options. (It's an option on Movable Type as well.)