Sandhya Soman and Lubna Kably | TNN (THE TIMES OF INDIA; January 26, 2014)

It took wildlife photographer and filmmaker Amoghavarsha long hours and some fancy high-speed photography to capture the graceful river terns flying down to snap up minnows from the waters of Bhadra. But despite all the effort that went into its making, he chose to make his documentary, River Terns of Bhadra, freely available in the public domain. It has been released under a Creative Commons (CC) Licence. “As a student, I was part of the Free and Open Source Software movement. Opting for CC was a natural progression,” says the filmmaker.

“Sharing”, under a CC Licence, resonates with the free knowledge movement. A growing tribe of publishers, musicians, photographers and academics is choosing to share their work for free. Amoghavarsha points out that his photograph of a rare freshwater jellyfish was useful to a scientific researcher submitting a white paper.

In view of this trend, the India chapter of Creative Commons was relaunched two months ago by the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), in collaboration with Wikimedia India and Acharya Narendra Dev College.

In 2007, filmmaker CV Sathyan, perhaps one of the earliest adopters of the CC movement, released his painstakingly created documentary to the public. It had taken him two years to capture the rebel spirit of noted Malayalam poet A Ayyappan to create Ithrayum Yathabhagom (The Journey Thus Far). The film is freely available in the archives of a website. “I made it not for money but to raise the humaneness of people,” says Sathyan.

Every CC license ensures that creators get the credit for their work. But it need not be a free-for-all situation – there are six variations of licensing permutations possiblesuch as ‘share-alike’, ‘non-commercial’, and ‘no derivatives’.

“Releasing one’s work under a CC licence doesn’t imply that you are letting go of the right to earn money. It merely helps you to reach a larger audience,” says Moksh Juneja, head, Wikimedia India.

But advocate Gowree Gokhale, partner at law firm Nishith Desai Associates, cautions: “Those who opt for the CC license need to have a clear understanding of its implications, especially because it is worldwide, perpetual and irrevocable (unless the license terms are breached).”

That perhaps is why award-winning filmmaker Anand Gandhi did not opt for a CC licence. But last week he did make his acclaimed Ship Of Theseus freely available online. “We have about 18,000 downloads. We are planning to further upload 25 hours of raw sync footage that can be downloaded, edited and reshared, especially by young film-makers,” says Gandhi. However, free sharing has its limits. “Films are incredibly expensive to make and some money should be directed back to the makers,” adds Gandhi.

 Pratham Books, a Bangalore-based publisher, continues to use CC licences for its children books. “Traditional publishers thought we were crazy,” says Gautam John, adviser, Pratham Books. But use of CC licences has surpassed Pratham’s expectations of reaching out to children. “We are getting new readers with every book in the public domain,” says John. The 500 titles with CC licences, in fact, outsell the rest.