Creative Commons Add-In for Office Released

Ctrl+Alt+De1337 writes "Creative Commons has announced the release of an add-in to Microsoft Office that allows the easy addition of a CC license to files created with Word, PowerPoint, or Excel. It was co-developed by Microsoft and Creative Commons and only works in Office XP and Office 2003. It can be downloaded from Microsoft's download center after a validation check, and CNet has a screenshot available of the tool."

Comments

Why do you need an add-in?

[ThinkingInBinary]

Why would you want a "Creative Commons tool" for Office? Wouldn't it just be easier to add a page after the title page, like the copyright page, but instead explaining the license of the document? Why do you need a program to do it for you?

What would be far more useful would be a way to tag Creative Commons documents in web pages, and then if some search engine (Google? please?) would explicitly label Creative Commons results as such, and encourage people to listen to, view, combine, mash up (shudder), and otherwise use them.

Re:Why do you need an add-in?

[ReverendLoki]

I for one can see how this would be useful. You see, there isn't one set of terms and conditions, but rather there's a whole range of possible conditions applicable under Creative Commons licensing.

What this looks like is pretty much a wizard that asks you how you would like to allow your work to be used, and then generates the CC license for those conditions. Although a nice add on, it really doesn't look all that complicated. I'm hoping it isn't long until someone makes a good wizard for OpenOffice.org as well.

Why should they need to?

[Manip]

There is something very wrong with our copyright system when people have to attach a licence to all media they create in order for others to use it... Perhaps I should start wearing a badge that reads "Your eyes and ears have permission to consume my copyright material (e.g. My voice, and face."

Why isn't media created free/public domain unless its creator wants it protected? ... ?

Re:Why should they need to?

[QuantumG]

No. You are wrong. All rights are reserved by default. If I create a work that can be covered by copyright, it is covered by copyright, and you have no rights under the law to copy the work without my express written permission (excluding fair use). This is one of the many ways copyright law is draconian.

Re:it is a crock off shit

[nuzak]

God forbid that Microsoft should encourage anyone to use their own product or anything. Such a shame that no one is able to write CC-covered material with any other product anymore, thanks to the exclusive arrangement that CC no doubt made with Microsoft.

Re:What's the point

[Keeper]

What's the point of posting on a website not under your control?

Re:What's the point

[Trevahaha]

Because you're licensing the content not the format it's presented in. People generally copyright the text on a website or inside a book, not that the book was printed on white paper using a serif font or that your website is running on Apache or IIS.

Please don't use this!

[zsau]

Please don't use this plugin if you are releasing your content under a free Creative Commons licence. No document is free if it's encoded in one of Microsoft's proprietry formats. You are much better off to use the online Creative Commons licence chooser, and copy the text to a document written in OpenOffice.org, TeX, Gnumeric, HTML or the like yourself. This way, you will know that all your potential audience is able to read the document (even if they have to download some software first), even in ten years time when Microsoft Office XP is no longer supported and the current version makes a hash of old files.