Creative Commons Statistics
from the CC-Monitor Project
Giorgos Cheliotis
School of Information Systems
Singapore Management University
giorgos@smu.edu.sg
Based on a presentation at the iCommons Summit,
Dubrovnik, June 14-17, 2007

License (1/2)
This presentation* is licensed under a Creative Commonslicense: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/* with the exception of the slide layout and the SMU logo which are property of SMU

This material is released early due to high demand and for the benefit of theCreative Commons community – researchers and academics interested in thedetails of the work are advised to contact giorgos@smu.edu.sg, as the related
research is ongoing and currently in the process of being published.
See next page for license details…

June 14, 2007

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

2

License (2/2)

June 14, 2007

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

3

Motivation for our study of CC
Before CC most content authors were faced with a binary decision problem:
reserve all rights (default copyright protection) or give it all up (public domain)
With CC for the first time we can observe large numbers of users making
conscious licensing decisions for their content!
First-level questions

The really important questions• How many authors use CC?

• How strong is CC adoption?

• Who are they?

• How do users value different
rights?

• Which licenses do they prefer?
• What is the impact of theirchoice?
• How do jurisdictions compare?

June 14, 2007

• Which factors influence thisvaluation?
• What are suitable businessmodels for CC content?

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

4

Estimates of CC license popularity• Some data has been made available online by Mike
Linksvayer and Christian Ahlert (Openbusiness), in apaper by Zachary Katz, and in a user survey
documented in the PhD dissertation of Minjeong Kim• Most data collection efforts based on Yahoo and Google
search results• Some observations made in the past:– Non-BY licenses barely used (and therefore dropped)– Total of millions of CC-licensed items (various estimates)– NC licenses more popular– SA and ND also popular attributes– Media type may play a role in licensing (music more liberal)

June 14, 2007

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

5

Data collection process (simplified)
Backlinks(Yahoo Site
Explorer)

YBL

Yahoo CCSearch

YCC

Backlinks(GoogleAdvanced
Search)

GBL

Yahoo

Analysis

Usage Data

Data Querying
Scripts

Google• With YBL and GBL we countthe number of HTML pages
linking to each CC-Deed page
• With YCC we use Yahoo’s
search for CC metadata

June 14, 2007

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

6

Total volume and license mix
YBL (Total: 37.1m)

GBL (Total: 1.2m)

16,000,000

600,000

13,355,702(36%)

14,000,000
12,000,000

8,038,317(22%)

10,000,000
8,000,000
4,368,793(12%)

6,000,000

6,571,412(18%)

300,000
144,059(11%)

38,427
(3%)
BY

BY-SA

BY-ND

BY-NC

BY-NC-SA

YCC (Total: 14.4m)
7,000,000
6,000,000

BY-SA

BY-ND

BY-NC

BY-NC-SA

12,885,979(36%)

14,000,000
12,000,000

10,082,500(28%)

5,000,000

10,000,000

4,000,000

2,689,388(18%)

3,000,000
2,000,000

8,000,000
6,000,000

492,504(3%)

1,000,000

4,000,000

4,041,077(11%)-

BY & BY-SA

BY-ND

BY-NC & BYNC-SA

BY-NC-ND

5,097,200(14%)
2,838,073(8%)

2,000,000

1,316,597(4%)

BY

June 14, 2007

BY-NC-ND

BY-NC-ND

Flickr (Total: 36.3m)

6,082,450(41%)

5,404,360(37%)

98,369(8%)-

BY286,259(23%)

222,810(18%)

100,000

987,502(3%)

2,000,000

400,000

200,000

3,749,091(10%)

4,000,000

478,377(38%)

500,000

BY-SA

BY-ND

BY-NC

BY-NC-SA

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

BY-NC-ND

7

Key observations••

Greatly varying estimates of size of total CC content pool
However, backlink search with both Yahoo and Google yields analmost identical license mix. In this mix:
– 70% of the licenses allow non-commercial use only (NC)– Share-Alike (SA) also a very popular attribute, present in over 50% of
CC-licensed items (though SA is anyhow self-propagating)– 25% of the licenses include the ND restriction•

Generally, two groups of content visible, with one group being
licensed under clearly more liberal terms and the other under more
restrictive terms•

BY-ND unpopular in all measurements, although many items
licensed under BY-NC-ND; various interpretations possible

June 14, 2007

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

8

Reconciling Flickr and search data
Observations• Flickr claims to host 36 million CC-licensed items• According to YBL search results the total CC pool is 37 million items• Flickr appears to host the bulk of CC content• Flickr license distribution is U-shaped vs. bimodal distribution of
YBL/GBL/YCC (possibly because photographers license differently)
Question• How many more CC-licensed items must there be outside Flickr for
the Flickr data to be consistent with the search data?
• The solution to a simple linear optimization problem gives that there
must be at least 25,500,000 CC-licensed items outside Flickr!

Grand total: 60+ million CC-licensed items online

June 14, 2007

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

9Volume Generic vs. Jurisdictions• 80% generic(unported), 20%
jurisdiction-specificlicenses

30,000,000• Generic historicallythe only license

15,000,000• “Long tail” is 8 million
items, non-negligible

June 14, 2007

25,000,000

20,000,000

Generic: 79% (29,195,778)

10,000,000

5,000,000

Jurisdiction-specific: 21% (7,875,039)

Generic
Spain
FranceGermany
S. Korea
Italy
Japan
CanadaUK: England & Wales
PolandChina (Mainland)BrazilTaiwanBelgium
Netherlands
MexicoHungary
Croatia
Chile
Austria
Australia
Argentina
SwedenIsrael
UK: Scotland
Portugal
Bulgaria
South Africa
Colombia
Peru
Denmark
Finland
Malaysia
Slovenia
Malta• Jurisdiction-specificexpected to grow atleast as fast as
generic

YBL

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

10Volume per jurisdiction
Note: Jurisdiction
volume should not behastily interpreted ascountry volume since
several users may beusing the unported
licenses or those ofanother jurisdiction!

2,000,000
1,800,000
1,600,000
1,400,000
1,200,000

YBL

1,000,000
800,000
600,000
400,000

Spain
FranceGermany
S. Korea
Italy
Japan
CanadaUK
PolandChina (Mainland)BrazilTaiwanBelgium
Netherlands
MexicoHungary
Croatia
Chile
Austria
Australia
Argentina
SwedenIsraelPortugal
Bulgaria
South Africa
Colombia
Peru
Denmark
Finland
Malaysia
Slovenia
Malta

200,000-

60,000Highlycorrelated

50,00040,000GBL

Note: Date of introductionof CC in jurisdiction nottaken into account

30,00020,000-June 14, 2007

Spain
FranceGermany
Italy
UK
CanadaJapan
BrazilNetherlands
Belgium
Argentina
Australia
Chile
Hungary
MexicoS. Korea
Austria
China (Mainland)
Croatia
IsraelTaiwanBulgaria
PolandPeru
Portugal
SwedenFinland
South Africa
Malaysia
Colombia
Slovenia
Denmark
Malta

10,000Note: UK jurisdictionsgrouped together in thischart

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

11

Volume per 1000 inhabitants
Note: Jurisdiction
volume should not behastily interpreted ascountry volume since
several users may beusing the unported
licenses or those ofanother jurisdiction!

45.00
40.00
35.00
30.00

YBL

25.00
20.00
15.00
10.00
5.00

Spain
S. Korea
Croatia
FranceBelgium
Italy
Germany
CanadaNetherlands
Hungary
Austria
TaiwanPolandSwedenIsrael
UK
Chile
Japan
Slovenia
Australia
Bulgaria
Denmark
Finland
Portugal
Argentina
BrazilMexicoPeru
Malaysia
Malta
S. Africa
Colombia
China

-

1.40

Highlycorrelated

1.20
1.00

0.80

GBL

Note: Date of introductionof CC in jurisdiction nottaken into account

0.60
0.40

Note: UK jurisdictionsgrouped together in this
chart

0.20

Spain
FranceCanadaCroatia
Belgium
Netherlands
Hungary
Italy
Austria
Germany
UK
IsraelBulgaria
Chile
Australia
Finland
Slovenia
SwedenPortugal
Argentina
TaiwanS. Korea
Malta
Japan
Denmark
Peru
PolandBrazilMexicoS. Africa
Malaysia
Colombia
China-

June 14, 2007

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

12License mix per jurisdiction
100%
90%
80%
70%

BY-NC-ND

60%

BY-NC-SA
BY-NC

50%

BY-ND

40%

BY-SA

30%

BY

20%
10%
Generic
Spain
FranceGermany
S. Korea
Italy
Japan
CanadaUK: England & Wales
PolandChina (Mainland)BrazilTaiwanBelgium
Netherlands
MexicoHungary
Croatia
Chile
Austria
Australia
Argentina
SwedenIsrael
UK: Scotland
Portugal
Bulgaria
South Africa
Colombia
Peru
Denmark
Finland
Malaysia
Slovenia
Malta

0%• Significant variations, cause unclear• Careful interpretation needed (jurisdictions ≠ countries, also very
different “sample size”-volume)June 14, 2007

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

YBL

13

Liberal vs. restrictive licensing
•

•
•

•

In order to simplify the picture, we can group the 6 licenses into 3
categories: liberal (BY & BY-SA), moderate (BY-ND & BY-NC), andrestrictive (BY-NC-SA & BY-NC-ND)
Then we can sort all jurisdictions according to their relative use ofliberal licenses
Yahoo and Google numbers are not so highly correlated for the
license mix per jurisdiction as they are for license volume(in other words, they “agree” more on the number of licensed items
per jurisdiction than on the license mix per jurisdiction)
However, since our analysis suggests that Yahoo data is more
complete, we will use YBL here to compare jurisdictions

June 14, 2007

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

14

License mix per jurisdiction (sorted)
100,000,000

100%

58%

90%

10,000,000

80%
70%

1,000,000

60%
100,000

50%
40%

10,000

30%
20%
10%

1,000

30%
100
IsraelCroatia
SwedenBulgaria
Colombia
South Africa
FinlandSpain
BrazilGeneric
Japan
Portugal
CanadaUK: England & Wales
Netherlands
MexicoDenmark
Chile
Australia
Malaysia
China (Mainland)
Germany
Argentina
Austria
Italy
Hungary
S. Korea
Belgium
PolandFranceSlovenia
UK: Scotland
Taiwan
Malta
Peru

0%

YBL

% Restrictive• Clear preference for restrictive• Significant variation, but consistent dislike for moderate licenses• Jurisdictions with >100k items use >50% restrictive licensing

June 14, 2007

% Moderate% Liberal
No. of Licenses

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

15

Freedom ratings to capture “mood”
Proposed license ratings
BY

BY-SA

BY-ND

BY-NC

BY-NC-SA

BY-NC-ND

Creative Freedom

6

4

2

5

3

1

Commercial Freedom

6

5

4

3

2

1

Total (Mixed)

12

9

6

8

5

2

License

Methodology• Each license is given a freedom rating• Each jurisdiction is given a rating based on the relative popularity of eachlicense in this jurisdiction• Optional adjustment for jurisdiction relative volume, to account for thejurisdiction’s total contribution to the CC content pool

June 14, 2007

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

16

Uses of ratings•••

The willingness of the entire CC author population to license their content
under more liberal or more restrictive terms can be summarized in just one
number, e.g., according to YBL: 6.21 (out of 12)
Freedom rating

Commercial

Creative

Mixed

Generic - YBL

3.38

3.06

6.44

Generic - GBL

3.18

2.89

6.07

All - YBL

3.27

2.94

6.21

All - GBL

3.19

2.89

6.08

Is 6.21 good or bad? Neither, at best what it shows is that the combined
effect of the two CC licensing poles (the liberal and the conservative pole)is a rather balanced CC movement, sitting halfway between “all rights
reserved” (copyright law) and “no rights reserved” (public domain)
Interesting is the fact that the commercial freedom values are higher thanthe creative values. This is because of the popularity of the SA and ND
attributes which have a more negative impact on creative freedom than oncommercial freedom (according to our definitions)

June 14, 2007

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

17

Jurisdiction ratings••

Tables of jurisdiction ratings can be easily constructed for all
jurisdictions
Jurisdiction ratings should not be hastily interpreted ascountry ratings!
– after all, 80% of the content is under the generic licenses, and this is not
only US-based content– but ratings are useful as the only global indicator we can automaticallyconstruct to assess the willingness of authors in a jurisdiction to license
their content under more liberal or more restrictive terms•

Tracking these ratings along with volume data per jurisdiction willallow for some form of measurement of the adoption of the ported
licenses in the future

June 14, 2007

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

18

Creative freedom ratings (max=6)

YBL

Position

Creative

RatingPosition

Creative

Rating1

Sweden4.2

19

Mexico2.92Bulgaria

4.1

20

Netherlands

2.9

3South Africa

3.8

21

Germany

2.9

4

Finland3.7

22

Hungary

2.9

5

Spain

3.6

23

Australia

2.8

6Israel3.6

24

China (Mainland)

2.8

7

Generic

3.4

25

Austria

2.8

8Brazil3.4

26

Malaysia

2.7

9

Colombia

3.4

27

Peru

2.6

10

Japan

3.3

28

Belgium

2.4

11

Canada3.3

29

France2.3

12

UK: Scotland

3.3

30

Italy

2.2

13

Croatia

3.3

31

Denmark

2.1

14

Portugal

3.1

32

Slovenia

2.1

15

Poland

3.1

33

S. Korea

1.9

16

UK: England & Wales

3.0

34

Taiwan1.9

17

Argentina

3.0

35

Malta

1.6

18

Chile

2.9

June 14, 2007

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

19

Commercial freedom (max=6)
Position

Commercial

RatingPosition

Commercial

YBL
Rating1Israel4.3

19Australia

2.4

2

Sweden4.1

20

Germany

2.4

3

Croatia

3.9

21

Poland2.4

4

Bulgaria

3.9

22

Malaysia

2.3

5

Colombia

3.7

23

China (Mainland)

2.3

6South Africa

3.4

24

Hungary

2.3

7

Finland3.3

25

UK: Scotland

2.3

8

Spain

3.2

26

Austria

2.2

9Brazil3.1

27

Denmark

2.1

10

Generic

3.1

28

Malta

2.0

11

Japan

3.0

29

Belgium

1.9

12

Canada2.9

30France1.9

13

Portugal

2.8

31

Peru

1.9

14

UK: England & Wales

2.8

32

Italy

1.9

15

Mexico

2.5

33

S. Korea

1.7

16

Netherlands

2.5

34

Slovenia

1.7

17

Chile

2.5

35

Taiwan1.5

18

Argentina

2.4

June 14, 2007

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

20

Mixed index (max=12)

YBL

Position

Mixed

RatingPosition

Mixed

Rating1

Sweden8.4

19Poland5.4

2

Bulgaria

8.0

20

Chile

5.4

3

Israel7.9

21

Germany

5.3

4South Africa

7.3

22

Australia

5.2

5

Croatia

7.2

23

Hungary

5.2

6

Colombia

7.1

24

China (Mainland)

5.1

7

Finland

7.1

25

Malaysia

5.1

8

Spain

6.8

26

Austria

5.0

9Brazil

6.5

27

Peru

4.5

10

Generic

6.4

28

Belgium

4.3

11

Japan

6.4

29

France4.2

12Canada6.2

30

Denmark

4.2

13

Portugal

5.9

31

Italy

4.1

14

UK: England & Wales

5.8

32

Slovenia

3.8

15

UK: Scotland

5.6

33

S. Korea

3.7

16

Mexico

5.5

34

Malta

3.6

17

Argentina

5.5

35

Taiwan3.4

18

Netherlands

5.4

June 14, 2007

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

21

Volume-adjusted mixed index
Position

Mixed

RatingPosition1

Sweden8.2

19Netherlands

5.4

2

Spain

8.2

20

Argentina

5.3

3

Bulgaria

7.8

21

Chile

5.3

4

Israel7.7

22Australia

5.1

5South Africa

7.1

23

China (Mainland)

5.1

6

Croatia

7.1

24

Hungary

5.1

7

Colombia

6.9

25

Malaysia

4.9

8

Finland6.9

26

Austria

4.9

9

Japan

6.5

27

France

4.6

10Generic

6.4

28

Peru

4.4

11

Brazil

6.4

29

Italy

4.3

12

Canada6.3

30

Belgium

4.3

13

UK: England & Wales

5.8

31

Denmark

4.1

14

Portugal

5.8

32

S. Korea

3.9

15

Germany

5.8

33

Slovenia

3.6

16

UK: Scotland

5.4

34

Malta

3.5

17

Poland5.4

35

Taiwan3.4

18

Mexico5.4

June 14, 2007

Mixed

YBL

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

Rating22

Looking for relationships…
The differences in the license mix between jurisdictions appear to beunrelated to common economic productivity, political freedom,
telecommunications or other national indicators (tested for software piracy
level, GDP p.c., unemployment, internet subscribers, broadband penetration, andpolitical, economic and press freedom ratings).
Likely the online communities CC users are active in are the mostimportant determinant of the way they license their content.
But we do observe that…
1. Google and Yahoo jurisdiction data are positively correlated, with volume data
per jurisdiction being more strongly correlated than license mix
2. CC has been propelled forward mostly by developed countries with economic,
political and press freedom
3. If we examine the top countries in terms of GDP p.c. then only for thosecountries CC adoption is positively correlated with piracy rates (further study
required)June 14, 2007

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

23

Conclusions on CC•
License mix•••

VolumeOverallJune 14, 2007

Authors prefer the most liberal and most restrictive licenses,
moderate licenses neglected
Restrictive licenses significantly more popular than liberallicenses (even if CC users presumably choose CC because
they find Copyright Law too restrictive)
License choice may also depend on the medium type, thecommunity and even the type of content within a medium(ongoing work on these issues)
Jurisdiction-specific licenses exhibit significant variation fromthe usage mix of the Generic license••

The total CC content pool is at least 40-60 million items
An anti-copyright/pro-piracy attitude may be a strong
contributing factor for the growth of CC in some developed
economies•

Belonging to a network/community is probably much more
important than belonging to a jurisdiction/country

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

24

Observations on measuring CC•••

Even if we could arrive at some conclusions, the data exhibits
significant variations depending on the day of measurement and/or
the choice of method
Search engine results are relatively unreliable for measurement
purposes…
…however by combining several bad measurements we may get agood result!
Better metadata and proper implementation of CC licensing andsearch capabilities by search engines and key online communities
will be essential for tracking the progress and use of CC

June 14, 2007

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

25

If you wish to know more about the study:giorgos@smu.edu.sg
Thanks to Ankit Guglani, Giri Kumar Tayi, Warren Chik, Anil
Samtani, Mike Linksvayer and Lawrence Lessig who
helped with producing and/or disseminating this report
Also many thanks to the great folks at the iCommons Summit
for their feedback and support
This work is supported by SMU Research Grant 06-C220-SMU-007

June 14, 2007

Data presented herein was collected in early 2007. It is based on (imprecise) search engine estimates andis therefore only indicative of the real quantities whose size we are attempting to assess.

26