YouTube to Introduce CC Licensing for Videos

In a move that seems long overdue, YouTube will start offering creative commons licensing options for uploaded videos and will make use of this new opportunity to make it easier to remix videos with the web-based YouTube video editor.

YouTube hasn't made the official announcement yet, but the news got leaked when the blog post was revealed earlier than the company wanted. The official announcement is expected to come later today.

While YouTube has removed mentions of CC licensing from its website, it still has a help page explaining how CC works.

"Creative Commons provides a simple way to grant and use copyright permissions to creative works. You can now access an ever-expanding library of Creative Commons videos to edit and incorporate into your own projects," the leaked announcement read.

"To find a video, just search in the YouTube search bar or from within the YouTube Video Editor. We're working with organizations like C-SPAN, PublicResource.org, Voice of America, Al Jazeera and others, so that over 10,000 Creative Commons videos are available for your creative use," it continued.

Obviously, since the feature isn't live yet, there is no CC tab in the YouTube video editor and there is now way of selecting the license used by uploaded videos. But both those features are coming soon.

"As part of the Creative Commons launch on YouTube, you'll also be able to mark any or all of your videos with the Creative Commons CC BY license that lets others share and remix your work, so long as they give you credit," YouTube also said.

Users will also be able to change the license of existing videos. For now, YouTube will only enable one type of CC license, which requires attribution, but otherwise has no restrictions.

Interestingly enough, video mashups created via the YouTube editor, will list all source videos automatically, making it easier to respect the requirements of the license.

It should be very interesting to see how this change will affect those uploading and remixing videos on the site and whether it makes it easier and safer for people to use someone else's videos to create their own.