Legal and Ethical Issues

Creative commons helps people distribute what they made but still have some of the copyright protection.  Using conditions you choose, your creative work will reach people without having to hassle over certain laws.

 "Should information be free?" is a very hard questions to answer.  Personally i believe knowledge (journal articles containing math, science, etc) should be free because knowledge helps us as a society.  Withholding vital new information, breakthroughs and discoveries will only hurt us in the long run.  Other types of media such as movie, tv, and music should still be paid for but the access needs to be easy.  If it's easier to just steal it, people will most likely steal it without a second thought.  But selling it for a fair price on a variety of mediums will most likely get you the cash. Unfortunately greed is a big part in the sharing of information and companies would rather fight tooth and nail against pirating when they should be competing with it.  According to Joseph Havey's  article Open Access Research Grows in Popularity, research in particular is getting a heavy push to be free after the activism and death of reddit co-founder and creative commons member Aaron Swartz.