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Present copyright law is too inflexible, providing no option between total control ('All rights reserved') and the prosecution of piracy, but one promising solution is offered by Creative Commons. Set up by Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University in 2001, this non-profit organisation has created a dozen styles of free licence that enable authors to choose which rights to give away and which to keep, thus creating a broad middle ground between total prohibition and free-for-all. Works published under Creative Commons licences are marked (cc) rather than (c). For example, one licence permits others to use the work for free provided it is attributed, while another permits sampling but not use of the whole work. There are over five million of them now in force, used by institutions from MIT to the Public Library of Science, and the BBC has just decided to issue archival material under a non-commercial (cc) licence.

Don't expect to see Microsoft, Sony or Fox getting enthusiastic about these licences any time soon, but with users like the Beeb the courts cannot avoid taking it seriously.