To Creative Commons, or not to CC

As the interviews draw to a close, I’m faced with a difficult dilema:

To go Creative Commons, or not to.

Here’s why this is an issue. I have so far contacted 36 corporate/governmental/individual entities. These people have given me permission to film them, or on their location (well not all – see a few posts back). They’ve given me this permission knowing that the film would be distributed. If I release it CC, and someone plays with the video and releases another version out, then they’d have to get permission from all those people too to release their film. Even though this is their problem, I’d be seen as a conduit to promote some kind of infringement. I have no qualms people playing with my video – in fact I want this to go public domain in 5 years.

That’s assuming I don’t use any copyrighted materials in the movie of course. I was in the midst of negotiating with CTV and G4TechTV to get some footage of theirs on my film. If I release this under the CC, I cannot use any copyrighted materials like that at all. That’s because I would become a conduit of copyright infringement, as it would be illegal for others to re-release the film without first getting permission from those TV corps. (Yet under the CC lisence I’d have, others can re-distribute – you can see how I would be the one pursued here.)

And another issue: distribution. If I go CC, or even mention public domain, then my hopes of distributing the film via the National Film Board are scrapped. If I don’t go CC, I can’t use the music I have from Magnatune for the initial non-commercial stage of this film. This music is a big key to the film. Your thoughts?

Either way I’m screwed.