Until now YouTube has been pretty strict about the way videos are licensed when uploaded. Understandably so, given the number of music videos and television programs that shouldn't be up on the site. 

But for those who want to share content they have created for free this lack of flexibility has presented problems. Licensing content can be an incredibly complex process with many home unloaders simply confused by the amount on offer. 

Not for much longer, with creative commons (with attribution) users can allow anyone access to their video as long as it is linked back to the source. YouTube's unified license system does allow for that which has been created to be used for commercial purposes, so be careful to protect anything super special you've made. 

The plan is that attribution links will be placed under creative commons videos, those getting less exposure and click-throughs when videos become popular will have their profiles raised by the site.

This decision should hopefully create more of a video sharing community on the site. Creative commons mean that users will be able to share video and recut things together, hopefully allowing for some pretty spectacular mash-ups. 

To get the ball rolling YouTube has convinced video providers like Al-Jazeera and even C-SPAN to allow 10,000 different pieces of content under creative commons. 

Excited about creative commons? We want to know!!