Here’s a different view on Creative Commons from Dan Heller, a professional photographer. Dan sees the downfall of CC resulting from misuse by the little guy. Here is the simple example he gives:
-A pro photographer places a copyrighted photo on a website for sale (his own, or a stock photo agency’s).
-A random 12-yr-old internet surfer finds the photo and places it on his Flickr photo stream, removes the copyright text, and gives it a Creative Commons attribution.
-A photo researcher at Big Company Inc. sees the photo and the Creative Commons license, and uses it in an ad.
-The original photographer sees the ad, files an infringement claim.
Even though Big Company Inc believed it was acting in compliance with the license, the law doesn’t allow for this defense. It is still culpable, and is subject to fines ranging from $750 to $30,000.
-The 12-yr-old is technically liable for Big Company Inc’s misfortune, but let’s face it—no one’s going to go after him.
-Big Company Inc’s lawyers now institute a policy of never trusting a photo having a Creative Commons license.
This could certainly be the collapse of CC use by big business, but I’m not sure a lot of big businesses are using CC photos in advertising for the very reason listed in the example above. And I don’t think he is correct in saying that no one is going to go after the 12-yr-old. The RIAA has been doing this very thing for a long time. The parents of the kid will ultimately pay.
I understand photographs are a whole different world when it comes to copyright. Just look at the number of photos on Flickr. Heller says there are more than two billion with 2.8% of them being tagged as CC in one form or another. In other words, in the amount of time it took you to read this last paragraph, fifty more photos were added to the CC library at Flickr. With the number of twelve year olds using Flickr, one of them is probably doing exactly what Dan has described.
I wrote about 
I am now one of those people walking around with a flashing blue light in my ear.
