San Francisco, USA — July 10, 2006

Scoopt, the citizen journalism agency that serves as a broker for selling user-created content to commercial media, has announced that it is offering Creative Commons licenses through its newly launched ScooptWords service.

ScooptWords was designed to create a market between bloggers and commercial publishers. Once bloggers have registered for a free Scoopt membership, they can add a ScooptWords button to their site that flags their written content as available for sale. Newspaper and magazine editors can then click the ScooptWords button to license blog content for commercial use. The blogger receives 75% of the sales revenue (50% for the first transaction).

Within the ScooptWords interface, bloggers can add a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license to their blog alongside the Scoopt commercial badge. The Creative Commons license lets authors easily and efficiently signal to the public that their work may be freely shared, reused, and remixed by people for noncommercial purposes.

“There’s a lot of great blog content out there ¬— some of it is every bit as good as content produced by professional journalists,” said Graham Holliday, ScooptWords’ managing editor. “However, there’s no obvious route to market for the blogger or way to buy content for the editor. So we launched ScooptWords to make this connection.”

“ScooptWords offers bloggers a great way to monetize their work, while still engaging in the participatory culture of the Web,” said Eric Steuer, creative director of Creative Commons. “Scoopt has come up with an innovative and workable way for bloggers to interact with print media, and be rewarded for it. We’re glad that Scoopt has chosen Creative Commons licensing to encourage bloggers to make their work part of a growing resource of shared and freely-available information.”

About Scoopt
Scoopt is a media agency that brokers commercial deals between content creators and content users. The privately owned company was founded in July 2005 by Kyle MacRae, a freelance journalist. For general information, visit http://scoopt.com and http://scoopt.com/words.

About Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001, that promotes the creative re-use of intellectual and artistic works — whether owned or in the public domain. Creative Commons licenses provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists and educators that build upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach. It is sustained by the generous support of various foundations including the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Omidyar Network Fund, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation as well as members of the public.

Contact

Eric Steuer
Creative Director, Creative Commons
(415) 946-3039
Email

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