This is the type of CC+-based commercial licensing scheme for user generated content that we have been expecting for at least a year.  For it was about this time last year that Creative Commons announced its CC+ commercial license -- a compromise between Creative Commons' steadfastly noncommercial (some would say anti-commercial) roots and the copyright licensing scheme's inevitable spillover into the private sector. 

CCC, the rights licensing agency for the US publishing industry, has both the resources and expertise to launch a viable commercial content licensing service for user-generated content.  It will surely eclipse the handful of startups that have already attempted to go down that path, including Cloakx and RightsAgent.  iCopyright also has a service for licensing user-generated content, but it is not based on CC+. 

CCC has partnered with Amazon.com to handle payments to users who sign up for the service.  Registration is free; CCC gets 30% of each transaction.

The service is easy to use and was clearly designed with web 2.0 users in mind, as opposed to the corporate librarians and permissions managers who typically use CCC's legacy services and its B-to-B online services such as RightsLink.  For example, users can pull profile information directly from their Facebook accounts into Ozmo.  The user interface is designed to simplify -- as much as possible -- the intricacies and arcana of copyright and contract law that underpin content licensing, though savvy users have various opportunities to override the default settings. Users can also add Creative Commons noncommercial terms to their Ozmo licenses.

Users who want to find content to license can do so through Ozmo's search engine.  Ozmo also provides logos for use on content providers' websites to indicate that the content is commercially licenseable, as well as widgets for blog content.  Ozmo also uses FeedBurner's FeedFlare to automatically place links to licenses on content pages or RSS feeds.  Ozmo's logos do not show any indication of the licensing terms, as iCopyright's do.

The only serious drawback with Ozmo that we could observe so far is that users have to set minimum prices of US $12.99 per content item, though so-called extended licenses (for terms such as broadcast media, live performances, and others) can sell for less. Many pundits have said that one of the biggest roadblocks to the success of content e-commerce has been the lack of an efficient way to process microtransactions (e.g., those less than $1).

There is a growing sense among some individual content creators that the grand experiment in free content ought to come to an end and that it's time for them to get paid for content.  The big question is whether a service like Ozmo will actually make that happen -- that is, whether people will actually use services like Ozmo instead of just taking content for free.  Ozmo is not DRM; it does not force anyone to obey licensing terms.  Nor does it use watermarking or other technologies to track usage of licensed content.  Instead, Ozmo is just about the most efficient possible way for people to license user-generated content without such checks and constraints. 

Although there may be room for improvements in revenue share, features, license terms, and ease of use that engender competition among rights licensing services for user-generated content, CCC deserves credit for finally building a bridge between Creative Commons and the commercial content licensing world.