In a way, the best way to fight piracy is by making it impossible for people to do illegal things with your works.
Zacqary Adam Green came up with this handy guide to Creative Commons for his article on copyright reform. Funny as it may seem, it is a very practical and straight-to-the-point analysis of the licenses, since it seems that you can only enforce a license as long as you can afford the legal battle.
In the case of software licensing, it is not recommended to use a Creative Commons license, since they were not designed for that use. CC was thought for artistic works, and although software is considered “art” in some countries’ copyright laws, they are practical works, more than just artistic ones. That is why using a Free Software license is recommended instead. They were designed to cover any technical and practical use for the work that you need to protect. Also, there are organizations like the Software Freedom Law Center that help developers and non-profit organizations to enforce their licenses among many other services with little or no budget.
I don’t know if there is something similar to defend works under a CC or similar free license. Maybe there’s an unexplored business opportunity for law firms.
