The right license for the job [July 24, 2012, 9:15 a.m.]
Overview
Choosing the right CC license for your work can be a deliberative and thoughtful process, but it doesn't have to be. We deliberate more below, but if you want to choose a license in a hurry, Creative Commons has a pretty simple tool for picking a license based on a couple of quick questions about how you'd like people to use your work.
Basically, when you're looking to share your work with others, ask yourself: do I want to allow commercial use of my work or not, and then second, do I want to allow modifications of my work or not? If you're not concerned about commercial use or controlling modifications of your work, then you can use the Attribution (CC BY) license. If you want to allow derivative works, but require that any derivatives also be made open, you can add the Share-Alike condition.
It doesn't hurt to think a bit more deeply about what uses you want to permit and even encourage. Every creator has specific interests and levels of comfort with sharing work, so it's important to take that into account when making a license choice. One person's pro could be another person's con. Creative Commons has been collecting a wide variety of examples of people in music, education, and social justice, all using CC licensing for their work: http://thepowerofopen.org/.
Exercise