Monday, April 28, 2008

17. Creative Commons

You might have noticed this little logo on both this blog and the Library Learning 2.0 blog. It's a Creative Commons license.


Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists,
and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to
carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved"
to "Some Rights Reserved."


Creative Commons is an alternative to Copyright, it allows more use, a wider range of choices for distribution, reuse and attribution. You can go to the Creative Commons website choose among the options for how you'd like to share your work. The license can be applied to both works online and offline. There are books publish with the Creative Commons license. Flickr allows you to apply a license to all your photos, very handy for people looking for images to use, you can limit your search to only those you're allowed to use.

Links



19 comments:

Robin said...

As Bobbi said, searching for items (photos, clip art, videos, etc.) that are CC licensed for use is a great way to spice up a presentation or add imagery to a flyer or brochure or just about anything! I use the Creative Commons Search site, but there are others out there that let you search just Flickr, for example, if you know you just want a photograph and not a video.

Anonymous said...

Thats pretty neat. I never really thought about other people being able to take my flickr pictures and use them. I think I might use that for my pictures. So is it a good idea to copyright your pictures?

Anonymous said...

Like Miss Nikki, I have a question, not a comment. Should we put something like this on our personal photos or youtube items we may have? How about our myspace pages? I have *beautiful* photo that Miss Robin made for me (hippie George w/ Jerry Garcia)--should I put some sort of protection on that? Or not?

Anonymous said...

This is a nice way for library staff, students, teachers etc., to know they are using internet items without violating copyright law. It's also a great way to share lessons, photos, handouts, presentations etc., that MRRL uses and someone else out in "libraryland" doesn't have to re-create it from scratch. I also hadn't thought of my personal items like photos being eligible or even of interest to others to use in documents or presentations. I'll have to check into that and the photos for the theater group too.

Robin said...

Nikki - technically, all of your pictures are copyrighted for your use only as soon as you take them. That's the official copyright "rule". What CC does is relax that rule a bit and let people know how they can use your stuff. You can set it to no use at all, or you can set it to full free use without even attribution back to you as the creator. That's your call! Hope that answers (sort of) absinthekid's question, too. It is completely up to you how you want to license your content. If you don't want anyone to use it, ever, go ahead and put a very restrictive CC license on it - it will just be publicizing the traditional copyright rules. Otherwise you can give people more rights, such as just using it with attribution, or being able to use it and alter it.

Anonymous said...

H'mm this ought to be a handy tool for the web. Unless you sell your photos to make money, it seems like a lot of folks wouldn't mind having their pics used by someone else, so this lets others know what is available. Having this distinction readily available, could help cut down on the illegal appropriation of photos that ought to be paid for.

Eric said...

I can use this modified copyright on the music I share online. With one simple logo, I'll be able to show which songs are available for others to remix. A CC search will also be a great way to access clips and photos without being concerned about stepping on someone's copyright. When it comes right down to it, it's the honor system as far as keeping others from using your work, anyway. Unless it's an obvious, public usage, you'll never know.

sexybeast said...

so, if I place a picture of Flickr, it is automatically copyrighted...If I don't want anyone to use it I shouldn't have to use cc, however, people are stupid, so the cc would help clarify what they can use. I think most people feel they can use any image they find on the web, cc would take care of some of the problem with illegal usage. How standard is cc right now?

Robin said...

Sexybeast - right, most people *assume* that everything on the 'net is free. That is incorrect, of course. Everything posted to the 'net (or created and disseminated in general) has a copyright with full rights to the author/creator. What you would do with CC is to make your rights a bit more visible. One other thing you can do is to set a default CC license in your Flickr account settings - that way everything that is uploaded will automatically have that license applied and you can change it for individual photos as needed.
CC is becoming pretty standard on the web, at least for photos. It's gaining ground in text-based creations as well, though. A few books have been released on the web recently with CC licensing. I don't see it much off of the web, though. Standard copyright is still the rule in "real world" items!

Bobbi Newman said...

One more thing to keep in mind about photos you post to the web, despite all the license etc there really is no way to stop someone from stealing an image. Almost any time a new prevention method is created, a way around it is.

You can put a watermark on your photo, but of course that "ruins" the picture. If you really don't want anyone using it, don't put it up.

Unknown said...

I watched the video about Creative Commons. The video explained it very well. This seems like a good tool to protect people's works, especially online. In today's world something like this is definitely needed, and it's amazing that in the internet world we have come to live in it wasn't developed ealier. This seems like a useful and needed application.

Anonymous said...

This will be a good way for me to let people know how I want my photos used. It will be a good tool for photo hounds like me.
I noe know what this is. I have run across it before when I was looking for pictures to add to my blog.

betterlate said...

This is very interesting. I did not realize that pictures on the internet should have a copy right.

Anonymous said...

I've seen the symbol, not knowing what it actually was for and this provided a lot of needed information as I sometimes pull photos off the internet and have put some on.

Anonymous said...

I like the idea behind CC being able to share and integrate ideas and images to create a new one.

Anonymous said...

I thought I posted already, but it isn't here. Anyway, I think this would be a good tool to show students more about copyright, how it affects them and how to find things they can use without infringing.

Anonymous said...

This is so cool. I think this is a great way to share content without attempting to determine what is "fair use" and what is a violation of copyright law. I've always felt like some aspects of copyright law were too restrictive.

Anonymous said...

I had seen the CC icon before and had not known what it was. It is good to know that there are protections afforded and parameters about is usable and not usable.

Anonymous said...

I've seen ths symbol and wondered about it but didn't bother to find out. Now I know. Thanks for clarifying what CC is and how it can be used.