This week's play and reflect activities required us to explore Creative Commons.
Creative Commons exists to “skip the intermediaries” when it comes to Copyright. As soon as something is created, whether it be a piece of writing, a photograph, or a piece of music, the owner automatically has copyright of the material. Creative commons aims to break the boundaries of copyright and allow users to decide whether or not they want their material to be used by the public.
Users can do this by creating a license on the Creative Commons website, they do this simply by answering a number of questions as to which rights they want to keep for themselves and which rights they want to waive for public use. Their website can be found HERE.
I like the concept of open collaboration for materials online however, it seems a little too idealistic for me. If I licensed the content I produced under creative commons I would still like to be acknowledged as the owner of the material, I would not be comfortable reserving only some of my rights as the producer of the content. What if the newly produced work became famous and made a lot of money? What if by some chance I had neglected to stipulate my rights in that regard? The legal battles that ensue would diminish the initial idea of collaboration. Copyright, at least, is fairly black and white.
For this week's PLAY activity we were required to post photos to Instagram. I enjoyed the process and will continue using Instagram in my daily life. It helps create and preserve memories, I can take a picture of something small and send it to friends across the world and it only takes a minute. I love photo sharing, a picture is sometimes worth a thousand words!
For more information on the implications Creative Commons has for libraries, please look at a link I found from the IFLA (International Federation of Library Associations) Conference in Gothenburg, 2010. HERE.
Enjoyed reading your post Annette, and thanks for the link to article from IFLA conference - enjoyed reading this too! It's important to ask these questions you're asking in this post when it comes to your own creative work. I think copyright is really difficult to grapple with when creating on the internet. Perhaps more straightforward before the internet, but needed something like CC to build on it.
ReplyDeleteHey Phoebe,
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading my post. Copyright is definitely something I still need to be my head around, haha. Creative Commons is a great idea for the rise of the internet, I'm interested to see how it goes in the future.
Creative Commons is one of those wonderful idealistic ideas that a lot of people will support, right up until they aren't getting paid for their content. I think copyright is something that has been greatly effected by our sudden leap into online information sharing. The Internet has changed our expectations of nearly everything so quickly and suddenly, that many laws and processes that existed for nearly hundreds of years before the net now have trouble being relevant today. We also take a lot of things for granted, and sort of expect everything on the internet to be free and available. I think it will take a few years but we will eventually create systems that work effectively for everyone.
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