WEEK 10: Following week 10 tutorial’s exercise, explain why you chose the Creative Commons license that you added to your blog and discuss the relevance (or not) of adding the license.
Some rights reserved by karindalziel
In my opinion, Creative Commons is a fascinating topic of discussion. With the Internet reaching all corners of the globe, how can we unify in the control of creative intelligence? And more importantly, how can mange people to follow these rules put in place?
Creative Commons are an organization that attempts to govern authors’ intellectual content displayed on the web.
After spending much time deliberating over which Creative Commons license to choose, I have decided to adopt the ‘Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike 3.0’ License for my blog. I feel this license most appropriately suits what I believe to be the essential rights of an author, whilst still encouraging the prospect of creative sharing.
To break it down for you, I am supporting the rights to…
1. Attribute any work used in a way specified by the author or licensor
2. Noncommercial use of their work (not for commercial purposes)
3. Share Alike, where you are able to ‘alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.’
Essentially this license gives consumers consent to share via their transmission, copying or distributing of work, as well as allowing them to remix it. This license essentially promotes media sharing much like Zuckerberg’s wish to ‘[create] a more open world’ in attempt to prevent overuse of copyright.
“Creative commons thus represents an attempt to roll back the intellectual property approach to copyright in order to facilitate more open access to creative works” (Garcelon, 2009).
Don’t get me wrong, as a writer myself; I feel that attribution to the author is of extreme importance. I am personally willing to share my ideas, yet I perhaps selfishly want my work credited especially if others decide to benefit from it. The non-commercial aspect of this license is also significant to my decision. I disagree with people using others creative intelligence to benefit and perhaps even profit from. Finally, ShareAlike supports this notion of ‘caring is sharing’, which I believe could allow creativity to flourish as people inspire others.
Creative Commons are a blossoming phenomenon that targets an area that has proven highly difficult to control. Just like in the real world, there still lie unclear rules for policing and maintenance of intellectual integrity. The current copyright rules attempted to complete this task but have proven too ridged hence the rise of Creative Commons. Copy Right laws can still be credited for their principled intentions to maintain control over creative intelligence.
But Creative Commons are definitely here to stay with leading websites such as Google, Flickr and Wikipedia all currently using creative commons licenses.
Ultimately I choose this license because as a student, having learned by example for many years I believe that advancement comes from a collective support. Whilst I doubt that my blog has helped any academic progress in the field of Net Communications, it can remain as a complementary source stemmed from discussion of pre-existing ideas.
As the saying goes, ‘two heads are better than one’.
REFERENCES:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWDneu_w_HQ&feature=player_embedded
Garcelon, Marc. ‘an Information Commons? Creative Commons and Public Access to Cutlrual Creations’, New Media and Society 11.8 (2009): 1307-1326.
Lessig, Lawrence ‘Open Code and Open Societies’, in Joseph Feller, Brian Fitzgerald, Scott A. Hissam and Karim R. Lakhani (eds) Perspectives on Free ad Open source Software, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005, pp. 349-360.
bethanyatkinsonquinton 