Asignment #3: Creative Commons

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that basically both allow and help people use creative works. It allows sharing, using, remixing and submitting; and a huge bonus: it's legal and free. It's different from traditional copyright in that the individual who submitted the work both owns their copyright as well as shares it with others. There are six free licenses that let the sharing of text, photos, video, audio, art and music be free. This is changing the way people can share and protect their work.

It's because of Creative Commons that many things are taking place worldwide. For one Creative Commons is helping expand sharing in the Middle East because Al Jazeera issued video footage under the Creative Commons license. The U.S. Government has expanded the use of Creative Commons licenses and even the U.S. Government's Chief Technology Officer spoke about the copyright issues and endorses Creative Commons licensing techniques. In New Zealand, the encouragement of Creative Commons will be done so that people can use licensed material on liberal terms.

Creative Commons is changing the way content producers are protecting their work in many ways. For one they came up with CCo or CCZero which is for anyone who wants to place their work in the public surrendering copyright and database rights. GreenXchange comes from Science Commons and has "some rights reserved." Artists, scientists, educators and musicians use this. It makes it avaialable to anyone and if they want to use it, they can as long as credit is given to the original artist. Wikipedia and Wikimedia are now even licensed under Creative Commons. Huge sites such as Yahoo and Google now allow you to filter search results using Creative Commons in their Image Search tool.

Josh Woodward, an artist who uses Creative Commons to share his work with all who are interested. With Creative Commons, anyone can use his work as long as credit is given to Josh, him being the original artist. It allows as we said before to use it in any way they see fit. I think this is a huge thing for unknown artists like him because it gets his name out there. With this website, his song could be used in things such as movies, etc as long as I said before and I'll say it again: proper credit is given to him.

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In my opinion, Creative Commons is an amazing tool for independent artists period. This is legally allowing people to get their stuff out their and let it be used as long as credit is given to the original artist. It's basically to me free advertising. It allows both parties to be helped out. One is getting their work shown in public while the other party is seeing another person's work. If someone doesn't want their work out there they simply don't put it on Creative Commons. It's a win win situation for everyone involved.

Sources:
http://creativecommons.org/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/esther-wojcicki/creative-commons-in-2009_b_366548.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/books/19kaku.html?scp=4&sq=creative+commons+copyright&st=nyt
http://www.joshwoodward.com/
Photos:
Creative Commons
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.
www.flickr.com/.../comment72157603774016372/
Josh Woodward
http://search.creativecommons.org/#
"Photo: Josh Woodward, Feb. 15, 2010 (Photo by flickr from Yahoo, licensed under the Creative Commons Searc by Creative Commons)."