What is Creative Commons? Do I care? CEdo555 – John Sklar, Instructor

Your work is yours, right? As we put our portfolios and other work online and into easily transportable electronic formats, we should begin to question what might happen to them. I am always honored when someone wants to use my handouts, PowerPoints etc. I just want to get credit for the time effort and content.

It is mine isn’t it? The work I create is mine. At least I believe it is. I thought it up, I put the pieces together. And of course, I’ve read a lot and seen a lot but none of that influenced my creativity, or did it? All in all our work is a product of our clever interpretation of what we saw, felt, learned and interpreted.

Young people, and older folks too.. Today people have this idea that they can use what they find on the internet as theirs. Grab a picture, video, idea or what have you. Make a few changes and put it in my paper, slide show, media presentation. Often we don’t mean to steal, we just forgot where we got that copy from. The clipboard on my computer doesn’t register the copyright.

A lot of work is already free… There is a tremendous body of materials that are there for the use. Authors and other creators are glad to share their work.. No charge. So what’s the problem?

Everyone is not willing to share… When a person creates artistic work they may want to make a living with it. They have a right. These people want “all rights reserved!” Don’t change a thing and pay me to see or use it. They have a right. It is called a copyright!

Today’s NY Times…. Websites that help people share music and media through a system called Bit-Torrent. They closed down gateway sites that show people where the torrents are. The “pirates” claim google and yahoo do the same thing. (They do) Search NYTimes.com for torrents to see the article

Enter Creative Commons You need to go to their website. I can’t possibly explain CC as well as they can. The © on a document means that the rights to use it are controlled by the owner and essentially says “All rights reserved” The CC on a document says, Its mine and you are welcome to use it.

Every CC license will help you retain your copyright announce that other people’s fair use, first sale, and free expression rights are not affected by the license.

Every license requires licensees to get your permission to do any of the things you choose to restrict — e.g., make a commercial use, create a derivative work; to keep any copyright notice intact on all copies of your work; to link to your license from copies of the work; not to alter the terms of the license not to use technology to restrict other licensees’ lawful uses of the work

Every license allows licensees, provided they live up to your conditions, to copy the work to distribute it to display or perform it publicly to make digital public performances of it (e.g., webcasting) to shift the work into another format as a verbatim copy

Every license applies worldwide lasts for the duration of the work’s copyright is not revocable

Slides 8-12 are from: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Baseline_Rights The page had this at the bottom:

Clicking on the link…

And more…

Please take some time to look… If you use Firefox there is a CC search option. Otherwise, go to the Creative Commons Web site and see what they have to offer. You may find that the CopyLeft movement will better help you find your way through the copyright laws. I have some links in the Class three angel page.

The next three slides are from: http://sopablackout.org/learnmore/ They have a video on the subject.

Why did Wikipedia Close last Week? The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, H.R. 3261) is on the surface a bill that attempts to curb online piracy. Sadly, the proposed way it goes about doing this would devastate the online economy and the overall freedom of the web. It would particularly affect sites with heavy user generated content. Sites like Youtube, Reddit, Twitter, and others may cease to exist in their current form if this bill is passed.

Why did Wikipedia Close last Week? The Protect IP Act (PIPA, S. 968) is SOPA's twin in the Senate. Under current DMCA law, if a user uploads a copyrighted movie to sites like Youtube, the site isn't held accountable so long as they provide a way to report user infringement. The user who uploaded the movie is held accountable for their actions, not the site. PIPA would change that - it would place the blame on the site itself, and would also provide a way for copyright holders to seize the site's domain in extreme circumstances.

Why did Wikipedia Close last Week? The Electronic Frontier Foundation laid out four excellent points as to why the bills are not only dangerous, but are also not effective for what they are trying to accomplish: The blacklist bills are expensive. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that PIPA alone would cost the taxpayers at least $47 million over 5 years, and could cost the private sector many times more. Those costs would be carried mostly by the tech industry, hampering growth and innovation. The blacklist bills silence legitimate speech. Rights holders, ISPs, or the government could shut down sites with accusations of infringement, and without real due process. The blacklist bills are bad for the architecture of the Internet. But don't take our word for it: see the open letters that dozens of the Internet's concerned creators have submitted to Congress about the impact the bills would have on the security of the web. The blacklist bills won't stop online piracy. The tools these bills would grant rights holders are like chainsaws in an operating room: they do a lot of damage, and they aren't very effective in the first place. The filtering methods might dissuade casual users, but they would be trivial for dedicated and technically savvy users to circumvent.