Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Creative Commons



A week or two ago, the monthly Knowledge Seminars at Brooklyn Public Library welcomed Fred Beneson, Outreach Manager of Creative Commons. Our presenter on Monday briefly showed us the Creative Commons website, a great resource to search for media that lends itself to be reused and/or remixed. Definitely check it out while looking for music to use on your podcasts.

"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."

It was pretty awesome to hear Fred speak about what it is Creative Commons actually does. This licensing is an alternative to the rigid copyright laws made in yesteryear. How do you know if you're allowed to post a photo online? Well, if it's under a Creative Commons license, with the only condition being attribution, you're free to post that picture up as long as you plop the persons name or username alongside it, giving credit. You might have seen this option to set your photos to if you use flickr.

A bit more on all the conditions, taken from the Creative Commons Website:

Attribution
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.
Share Alike
You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.
Noncommercial
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only.
No Derivative Works
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.


Librarians need to understand the basics of copyright, and in doing so, we'll probably be looking for an alternative to it. Whether we're making content (blogs, websites, etc) or consulting someone else who is, these licenses are free and a fab way to share!

1 comment:

  1. Emily, thank you for sharing this with the class. It's really helpful and I think you're right, it is important to discuss these issues from a library specific standpoint. I am definitely going to invite someone from CC for next term.

    ReplyDelete