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.
Creative Commons Composite logo using 2500 flickr images.
Some rights reserved by qthomasbower (Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Let’s face it, in this day and age, which average University student has the time to go out and snap photos of abstract subjects to use as complementary images in blog posts? Possibly some photography enthusiasts and then no one else. The next best thing then would be scouring the Internet for online content in which the author explicitly states that he allows anyone to redistribute his work. Even then, you risk pilfering the copyrighted work of others because the term “fair use” on the Internet can be interpreted very broadly. In this digital age, there is also a high possibility that others are going to reuse content especially if it is readily available and easily attainable online (with a simple “right-click” and “save”).
Salvation in the form of the Creative Commons License
Enter the Creative Commons License (CC), founded in December 2002 by Lawrence Lessig, to give current copyright holders the option of making creative work available for copying and distribution by granting various exceptions to the rights they hold under copyright (Garcelon, 2009: 1309). This means that with the Creative Commons License, individual content producers can specify which rights they are willing to share and how they want to be attributed. For “second-tier” authors, musicians, artists and even small companies involved in distributing their creations, Creative Commons provides alternatives to “oligopolistic control” of the distribution of these creative works (Garcelon, 2009: 1311). It also allows small companies to challenge major music companies attempts to control distribution markets by giving potential downloaders both non-commercial and commercial options (Garcelon, 2009: 1311). All in all, it facilitates more open access to creative works (Garcelon, 2009: 1310).
Here’s a video explaining what the CC License is about:
What does this mean for bloggers?
Bloggers use Creative Commons Licenses for a variety of reasons. Some feel that it is a great way to give back to the community, others use CC licensing as a form of promotion, encouraging their content to be used with attribution, and others feel that it is a way to promote copyright reform.
However, Creative Commons can actually provide bloggers benefits that go well beyond the buttons and badges. For this WordPress blog, I have specifically chosen the Creative Commons license, CC-BY NC 3.0, which allows others to “copy, distribute and transmit the work” or “adapt it” for non-commercial purposes and only by attribution.
CC-BY NC 3.0
Why CC-BY NC 3.0?
I have chosen this CC license for a number of reasons to support my site and my content.
1. Search Engine Benefit
Using Creative Commons will no doubt get my content into CC-oriented search engines which offers convenient access to search services provided by other independent organizations such as Google or Yahoo (The Blog Herald, 2009: para 4). This will help expose my blog to many new visitors.
2. Greater Copyright Clarity
Many people on the Web are confused about the traditional “All Rights Reserved” license and are unsure with what they can or cannot do with the content. With the CC terms clearly explained, it encourages users to follow the license (The Blog Herald, 2009: para 7).
3. Encourages My Works to be Quoted
Obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy.” –Tim O’Rielly
As blogs increase in maturity, they become vital digital assets and a more formal publishing arena. Thus, many influential bloggers are careful not to infringe on copyrights in fear of being sued (TopRank, 2010: para 10). By placing a CC license in clear view, it states explicitly that they are allowed to reuse my content on their blogs and attribute it accordingly. This offers an encouragement for people interested in my content to reuse some of the text. Thus the CC license encourages others to quote more from my site allowing it to become a topic of discussion and link more to my work than they might have otherwise (The Blog Herald, 2009: para 11).
4. Less Time Wasted by Dealing with Infringement
Having a CC license, allows me to give permission for what might otherwise be an accidental infringement, or a minor misstep and focus only sites that plagiarize or use my material for commercial purposes. This means that I have fewer infringement to deal with and more time to develop my site, create new content and build my audience base (The Blog Herald, 2009: para 13).
5. A Legitimate License
As quoted from The Blog Herald (2009, para 15),
much of the copyright interactions we have on the Web are governed by implied licenses, or licenses that exist when no actual license is granted. For example, one of the reasons Google is allowed to index and cache Web pages is because, according to the legal system, by putting your content on the Web you are giving them an implied license to do so.
Many problems arise from this as there is a great deal of uncertainty regarding what an implied license grants users. As a counter measure, putting up an actual license i.e the CC license trumps the implied license by making the terms of use on my site clear (The Blog Herald, 2009: para 16). In addition, CC licenses are lawyer written and have been tested in courts. As I am unable to afford a lawyer to write me a license and do not have sufficient knowledge to write my own, and a free CC license solves all of that.
6. Images on Blog
Finally, with Flickr, I can search for creative commons images using the advanced search option, then place the images in my blog posts with the author attributions in the caption (as can be seen at the image at the start of this post). It is a win-win situation because I can display attention grabbing pictures for my readers to rest their eyes on in-between tedious blocks of text and the image author wins because the image links to his/her webpage which allows the occasional visitor.
Conclusion
In conclusion, a CC license is a simple way to encourage others to share, remix, and reuse my digital content. Licensing my works under Creative Commons is strategic as it actively encourages sharing with permission and attribution. It also allows me to modify my copyright term so that my work can succeed in the digital world, legally (TopRank, 2010: para 3).
I have since embraced it primarily as a promotional tool.
References:
- Creative Commons (2011), Licenses website, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ 13 May, [date accessed].
- Garcelon, M. (2009) ‘An Information Commons? Creative Commons and Public Access to Cultural Creations’ New Media & Society, 11(8): 1307–1326.
- The Blog Herald (2009), 5 Lesser-Known Benefits to Creative Commons website, http://www.blogherald.com/2009/01/05/5-lesser-known-benefits-to-creative-commons/ 13 May, [date accessed].
- TopRank (2010), Use A Creative Commons License As An Online Marketing Tool website, http://www.toprankblog.com/2009/07/creative-commons-license-marketing-tool/ 13May, [date accessed].
CARISSA 