Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Thing 23

Copyright. It's simple to find copyright for books. Not so simple for online information, images, music. My goodness...I read a little bit of that copyright comic book and it opened up many ideas I had not considered. It's very frustrating how copyright laws are interpreted. I know copyright ensures that the copyright holder earns money so that he/she can continue to produce works we want to read, see, or hear. But it seems the copyright laws from the 1980s have made copyright much more convoluted and confusing. The poor documentary makers who have to pore over every millimeter of film to see if they've captured a copyrighted image is an example of this confusion. If an image of a Coca Cola sign ends up in the film, does the director have to contact Coca Cola for a release? If a man is singing "I Did It My Way" in the film, does the director have to contact Frank Sinatra's estate? What a headache! Thank goodness it's not my job to decide the answers to these questions! But because intermediaries (read: lawyers) get involved to make these kind of decisions, money is always involved.
What a relief that there are some people out there who recognize that many artists, writers, musicians, scientists, and even politicians might desire to share their work with others without the involvement of intermediaries and big bucks. I had never heard of Creative Commons before. The Creative Commons license allows the copyright holder to keep his copyright while inviting certain uses of his work. It's a link between full copyright which is all rights reserved and public domain which is no rights reserved. Creative Commons is some rights reserved. It would allow works to be used without costing a lot of money.
As I was looking for an example that shows a work modified from the original, the most obvious is our Learning 2.0 Through Play. Look at the bottom of the page of each Thing and you'll see the credits citing the use of Creative Commons. Some other great examples can be found in the article about Creative Commons in Wikipedia. I was intrigued with The Public Library of Science which is an open access forum for scientists to read, download, copy and use any way they wish. There are core principles to follow in doing this and cost may be involved. It is not necessarily free. I recall when I was trying to help a student find some online research information for a Science Fair project and was stopped by not being a paid subscriber to a science journal. The Public Library of Science is just one way the internet has become more communal and collaborative and generous, I suppose you'd say.
I look forward to continue to finding websites with shared audio and video and other images with Creative Commons licenses. Some rights reserved seems pretty fair use to me!

No comments: