Monday, November 13, 2006
Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a licensing scheme that protects your copyright, but allows others to make use of your creative work. I strongly support Creative Commons licensing but also respect the right of creators to control how what they create is used. Creative Commons is sort of like open source but for creative works like music, writing, and visual art. I suppose it could be applied to code as well, as code is copyright when it is put into some kind of permanent form.
Creative Commons reflects the increasingly open nature of the Internet. You will find that many images on Flickr operate under some flavour of Creative Commons. On Revver, you must submit work under creative commons as you agree that others may syndicate your video.
Why would you want to allow someone to syndicate your work? Why would you desire to let go of some of your rights? Sharing allows your work to filter more deeply into the market place. A CC license can be structured to forbid commercial use, so lets say that you take a great picture of a banana flower in Mexico. You upload that image as part of a set on Flickr. Some one sees your flower and really digs it. They use it as wall paper on their computer. A Dole representative sees the banana flower photo and finds out that it is on Flickr. They look it up and see that it is under a CC license but contact you to use it commercially on a new product.
Is this realistic? Yes. In many ways Flickr is becoming a viable alternative to stock photo CDs. My guess is that the companies that sell stock photography are getting a little worried given that millions of images are available on sites like Flickr.
Are my images on Flickr offered under a CC license? Most of them. Some are listed as All Rights Reserved, but it is something I’m changing slowly but surely. I have about 3500 images on Flickr these days and it is taking some time to alter the licensing on them.
One other thing protects me to a certain extent. I have opted to have the largest sized image at 800 pixels on the long edge. It would be fine for printing a snapshot, but not much more.
Creative Commons reflects the increasingly open nature of the Internet. You will find that many images on Flickr operate under some flavour of Creative Commons. On Revver, you must submit work under creative commons as you agree that others may syndicate your video.
Why would you want to allow someone to syndicate your work? Why would you desire to let go of some of your rights? Sharing allows your work to filter more deeply into the market place. A CC license can be structured to forbid commercial use, so lets say that you take a great picture of a banana flower in Mexico. You upload that image as part of a set on Flickr. Some one sees your flower and really digs it. They use it as wall paper on their computer. A Dole representative sees the banana flower photo and finds out that it is on Flickr. They look it up and see that it is under a CC license but contact you to use it commercially on a new product.
Is this realistic? Yes. In many ways Flickr is becoming a viable alternative to stock photo CDs. My guess is that the companies that sell stock photography are getting a little worried given that millions of images are available on sites like Flickr.
Are my images on Flickr offered under a CC license? Most of them. Some are listed as All Rights Reserved, but it is something I’m changing slowly but surely. I have about 3500 images on Flickr these days and it is taking some time to alter the licensing on them.
One other thing protects me to a certain extent. I have opted to have the largest sized image at 800 pixels on the long edge. It would be fine for printing a snapshot, but not much more.
