Creative Commons

February 19, 2009

Creative Commons

Teachers post so much great, creative content on the web, but how do others know what they can and cannot do with it? The way current US copyright laws are written, anything you post on the web is automatically copyrighted. So technically, someone that wants to use your materials must ask you for permission to. But what if you intend for the material to be used? Do you have to put in the public domain with no restrictions at all? Well, until CC, that was the only other option, but CC bridges the gap between the two, allowing you to decide how your work can be used. CC doesn’t replace your copyright- it allows you to modify the terms of the copyright to suit your needs. So you can choose to allow your work to be shared, reused, remixed… http://creativecommons.org/

Share, Remix, Reuse — Legally
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.”

I love that last line. “Some Rights Reserved”- what does that mean? When you got o the CC website, you can generate a CC license based on the restrictions you want to keep on your work. On the Licenses page http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/ you can read about the four types of restrictions: Attribution, Share Alike, Noncommercial, No Derivative Works. And you can select the correct version by simply answering a few questions at http://creativecommons.org/license/ then you copyand paste the code (instructions are on the CC website) and the info will display on your page.

Technology 4 Teachers by Debra Geoghan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at technology4teachers.wordpress.com.

How cool is that?

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