Online Essay

Creative Commons: Some Rights Reserved

If each person was to receive a dollar for every time their assignment had to be rushed and completed half heartedly in order to get it in on time, it would be very likely that some people would have enough money to buy themselves dinner at an overpriced restaurant. If only relevant journal articles could be copied and pasted into assignments without the worry of referencing or quoting where the information from the assignment came from, much better essays would be produced and they would be finished with plenty of time to spare. Although, what’s the point of that? Nobody would never really learn anything, and everyone in the class would be producing top quality work. This essay is based on the topic Creative Commons, also known as CC. Even though there are both positive and negative argument towards Creative Commons, this essay is focusing towards the reasons as to why Creative Commons will need to play a big part in the future of media and technology.

Creative Commons is a non-profitable service which has been around for 8 years. Michael Baumann (2009) says “it serves as a digital tour guide for intellectual property licences.” Without copyright laws we would have the right to use other people’s work for our own. Ever wanted to perform someone else’s song without acknowledging who wrote or produced it, or ever wanted to use a peer reviewed article in an assignment and said it was your own? If copyright laws didn’t exist, we would be able to perform Britney Spears’ latest song and call it our very own, not that we would want to, however this would be acceptable (Gordon-Murnane, 2005). However what if you wanted your work to be recognised by others? What if you didn’t mind that your music was being used in a movie, as long as you were being recognised as the creator? This is where CC licensing is introduced. Rather than the traditional “all rights reserved”, CC offers an alternative system which offers “some rights reserved” (Anonymous, 2006).

A brief explanation of the copyright laws and free licensing is accessible on the Creative Commons website. The Creative Commons website also offers eight special licences, six basic licences and a core licensing engine. Music sampling and sharing along with contributing works to public domain is all covered by Creative Common’s ‘special licences’, whereas, the ‘basic licence’ offers various options for authors. Butler (2005) states the basic licence also includes “the offering of works for mere attribution (credit), restricting use to non-commercial purposes, permitting adaptation (derivative use) and requiring users to ‘share alike’ if they make changes.”
Below are examples of the four basic conditions of licensing, which are also mentioned above:
1. Attribution – credit must be given to you whenever someone uses your work as a public domain.
2. Share Alike – Anyone is allowed to edit, remix, or build on your work. However one condition applies: The licensing agreement that the derivative works are distributed under must be identical to the original.
3. Non-commercial –Your work can be copied or distributed by anyone, although it cannot be derived or used for commercial purposes. “The non-commercial licence condition keeps the spirit of sharing and creation for the public good.”
4. No Derivative Works – Your work can not be edited or remixed, but it can be copied, displayed or distributed. For example, if you produced a movie, nobody but yourself has the rights to change or distort it; however they can copy or issue it out.

These four basic licensing conditions can be used in different combinations to make up any basic or special CC licence (Baumann, 2009). If an unsigned song writer is looking to create a fan base, they are best off applying for a Creative Commons licence. A Non-commercial CC licence would best suit an unsigned song writer who has career objective. This is because a Non-commercial CC licence allows the writer to reserve the commercial rights to their music (Anonymous, 2006). Flickr offers a range of photos under a CC licence. There are several photos on the site, some with a combination of CC licences, and some with just a basic CC licence. Another organisation which incorporates CC licensing is Jamendo. They provide free download and streaming of music published under a Creative Commons licence. CC licences have also been welcomed by the open access (OA) community. Author of Open Access News, Peter Suber states “Creative Common’s licences are terribly useful. They are very easy to implement. They come in a good variety of flavours, including several that closely match the best public definitions of open access (Anonymous, 2007).” More information regarding Peter Suber’s views on Creative Commons can be found on his website.

Another reason as to why there are multiple arrangements regarding CC licences is due to the fact that Creative Commons doesn’t just stop at music and media, it also continues on to science and technology.
"Great science and medicine is teamwork, disputation and the resulting creativity and progress in the world needs sharing and a much wider understanding among a more literate public (Anonymous, 2006).”

No matter what classification your work may lie in, if one’s creation is envied by the public, they will more than likely want their work to be shared. That’s why Creative Commons is becoming extremely popular towards the people of art, music, technology and science. With Creative Commons, they know their work will be used and shared as the way they want it to be within the public. Donations and support can be given to Creative Commons through their website. One of the many ways to help Creative Commons is by simply joining their network. To do so click on the following website, Creative Commons Support.

References

Journal Articles

ANONYMOUS (2006) Made for Sharing. Creative Review, 1.

ANONYMOUS (2007) Common Touch on Rights. Information World Review, 1.

BAUMANN, M. (2009) An Insider's guide to Creative Commons. Information Today, 26, 1.

GORDON-MURNANE, L. (2005) Generosity and Copyright: Creative Commons and Creative Commons Search Tools. Searcher, 13, 8.

GOULD, P. (2004) Creative Commons ponders share options. Nature. London.

Websites

http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/hometoc.htm

http://www.creativecommons.org.au/

http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/

https://support.creativecommons.org/

www.jamendo.com/

Tutorial Task - Week 7

Sorry about the order of the posts. Here is our news story on a formula two Bellenden Ker College residents invented to cure the hangover. Enjoy!!!

Subject Evaluation

Overall I quite enjoyed this subject. I believe that writing the lecture summaries will benefit me when it comes to the end of semester exam. It was good to learn how to use other programs such as movie maker and audacity, as well as other software like Firefox and Google chrome. I’m also glad that we had the opportunity to incorporate political aspects into our technology studies. The different lecturers were all interesting to listen to; they seemed to have a lot of experience in different sectors of the technology industry. Thanks for stopping by, and stay classy!

Lecture Summary - Week 9

Once again, it’s great to be here, informing you about the weekly lectures. Don’t get me wrong, they are definitely a hoot! Unfortunately this will be my 9th and final summary, so please enjoy!

Everything about our social networking environment is constantly changing. The first of my online social networking experience was with MySpace. Once I moved to Brisbane for university, Facebook became my new substitute for MySpace. It is so much easier to use, and we don’t have to bother about keeping our profile looking up to date. Now I’m in my second semester of my first year at University and as a requirement for one of my subjects I have to use Twitter. If it wasn’t for this subject I don’t think I would have ever associated with the networking site. Is it good to have this environment where everything is constantly changing? What do you think?

The lecturer spoke about how Rupert Murdock bought MySpace for an extremely large sum of money and will most likely not be able to make that back because MySpace is not popular anymore. Everyone has merged to Facebook. A comment which was brought up was ‘Why do we spend millions of dollars on social networking sites just to watch them fall?’ This is because apparently social networking sites succeed most when they are specific. Examples of networking sites were shown in the lecture that do well, such as the Vampire site.

We looked at the website ‘Wayback Machine’ which takes old websites and archives them. We looked at websites such as Yahoo, Google and Griffith University to see how much their page structure has developed and advanced. Unlike Yahoo and GU, Goggle’s website has hardly changed. If something worked 10 years ago, why change it?

We had a different lecturer this week. I like it how we get different speakers some weeks. It keeps the subject interesting and we get to experience different people’s point of view. This week’s lecturer showed us his sweet as website of sweet as games. I was very impressed.

Tutorial Task - Week 9

For this week’s tutorial task we have to choose a topic for our final research essay. At this stage, I am currently set on topic number 5 which is ‘Creative Commons is both a solution and yet another failure to deal with authorship and copyright on the internet. Discuss and give examples.’ So far I have found 5 sources relating to this area of studies.

1. The first resource I am going to use is the article on Creative Commons provided on learning@griffith. Thank you very much Steven. The key argument in this article is that CC licenses are the best hope to the future. This is great because it backs up my argument very nicely. I also believe CC licenses are what the future of media needs. Media producers should be able to share their work so other people can enjoy it.
2. The second piece of information I’m using is called ‘Copyright – Only Dedication or Public Domain Certification’. This article is focused on defining what Creative Commons is. This article gives me good knowledge to help back up my argument throughout the essay.
3. The third article I’ve looked at for the essay is called ‘Commons Touch on Rights’. Different types of CC licenses are mentioned throughout this article which therefore will help me introduce other necessary information to my essay. The article also compares ‘Open Access’ with ‘Creative Commons’, as well as what industries would have troubles with deciding which way to go.
4. The forth article I found which may be useful is called ‘Made for Sharing’ from the Creative Review. In this article there is information on the values, attitudes and beliefs of music artists relating to Creative Commons. I believe my essay will benefit from source such as this.
5. The fifth article I’m going to use comes from a different direction in comparison to the other articles mentioned so far. This angle to the topic is created by the Creative Common Corporation itself. It is focused towards the fact that the team from the industry doesn’t want to develop a comprehensive directory or database of Creative Commons.

Tutorial Task - Week 8

For this week’s tutorial task we were asked to see how many opportunities we are able to achieve from the list below whilst sticking to our political beliefs. As well as, which ones can we find for political participation via the internet?
My main political belief is to give everyone the time of day to the best of my ability. For example, if a Christian or any anyone else willing to preach their views on their religion, we should take a minute to listen to them. That’s why I would be able to sign an e-petition without changing my political beliefs, however I don’t go around looking for such things, they have to come to me.

Sign an e-petition.
I didn’t sign an e-petition. I only participate with those things when they tap me on the back. I don’t go looking for them.

Respond to a professional blogger at a major news site.
I responded to Emily Jade’s blog on the Courier Mail website. The blog was about a teenage girl who wants a chance to redeem herself after doing wrong by her finance.

What is Barak Obama up to today?
Obama addressed us of his support and dedication to the relationship between Israel and the U.S. The speech was made in Chicago.




Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are.
Local: Desley Boyle
State: Julie Attwood
Federal: Arch Bevis

Look up the Queensland or Australian hansard to find the last time your local member spoke in parliament.
September 17, 2009 was the last time Desley Boyle spoke in Parliament.

Let your local member know what you think about their last speech.
I honestly had nothing to say...a motion on Far North Queensland’s Regional Plan doesn’t interest me right now seeing as I’m spending most of my time in Brisbane.

What do you think of the Australian Government’s plans to censor the internet (the so-called “Clean Feed”)?
I would have to say my attitudes regarding this subject sway towards ‘censorship is a good idea’. When I have my own children I don’t want them experiencing porn and other explicit material at a young age. It is so easy to come across when surfing the internet, maybe a little too easy. But that’s just me; no doubt there are people out there who will say it’s a total waste of money and time.

Lecture Summary - Week 8

Political Possibilities – by Steven Stockwell

Welcome to another one of my exciting weekly lecture summaries. This week’s lecture is a little bit more difficult to write about seeing as we didn’t have one... YEEEOOOWWW!! Thank you to the lecturer’s of Griffith University for my day off. Your antics were much appreciated. As we all know the strike unfortunately lasted for one day only. Therefore, we got a quick rundown of the lecture in Thursday’s tutorial... Lucky us!

According to our tute, Daniel Hourigan, this week’s lecture was based on the link between the Military and the entertainment industry. The way he likes to describe it is as “a two way street”. Hollywood’s movie industry spent most of the 1980’s and 90’s trying to create sets in order to make movies based on these times.

Another topic which came up was E-petitions. We spoke about how they were very affective in relation to the regular face-to-face petitions. In accordance to the face-to-face petitions, there is more response online.

Several key words were brought up in today’s tutorial and we learnt about each one of their meanings when relating to politics and technology. The key words are:
• Access: which means your google results won’t be censored, when talking about democracy.
• Technologic Determinism: we don’t just use technology, as technological determinism determines the way we use it.
The following few terms are called Social Constructions:
• Encryption: Company secrets – something they won’t want the public to see.
• Commodification: to take a raw object and turn it into something or value.
• Anarchy: a complete loss of order.
• Liberalism: progress – going somewhere.