creative commons

A great look into the workings of Creative Commons -- a new idea in intellectual property ownership rights and licensing -- can be found on Denise Howell's Bag and Baggage. The idea behind Creative Commons is to make it easier for people to define how they would like their artistic property to be used by others. The explosion of created materials on the internet has brought with it a lot of confusion to the public over which materials are copyrighted, and which can be used and incorporated into other works. Creative Commons is leading an exciting effort to let people share ideas and work together. As they state on their pages:

Our initial goal is to provide an easy way for people (like scholars, musicians, filmmakers, and authors--from world-renowned professionals to garage-based amateurs) to announce that their works are available for copying, modification, and redistribution. We are building a Web-based application for dedicating copyrighted works to the "public domain," and for generating flexible, generous licenses that permit copying and creative reuses of copyrighted works.

Shining a Spotlight on Sharing: We want to make it easy for people to find works that are in the public domain or licensed on generous terms. We are developing a method for labeling such works with metadata that identify their terms of use. Potential users could then search for works (say, photos of the Empire State Building) based on the permitted uses (say, noncommercial copying and redistribution).

Denise's presentation is a wonderful start on giving us an idea of how these efforts will come about.