Creative Commons

Creative Commons is "a nonprofit organization that increases sharing and improves collaboration." Their organization works to increase creativity throughout the common public, to increase free and legal sharing. They provide tools to give everyone the opportunity to stick to a standardized way of copyrighting their work. Creative Commons creates a less strict environment by giving people an option of copyright terms from "all rights reserved" to "some rights reserved."

More about Creative Commons can be learned through this video:



Creative Commons is different from the traditional copyright because it allows artists to chose the conditions of the license they would like to give to their work. There are six different licenses available through Creative Commons. The first type of license is Attribution; this allows others to "distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work as long as they credit you." This allows people the most access to your work. The next type of license is the Attribution Share Alike; this allows people all of the rights of the Attribution license but they must "credit you and license their work under identical terms." The third type is Attribution No Derivatives; allowing "redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you." Another type is Attribution Non-Commercial; allowing "others to remix, tweak, and build uponyour work non-commercially," but they dont need to license it the same way. Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike; lets others "remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit and license under identical terms. Others can download and redistribute your work, and translate, make remixes, and produce new stories based on it, but all new work will carry the same license, so anything else created will be non-commercial in nature. The last type of license is the Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives; being "the most restrictive of the six but allowing redistribution. It is also called 'free advertising' because it allows others to download and share as long as they mention and link it to you but not change or use commercially."

Artists like Josh Woodward are taking advantage of Creative Commons and still protecting the rights to their work because he is able to produce his work quickly and efficiently and get it posted on his website quickly by using a Creative Commons license as opposed to waiting for a copyright on his work. This helps Josh Woodward and artists like him to get their work out there quickly and allows other artists, depending on the type of license, to use other work to enhance their own or to remake and tweak the work by giving credit to the original creator.

I think that Creative Commons is a great way for people to put their work out there and also have it protected in some way. A good way to find different types of Creative Commons work is to check out this site it helps you to locate work like this:

This photo was found on calmenda's photostream on Flickr and is protected under the Creative Commons Attribution License. From the mashable site you can also find audio, general searches, images, texts, visuals. I think that Creative Commons is a great way for artists of music, writing, journalism, video, photography, cartoons, and any other creative outlet to protect their work and get it out to the public.

More information can be found at Josh Woodwards website, blip tv, Creative Commons, and Mashable.