Copyrighting Made Easy With Creative Commons May 11, 2009
What You Should Know About Creative Commons
Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that your business can use to assist you in copyrighting your own original material as well as in appropriately using the copyrighted material of others. It is an alternative to standard copyright practices which tends to be more affordable and easily accessible for small businesses than the standard copyright options. In order to properly use Creative Commons, there are a few things that you should know about both the licensing of your own material and the use of the material of others. Arming yourself with this knowledge can improve your options for use of your content while protecting you legally from trouble with copyrights.
The core thing that you should understand is that Creative Commons is a tool that you can use to change the licensing on items that are already copyrighted. People’s original works in text and images are typically copyrighted by default. Creative Commons allows you to assign different licenses which may allow people to use your work. You can also search the Creative Commons license database for works that others have given permission to use. Working from both angles, you can use Creative Commons to safely share your work while also adding the content of others to your own site and publications.
From the perspective of sharing your own work through Creative Commons, the core thing to understand is that appropriate licensing of your work will allow you to let others use the work but will require them to treat it the way that you want them to. This means that you can publish content and allow others to use it within certain guidelines. For example, you can attach an attribution license which would allow someone else to re-publish your content but only if they give you credit. This is a great way to spread the word about your work because it puts your content out there but indicates where to find the original source which is you. An important thing to note is that you should be selective about which content you put out there for use; the goal is to release enough content to be useful to others but not so much that people don’t have to check out your site or publication to get the full impact of your work.
The second part of using Creative Commons is by searching through the works of others to re-publish on your own site or in your own publication. You may search for images to compliment your text or you may search for chunks of text to use within bigger pieces. This is great because it allows you to obtain content without having to pay for it or to take the time to publish it yourself. You can find this content through the online Creative Commons database which is free to use. Make sure that you understand the licenses attached to any work that you use and then follow the rules for re-use of the content which are clearly outlined on the site. Also make sure that you are selective in choosing content that reflects the information and tone that you want people to experience when reading your work. For more information about copyrighting and SEO copyrighting services contact Real Deal Technologies.
[...] there are a lot of other things that I don’t do myself that it is great to use Creative Commons for in order to add to my site. The main thing that I use it for is to find Flickr photos that I [...]