Creativity Made Easy: Creative Commons and Copyleft

The Creative Commons is devoted to the building upon of ideas for sharing. Creative Commons issues licenses to the authors or creators of the work so that their work is protected, these are called "creative commons licenses". The author of the work is able to tailor the license to their needs and restrictions.  The work can then be sent out into the world wide web for other creative minds to build upon and enhance or simply play with.  This benefits the original creator because they can get their work out into the public but they have ownership over the product because of the Creative Commons license. What makes "CC" unique is that it is free. In a way, you can understand the CC license as a "watered down" and customizable copyright license.

The first time I noticed the CC license or logo was in Flickr. The photos have the signature CC to protect the photographer's image as their own and ensure that there is no chance for copyright infringement. I also learned that Wikipedia uses CC. It is a way for users to share intellectual property but also place some safe-holds on their "products".

CC is an element of a greater movement known as "copyleft" what copyleft essentially strives for is a more free copyright system where "all rights reserved" can be interchanged with "some rights reserved" as it is decided by the individual product or idea owner and creator.  What CC and copyleft now allow us to do is open forums for communication, experimentation and honest feedback.  The web is headed in an interesting direction and I see this trend towards open communication becoming more and more prevalent. Websites like www.quirky.com allow users to post ideas or inventions and receive feedback from engineers, artists, designers and homemakers (anyone who wants to comment) that can provide them with great feedback and a general sense of whether or not the idea would work in the end.  This open sharing of ideas is truly innovative and I hope it continues to develop!

Check out the video at the top of this post. It is a great way to understand CC. Enjoy!