Week 2: Readings

Creative Commons

What is it? That was the first thing I thought about when I watched the introductory video I was given, no actually I’m lying, the first damn I thought about was how someone could draw such a fucking perfect image of the earth.

Moving on…

Basically, a Creative Commons license is a free licensing tool that allows artists to share and the public access to use their material with given boundaries/restrictions.

There are many different types of Creative Commons License’s available for artists to choose from depending on how much freedom they wish to give away.

E.g. Allowing your work to be used by others as long as you are credited, however they are not allowed to change the material in any form or manner, nor are they allowed to gain profit from selling/distributing your material.

CopyRight

The overall theme of this week’s readings was “how do I avoid a copyright dispute on my blog and end up paying my life’s supply of money?” Establishing what we are and are not allowed to share on this page. As well as the protection we receive for our content, such as if we post a photo or video are is completely our own.

To me is seems as if everything these days has some form of copyright within it’s name; images, videos, song lyrics and even certain words when used in the wrong context. We can’t insult, we can’t copy, we can’t even sing a song without technically breaking the law.

I guess what everyone is just trying to tell us is that our own digital footprint can be your best friend or worst enemy, don’t insult and don’t touch what isn’t yours. Whilst some care little for what happens to their content as long as they’re name is the one that appears under the title: Artist, there are many out there who will go the distance to make you life shit. Why? You may ask, because they’re private about their content, and if it’s popular enough they will want to protect it just the same way you’ll want to protect one of your assets.

Be safe online my children!

For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.
 – Margaret Heffernan

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