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  Some Rights Reserved by TilarX, 2007 |
Creative Commons (CC) is a not-for-profit organisation that offers authors of creative works a flexible, alternative and free approach to licensing. In response to the global Copyright/Public Domain dichotomy of licensing, the organisation provides authors with a range of flexible, mix-n-match licences that can be applied, free of charge, to any works they might create, including those made available to others via the web.
By selecting one or more of the following licences, authors have more freedom to display, disseminate and share their works with web users without relinquishing credit for the works or fundamental authorship. Visit the Creative Commons website for a full description and terms of each licence and licence combination.
Attribution | CC BY
Share Alike | CC SA
Noncommercial | CC NC
No Derivative Works | CC ND
Creative Commons Australia is the affiliate of the CC organisation, being responsible for administering Australian CC licences.
As a university student, I could envisage these kinds of 'middle ground' licensing tools being adopted by undergraduate and postgraduate students to retain a sense of ownership over academic and creative works without prohibiting other students from accessing, using, sharing, or learning from them. The stop-motion short films we created in Week 2 of this course are just one example.
2. Examples of works that are licensed through Creative Commons.
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 Thomas Bower, 2008 |
The music band Radiohead is well known for its espousal of the Creative Commons, both ideologically and practically speaking. The music video included here - 'House of Cards' - was created using laser 3D Plotting technology, and is licenced under the Creative Commons framework.
3. An academic article that discusses creative commons.
As recently as January of this year, Laura Gordon-Murnane penned a succinct analysis of the 'Free Culture' movement entitled, Creative Commons: Copyright Tools for the 21st Century (2010). The article, which appeared in Online journal, describes three major events and a general ideological shift that fished the Creative Commons from the proverbial 'thinktank' and transplanted it into the twenty-first century and increasingly common usage.
The author cites two significant twentieth century revisions of United States copyright laws (the Copyright Act of 1976 and the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1988), along with the advent of the internet and the beginnings of the movement away from a read-only, analog-format culture as the principle triggers for the Free Culture movement. The Creative Commons (CC) is described as a 'new category' of copyright protection that has developed in response to the peculiar nature of a burgeoning read/write culture spear-headed by Web 2.0.
Far from singing uncensored praises for the 'Some Rights Reserved' option, Gordon-Murnane outlines both the benefits and drawbacks associated with adopting the framework. Perhaps the most significant of the drawbacks mentioned is the 'irrevocable nature' of CC licences: essentially, content creators can opt to cease distributing work under a CC licence, however, those copies of the work already distributed cannot be withdrawn or retrieved (Gordon-Murnane, 2010). The ease of disseminating and copying digital content online, coupled with this provision of the CC framework mean that potential CC licensors should carefully consider how they want their works to be used by others, now and in the future.
Creative Commons vice president Mike Linksvayer makes the comment to the author that, where Noncommercial (CC NC) licences are concerned, licensors should expect some uses of their work that do not meet with conservative definitions of that CC licensing tool (Gordon-Murnane, 2010, p.21).
It is surprising that this course has provided me with my first contact with the Creative Commons, given that Creative Commons licensing tools (which have parallels with Richard Stallman's GNU General Public License model for software) were released publicly in January 2002... Even more interesting was the note that appears at the bottom of this article when printed from http://www.onlinemag.net/:
"Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission."
Clearly, despite widespread adoption of the framework by academic institutions, libraries, museums, and more recently, scientific communities, some reservations are still harbored by well-informed members of the creative community.
4. What is Portable Apps, and how is it useful?
Let's begin by considering what Portable Apps are and who uses them. Portable Apps - or portable application software - run from portable drive devices, such as CDs, iPods, USBs and external hard drives. Rather than storing files and settings on the host computer or operating system, all configuration files necessary to run the application are stored with the program files on the portable device.
At first I struggled to grasp the link between Portable Apps and the Creative Commons, however, I stumbled across PortableApps.com, which provides a directory of 'free open source software and freeware portable apps'. It seems that both Portable Apps and the Creative Commons subscribe to certain ideals associated with the 'Free Culture' movement. The suite of programs provided on PortableApps.com, for example, is free of charge; the suite is also free from spyware and advertising, doesn't require you to declare your personal details, and won't pester you to purchase or download further software. Essentially, there is no question of users choosing between privacy and accessibiliy, as is the case with many social networking websites and standard software applications. Like some Creative Commons-licenced works, Portable Apps are also free in terms of copying and sharing the software: this characteristic is in line with the tendency of 'social media' devices and applications to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge and culture freely amongst users worldwide.
Various other benefits are commonly associated with Portable Apps including the convenience of reliable transfer of your personal settings, bookmarks, email, et cetera to any Windows computing platform.
Mozilla Firefox (Portable Edition) is an example of a Portable Apps browser combatible with Windows and Wine (Linux/Unix) operating systems. Not only is the software free (excepting downloading 'costs'), but the application allows users to use a familiar and customised browser on any compatible PC without inadvertently installing program files and leaving personal data behind.
OpenOffic.org Portable is a complete office suite (word processor, spreadsheeting tool, and presentation, drawing and database utilities) with the same benefits.
Reference List
Bower, Thomas. (2008). 2500 Creative Commons Licences [Digital artwork]. Retrieved September 12, 2010, from http://www.flickr.com/photos/qthomasbower/3640362081/
Gordon-Murnane, L. (2010). Creative Commons: Copyright Tools for the 21st Century. Online, 34(1), pp 18-21.
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