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for faculty, instructors and staff using educational technologies.
EdTech provides consulting, training, outreach and educational services
for faculty, instructors and staff using educational technologies.
The Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that can help students imagine their creative works as being produced for real audiences and having an effect on a community of other artists, and at the same time protect their rights. Faculty who work with students producing writing, photography, film, music, and other media that can be displayed or shared online may find the Creative Commons an important resource for their students. Lawrence Lessig, a professor of law at Stanford University, founded the Creative Commons to solve a practical problem with copyright, and his solution was to help artists who want to give up some of the rights to their work do so in the right way.
How can giving up rights actually benefit the creator? This will become clearer with an example. Let's say I'm an art student and I create a nifty video. As soon as my work enters some fixed form, it is copyrighted. I don't have to file papers, or tell anyone it's copyrighted, or even put a copyright symbol anyplace. Copyright is automatic. I can post this on a web site so that people can view it,** but they can't legally copy it or use it in most cases without my permission, even if it doesn't bear a copyright notice and even if they don't know my name or can't contact me. On the other hand, I can choose to give up my rights altogether and place it in the public domain, meaning anyone can use it in any way. You're probably thinking so far, this sounds clear and simple: keep copyright to protect your rights, or place your work in the public domain if you don't care to protect your rights. There are a couple of problems with this situation, however. There are at least two reasons I might want to share my work in some way short of placing it completely in the public domain, either for personal reasons or communal ones.
First, there are communal or political reasons: creative works build on each other. No one is an island. When I created this video in this example, chances are I was strongly influenced by other movies I'd seen, as well as photographs and other art, writing, and music (perhaps I incorporated some of this directly in my video). Walt Disney created the character of Mickey Mouse by modeling him directly on a Buster Keaton movie, but now the company strictly enforces its copyright on the mouse. Recognizing that creative ideas build on each other like this, artists might want to make it easier for other artists to use what they create, like a potluck dinner where everybody shares alike, a commons . But at the same time, even if I want other artists to be able to use my video, if I just put it in the public domain, I couldn't stop, say, a big corporation from using my work, profiting from it, and giving me nothing.
Second, giving up some rights can sometimes be in your self-interest. If I'm just starting out as an artist, I might like the idea of my work being spread around, even used in other people's work, so long as they give me credit, and can't make money from it without asking me. The greater publicity might help me. For example, I might want a TV producer who saw my video on someone else's web site and liked it to be able to spread it around freely to people she works with, as long as she gives me credit, but still want MTV to have to ask me - and pay me - before it airs my video commercially. In short, unmodified copyright can get in the way of beneficial sharing, and public domain can get in the way of the creator receiving profits from a work. The solution would seem to be some middle ground between complete retention of copyright on one hand, and completely surrendering one's rights on the other.
"If I'm a not a lawyer and don't have an intellectual property lawyer on retainer, how would I know how to give up some of my rights, but retain enough rights to prohibit some uses of my work? This is what the Creative Commons does for creative people."
I could just try to control the use of my work by expecting each individual to contact me and ask permission for each use, but this is hardly practical. If I'm not a lawyer and don't have an intellectual property lawyer on retainer, how would I know how to give up some of my rights, but retain enough rights to prohibit some uses of my work? This is what the Creative Commons does for creative people. It offers prewritten licenses for people to attach to their work, to share it with others while controlling how it can be used.
The Creative Commons does not provide space for artists to publish their work, or even provide a database of links to works that people create. (They do provide a few links to other places on the Internet where people might publish their work, and they also have a few "featured works.") What they do is provide licenses that specify conditions to cover various options for giving up some rights while keeping others. For example, an "Attribution Non-commercial Share-Alike" license would allow others to distribute your work, or even modify it incorporating into their own creative work (that is, make a derivative work), so long as they give you credit, and they are not making money from it. Also, licensees who incorporate your work into theirs (for example, they incorporate a portion of my video into a video of their own) have to give everybody else the same rights to copy and use the new work. These licenses have been written - as much as possible - to stand up in courts all over the world. There's more. These licenses are provided in three forms: a complete license, a summary in plain English, and machine-readable meta tags that can be attached to artists' work. Thus, artists and writers who are tempted to put their work in the public domain because they like the idea of derivative works now have another option that allows them to keep some control. They can allow theses uses of their work while keeping other rights.
"Faculty who encourage students to publish their work online, in e-portfolios or other forms, would do well to encourage them to license them through the Creative Commons." Faculty who encourage students to publish their work online, in e-portfolios or other forms, would do well to encourage them to consider licensing them through the Creative Commons for the following reasons:
The Creative Commons is now a non-profit corporation drawing on the labor of participants at Stanford, Harvard, and MIT. It has become central to the movement to progressivize copyright that is commonly known as the "'creative commons' movement." One of its most famous efforts was a CD produced and distributed by Wired magazine. This CD is made up of tracks by artists like David Byrne and the Beastie Boys. These artists contributed original tracks to this CD expressly to offer them to other artists to copy, manipulate, and use to create new original work. That is, they allowed - no, invited - derivative works without putting their music in the public domain. This CD could make for an interesting discussion in a class on writing, photography, computer programming, or any class where students create original work.
* The assistance of Steven J. McDonald, general counsel for the Rhode Island School of Design, in the preparation of this article is much appreciated.
** Of course, when I post anything to a web site, I am giving implied permission to everybody to copy it temporarily to their computers just to look at it. This limited permission, however, does not mean that you can also make copies of what you see and distribute them to all your friends, for example.
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