Don’t call it a Creative Commons reflection

So last week’s workshops on Creative Commons and Digital Images both went reasonably well – thankfully Joy, Hilde and Jeff were all stunningly effective co-facilitators.

The CC workshop was enlivened by the attendance of Ciaran Llachlan Leavitt, who was interjecting with so many challenging and compelling points I interrupted my presentation to ask, “who are you?” Turns out she is a writer who among many other things has battled with Disney (and come out smiling), shared a panel with Jonathan Letham (author of this piece which you’d better read if you haven’t already), and worked out her fiction online via a CC license.

Ciaran (perhaps I should refer to her as Llachlan) made a lot of pertinent points, but perhaps the most important was the evident need for users of CC to select the license relevant to the jurisdiction they live in. For that reason, and because I feel obliged to finally remove my NC clause (for reasons I only begin to understand, but whatever), the license on this blog has changed.

Yes, you tens of millions of content mongers who are looking to reuse my musings on freeform radio, the Saskatchewan Roughriders, and occasionally on educational technology — take note.

And I see D’Arcy is already there, of course. I am unsurprised yet comforted.

6 thoughts on “Don’t call it a Creative Commons reflection

  1. I debated about whether to use the NC clause or not, and wound up unable to think of a good reason to prevent commercial use if attribution was given. Worst case scenario? Something I do winds up in a book. Or on the cover of a magazine. Or someone’s annual report for their company. All of these things happened. None of them would have made me any cash. But someone was able to benefit from what I had already done. I chalk it up to karma, and hope they’ll pay it forward.

  2. Just to keep ’em guessing I actually display 2 *different* CC licenses on my blog 😉 Actually that’s just my laziness at not reconciling the one in the template with the one in the plugin I use.

    The funny thing though…I still regularly get requests to sign copyright clearance forms for materials that clearly are marked with CC licenses! As recently as last Saturday (Saturday!!!) at 6:45am (AM!!!!) I got a call asking if I would fax back a permissions form to reuse an image from my blog. I explained to the person that they didn’t need to ask permission, just follow the rights outlined in the CC license. The irony, though, is that, in altering the image from the blog with their own annotations, they invoked the “Share Alike” component of the CC license, something unlikely to please their publisher. We’ll see. They haven’t got back to me on that one…

  3. I got a request this morning to use one of my Flickr images. Clearly marked with a CC-By license…

    Scott – by signing a separate license, you’re bypassing CC. If they have an agreement with you specifically, that will likely count as a separate license, and not bound by the CC terms that would otherwise apply…

  4. D’Arcy, I *didn’t* sign the agreement, specifically because I told them “hey, it’s already a CC licensed resource.” It’s important to stick up for both the freedoms *and* the license. They are free to use it, but they need to do so on the conditions *I* set out, not the other way around.

  5. Kudos to you Brian for dropping the NC. In our research group we’ve been advocating for the education sector to drop commercial licenses and move to CC BY-SA, which we feel provides enough protection to the author, while allowing for remixing and free use. Actually all content in http://lemill.net is licensed under CC BY-SA. Many European ministries of education have been hard to convert, but we’re getting there slowly but surely.

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