Thursday, January 27, 2011

Share and use

I talk and write a lot about the benefits of using Creative Commons when publishing texts, photos and films on the web. It would save so much time and confusion if all material had a label on it that stated what you may or may not do with it. If I clearly state via a Creative Commons licence that you can copy and reuse my photo then you know the conditions immediately. If I don't want my work to be copied then it should say so. Whether people respect that or not is another matter but at least my wishes as author/creator are clear.

This is still rare on the web and one fine example is YouTube. All films there have an embed code that enables you to post the film on your blog (as I do regularly). By making it so easy to embed it's no surprise that people do just that but I wish the embed code had, for example, a Creative Commons licence attached so that everyone can see on my blog who made the film and what conditions apply. If you post on YouTube you should have the option of allowing embed or not. If you don't provide guidelines there will be confusion.

Here's a short film about the benefits of Creative Commons that is a year or so old but had escaped my attention until now.

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