Legality and the Creative Commons Debate

While there are many website creators and bloggers all over the internet who host content that is not their own, or who merely blog solely out of amusement... something to while away the time before they retire, some of us who do create content, do so

a) to develop professionally
b) to create a large body of work i.e. a work of art
c) to share this art with our colleagues, friends and global collaborators

Either way, whatever we produce on our pages, (even if we're already retired and no longer in the classroom/ creative world)... our writing and designs are usually subject to copyright and in most of our cases, subject to creative commons licensing which means that it is free to use but attribution  for the final or even draft product must be given.   

Some of us really don't mind if this work provides others with an income, others of us really do.   I am one of the ones who does.   Some out there think that if we get upset by having work stolen, we shouldn't because, basically,  in their opinion, blogging isn't real work!

I guess, once upon a time, journalism wasn't real work either.  And didn't Van Gogh die penniless - or was he the guy who cut off his ear?  Nevermind.

While albeit, understandably, admittedly for those who blog solely to promote their company's wares or to advertise their upcoming conference presentations it is indeed very difficult for them to see a problem with material being lifted off our, as artists,  pages...  after all, in their cases if their advertisements are shared with others, they're very happy.

Still, not all blogs or bloggers are the same, nor do we all create under the same motivations.  For some of us, when our hours of energy, time and work is copied, it is an infringement, a violation of our rights.

These past few weeks have seen several very interesting cases crop up in our own field  of ELT, in general education and on the outskirts of it.  I know that I personally believe that not only do we need to respect each others' art, we really must fight together against those who would violate it.

What do you think? 

Have you ever had work lifted?  Were you able to deal with the thieves?

Has anyone ever tried to claim ownership over something you created?  How did it make you feel?

Have you ever contributed to a large body of work for a colleague or a boss and then had them casually forget to give you credit or reference your work?  How did this make you feel?

In this techno-age should our students be taught now not to violate copyright?   Or do you believe that the age of owning the right to have your name on your art  is now over?

Is plagiarism ever flattering?

Useful links related to this posting:

• Understanding Creative Commons (previous post on this theme: Uncommonly Creative)
• Get your Creative Commons official license here.
  

• How to find millions of photographs, music and other forms of media which have been licensed under creative commons:  Search Creative Commons

• Simple Wikipedia

• Wikimedia Commons

• Plagiarism.org

• Idioms in English - excellent initiative by the webheads to create a resource for ELT 

Problems with copyright:

• Nick Jaworski and the case of the unethical contract
• Marisa Constantinides and the case of the stolen articles
• Tom Barrett and the case of the lifted google-doc

If you have also written on this issue or are currently struggling with someone on a copyright issue, please don't hesitate to add your url below.

 Best, Karenne education  

I love hearing from you! Please add your thoughts on this issue if you have suffered or been violated or if you are unsure about the legalities of creative commons / would like to share how you work - don't worry about perfection or agreeing with me: it's always a pleasure to hear from you and know what you think.

Do you know of another excellent source for free creative-commons licenced materials and media to share with students?

And p.s. what a week... eh?

There seriously must have been something out there in the universe - moon, stars and planets, and all that... I honestly feel like I've been dealing with crazies all week...

Slide over to slideshare.net, EFL Tech-Tip -4

If you've been reading my blog postings for a while now then you'll already know that I'm a big fan of slideshare and even have my own page there.

If not, then let me quickly introduce you to a super source of material for your business, general English and ESP classes; teacher-training tips; grammatical explanations and much, much, more.

Slideshare is basically a platform where trainers, normal people and experienced consultants load up their powerpoint or open office presentations so that anyone who might be interested in learning from them can.

It's a wonderful source of authentic material, mostly highly professional and very informative.

The best of these are written with very few words, many images and thus work as excellent skills prompters.

You can use them as a basis to get your students chatting, writing, dissecting the issues in context or extracting core vocabulary. Get them making predictions, explaining backgrounds behind the ideas, comparing cultural influences or just simply learning English by learning something they're very interested in knowing more about.

Downloading from this site is a simple procedure: above each presentation which allows this function, there's a button you can use to do this. Look for the little pink heart which marks favorites - next to that there's a button with a down arrow indicating you can take the presentation and store it on your own computer.

And of course, if you don't have access to a computer in your classroom, you can also set the slideshares as a pre- or post-task activity (a.k.a homework) by sending your students the link(s) via email. Best, of course, is getting them to slide on over to make their own choices.

Useful links related to this posting:

Lesson tips using slideshare

Stuff I've used with my students, stuff I learned from, stuff I save here.
(see left side for tag types)

Best,
Karenne

p.s. If you've got any other great tips to share with us on how to use slideshares in the ESL & EFL classroom or if you'd like to tell us how you used one of them with your students, don't hesitate to do so - we can all learn together - click on comments.

Update 25-March-2008 for the smartphone/blackberry and i-phone users:
Slideshare available on your mobile phones (as far as I can tell, still free)

Introducing SlideShare Mobile: use SlideShare on the go!

View more presentations from Amit Ranjan.

Uncommonly creative

The other day I was training a group of teachers on developing their learners' speaking skills and one of the participants asked me where I got my pictures from and whether this was all on the "up and up."

It suddenly dawned on me that actually a lot of EFL and ESL teachers, materials authors, newsletter, journal, blog and freebie ELT magazine writers don't actually know about creative commons.

So what is creative commons?

Creative Commons is a type of license that is added to a piece of work (photo, music, video and more) and rather than assign copyright to it the author gives permission for this item to be used by whomever, as long as they appropriately attribute it (put the name of the author).

The simplest way to cross-check against the different sources of creative commons material is here:

http://search.creativecommons.org/

You can also do an advanced search from google, yahoo or directly in flickr, blip.tv, spinXpress.

How can you use it in class?

The sky's the limit.

I use it to create interesting worksheets, make the cover pages for my commercial worksheets, make games to divide up my training groups, use photos in my blog entries to make them look interesting ;-) LOL, have even used a piece of music as backdrop to my video, etc.

The bottom line is that you can have as much fun and be as creative as you like.

For free! Of course, it's always a nice idea to give back too and these days I walk about with a camera and have been uploading my own stuff into flickr and of course, my blog entries are CC'd too and institutions or teaching associations are welcome to use them in their magazines.

Can you do anything at all with the stuff you take?

Well, actually there are six different types of creative commons licenses so I generally do an advanced search and specify how I'm going to use something and then go from there.

I also try to make sure that I respect the originality of the work and its creator by letting him/her know when and how I've used something. They always like this ;-).

Anyway, this might seem like a lot to take in so here's a great video explaining it all here:

A longer, more in-depth, video and explanation behind the philosophy and concepts of creative commons can be found here.

For a general reference on the types of licenses, I've cut and paste from Wikipedia as follows:

Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd) This license is the most restrictive of the six main licenses, allowing redistribution. This license is often called the “free advertising” license because it allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa) This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. Others can download and redistribute your work just like the by-nc-nd license, but they can also translate, make remixes, and produce new stories based on your work. All new work based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also be non-commercial in nature.

Attribution Non-commercial (by-nc) This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

Attribution No Derivatives (by-nd) This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

Attribution Share Alike (by-sa) This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.

Attribution (by) This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered, in terms of what others can do with your works licensed under Attribution.

Best,
Karenne