Creative Commons

Creative Commons provides the creator of an item that is generally covered by copyright, books, songs, movies, etc. the opportunity to choose the share their work under one of the terms of the six licenses available. There are those who wish to enlarge and expand the body of innovation and choose not to put their work in the restrictive copyright coverage. There are six main licenses with varying degrees of giving credit, use - commercial/non-commercial, and actually changing the original work to be "better" or different. Once you apply and are covered you can not change your mind.

Standard Copyright protects the creator, that person has to be cited as originator, you must ask written permission to reproduce, all monies go to originator, you can not improve/change the original. In 1998 the "Sonny Bono" copyright term extension" passed and now is an additional 20 years. The Wikipedia article explained the increases and also coined it the "Micky Mouse" Act. Mary Bono thought the rights should go on forever, Jack Valenti said forever minus 1 day. It is a long time before a copyrighted item goes into public domain.

Knowing if a piece of media is covered by a Creative Commons license and the terms of the coverage tells me as a Library Media Teacher how that piece may be used for educational purposes. I find that teachers do not know copyright and will do as they please. As LMTs we must raise the bar for our staff and our students and educate all of them in the rules of copyright and fair use. As this is one of our mandates from Information Power, it is important that we are conversant and knowledgeable regarding the rules. In this area we are the curriculum leaders. Personally, if you are going to talk the talk, you also need to walk the walk.