An assignment this week was to spend time thinking about copyright and the initiative of Creative Commons. Here are my thoughts:
Something really interesting that I read about from all of the articles was the fair use act. I really liked how they discussed what exactly is “fair” and the ethical meaning behind it in this article. Since not everyone has the same meaning of “fair” this is a pretty hard concept to understand. It takes a lot of open-mindedness and understanding of someone else’s views. There’s a lot of disconnect between what’s fair use and what’s not. With all of that being said, I think the idea of “fair use” is a really great idea. I view it as free publicity for the owner of the copyright. This is great because it allows for people to get their creative work out to the public. What’s the use of creating something if you’re the only one who’s going to see it?
According to this site, “Creative Commons allows copyright owners to release some of those rights while retaining others, with the goal of increasing access to and sharing of intellectual property.” I took this statement as pretty much meaning that you choose exactly how you want your work to be used or manipulated by others. The only thing that I have against this concept is the tiny details that I’m sure a lot of people get very tied up in. Kind of back to the idea in “fair use” when it comes to the debate of what “fair” really means.
For myself, I don’t really mind if people use my creative work or not. Of course like anyone else, I would want credit for my work, but I only want to create things if they can be shared with others. Also, if I can inspire someone to create anything based off of something I made, it would be 100% worth it to share my work with the public.