As students growing up in the digital era, we are all content creators. From posting blogs, to taking pictures and videos, to programming applications, we are making work that is by default protected by a full copyright. Now on the flip side of that, I’m sure every almost every teacher we’ve ever had has told us, “Don’t use content from the web, you don’t own the copyright.” What if I told you there is a place to find all kinds of free usable content and a way for you to share your work with the masses as well?
Creative Commons
Enter Creative Commons, a copyright licensing system that seeks to help people share and remix content on the Internet. There are multiple types of Creative Commons licenses that deal mainly with: giving attribution to the original copyright holders, deciding if you can modify the original work, choosing if derivative works also fall under a Creative Commons license, and whether you can charge for the content you remix.
This short video talks about what Creative Commons is:
By licensing your content out to people for free, you are donating to the commons. You act as a resource in your art and you generate some valuable name recognition. As a student, just getting your name out there is highly important to breaking in to your field.
Some Examples of Creative Commons Resources:
- Wikipedia - You probably knew that all of the content on the Wikimedia sites are open to be remixed for free. (Unless explicitly stated differently.) As long as the work is cited you can use of any of the content displayed in Wikipedia (Although your teachers will probably still not approve.)
- MIT’s OpenCourseWare – A Creative Common’s database of full MIT courses that are available 100 percent freely online. A great way to pick up a new skill in your off time.
- Flickr – Flickr gives artists the ability to Creative Commons license their pictures. By using the Creative Commons search bar you have access to a huge database of free pictures.
- Soundcloud – Another database, this time of user generated audio content. By searching the creative commons audio database you can find plenty of songs to use as a soundtrack for a movie or as samples in your next remix song.
- TED Talks – The global conferences that gather the smartest people in the world to look at social, economic, and environmental problems are Creative Commons licensed. That means that any video posted can be reposted and remixed to create hilarious mashups.
Open-source Licenses
So now that we all know about Creative Commons, let’s look at the software side of open development. Open-source software was a license formalized by Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation in 1983. For a software to be considered open-source the source code must be released to the entire public, there can be no restrictions in how that source code is available, and any modifications made to the original source code must also be licensed as an open-source software.
By having access to the source code, programmers can learn directly from the code on how the program was put together, patch security vulnerabilities as a community (rather than wait for a company to take forever for a crappy update), and create forks from the original program to make entirely new applications. (Such as with Linux.)
By using the open-source license on the works that your program, it will be easier to make the program better through user interaction. You can leverage the hive mind that is the Internet and upload the project to Sourceforge.net and hopefully make your one man show an army of programmers.
Open-source software at it’s finest:
- Firefox – The Mozilla Foundation’s open-source browser Firefox was one of the first challengers to Internet Explorer, after the First Browser Wars of 1998. Firefox offers add-ons developed by the community that expand the browser in ways that I never thought we’re possible. (Look at the citation manager Zotero for proof of the power of add-ons.)
- Miro – Miro is a open-source internet television program that downloads audio and video podcasts, as well as torrent files. The program is managed by the Participatory Culture Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to creating a more open video content environment. A great side project is the Miro Video Converter, an open-source free video format converter.
- Thunderbird – Thunderbird is another Mozilla Foundation project that acts as cross-platform email client. The addition of add-ons, great Gmail and Google Calendar support, and the ease of making complicated filters sets this mail client apart.
- Pidgin – Pidgin is a great example of using open-source software to simplify a complicated task. Pidgin combines all of your various chat programs (Facebook, AIM, etc.) and presents them all in a user interface.
- Chromium – Chromium is the open-source variant of the Chrome browser made by Google. Chromium includes all of the latest versions of the software and some experimental features. The Canary build of Chromium gives you access to all experimental features, while also doing nightly updates.
- Linux – The granddaddy of the open software initiative is also one of the most interesting. Linux has about 300 different active distributions, or slight variations on the original Linux source code.
Through Creative Commons and open-source licenses people have the power to make an alternative copyright system, one that breeds a true sharing economy. As a student you can use these resources for your projects and also contribute your content to the masses
Further Reading:
Benjamin Negely - Yogi Barr-a
Creative Commons Homepage - CreativeCommons.org
Students for FreeCulture - FreeCulture.org
Geekin’ It is a blog that focuses on technology and geek culture for ASU students. Geekin’ It covers how to use technology to your advantage as an ASU student, as well as comic books, videogames, electrical engineering and geek culture in general. The writer loves Mass Effect 2, Scott Pilgrim, 8-bit music, creative writing and learning how to use an Arduino board. You can follow him on Twitter here.
