Legal tips 2. The legal use of Internet other people’s stuff .Creative Commons
Tuesday, November 11, 2008 @ 7:16 AM
Ours vs. mine
Every text, song, picture or video…maker has ownership’s rights. If an author does not explicitly say anything on the contrary, ownership’s rights are his during all his life and for 70 years after his death.
This means that just the author or his heirs can copy, reproduce, interpret, make by-works or exhibit it publicly. If someone wants to use them, needs to ask for permission. The only exception is the right to quote.
A creator can also renounce his copyrights and transmit them to public domain.
Another possibility are the “copy left” or the “creative commons” (named under abbreviations: CC). They can be copy and distributed by other users with the marginal notes decided by the author.
These are the possible limits to copy and distribution of those works:
- 'Attribution': it requires quoting the author of the work.
- 'Non-commercial': it requires the copier to not obtain any financial benefit with it.
- 'No Derivative Works': It cannot be used in a derivative version.
- 'Share Alike': all derived Works needs to be distributed with same license as original.
These can be mixed among them.
For instance Flickr.com has an image finder who will obtain just those ones with CC licence.
Stock.xchng also allows the storage of open-use licensed pictures.
Social Nets like MySpace has lots of music with CC license.
For the searching of these CC works you can use Firefox or Chrome under "predetermined search". Always paying attention to the limits established by the author and specified under the icons of Creative Commons.