Social Ch@nge

When my Amnesty International group decided to run a slide show in our local cafe commemorating human rights, they started brainstorming where we could get content for the show. Obviously, a great way to get graphics, audio and video for any non-profit outreach you do is to make it yourself.

But what if you’re pressed for time, or you don’t have a graphics volunteer? Since your non-profit would never ever pirate an image from the web, it’s time for you to get acquainted with Creative Commons.

Everything you create automatically has a copyright on it, and all rights are reserved - you have to contact the author for permission any time you want to reproduce their work.

But what if you don’t want to reserve all your rights - you’d like people to be able to use your music on a radio show, or your photos in their blog?

Non-profit Creative Commons lets you customize your copyright, so that only some rights are reserved. This means certain users can freely use your material, even to create something new, without having to request your permission.  CC does this through providing you with a customized license that you can tag on to your work, letting people know exactly what they can and can’t do with your work. Users like me can use your work, as long as we abide by the rules you’ve set out in your license. For example, the Flickr users who posted the original photos we used in this post used a Creative Commons attribution 2.0 generic license, and we have to abide by its rules. But that’s it. No back and forth, no emailing for permission, no worries.

The easiest way to search what’s CC licensed on the web is to flip the drop-down menu on the upper right hand corner of your FireFox browser (that’s your search engines toolbar). Choose the CC icon and surf away.

Spark, the CBC radio show about internet and society, is a big proponent of CC content, and this archived show is an excellent starting place for anyone looking for inspiration on what CC could mean for them and their work. Now get creative!

Original Photos: renaissance chambara and tao_zhyn, both licensed under CCA 2.0 G