The power of Creative Commons
A few months ago I posted a del.icio.us link to the Norwegian Wikipedia entry on Friday. In addition to all the helpful information about the last day of the five day workweek is a little information is a photograph of a typical Shabbat dinner. That photograph of Erica, Julie, Rob, and my dad enjoying a Shabbat dinner in our D.C. apartment got to Wikipedia by way of a search for Creative Commons material. The reproduction of this photo is possible because I, like an increasing number of media creators, mark my productions with the appropriate permission.
All of my flickr photos, for example, are marked with the Attribution-ShareAlike license provided by Creative Commons. This tells anyone who comes across my images that they may do whatever they like with them as long as they attribute the work to me and allow others to use the image with the same restrictions.
This might sounds like a silly thing to do with my flickr pictures. Most of them, after all, are of places I've been and my friends. But because I apply this license to them. Because I choose to allow the community to do with my images what they like as long I get credit, I get the pleasure of running across my pictures in the strangest places. I've even gotten a few e-mails asking if people can use an image in a small publication or on a CD cover and I always say yes.
Next time you log into flickr, change your default setting from copyright to the Creative Commons license of your choice. You'll be surprised to see who likes your photos.
Here are some more places I've discovered my images in the wild:
- Londonist Peace Mom
- Dingoes Attack A day without immigrants
- Made You Look Stale, Stale, Stale Corporate Image
- field notes We are workers, not criminals
- ADDED DCist It's D.C. Pride Week! All Experimentation Will Be Forgiven
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2 Comments
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Who is this guy?
Sam, thanks for sharing!
The Wonder Bread Truck photo was the "1000 word" image I needed for my blog post.
I used the image again (with attribution of course) in my weekly ezine Getting to the Point in an expanded version of the blog post. Several of my readers wrote that they loved it.
Keep clicking the camera and the keyboard.
Doug Emerson
Hi Sam,
the Doug Emerson who commented needs more advice on how to use CC licences.
I mark my photos on flickr with Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike, but he stole one for a commercial website and email shot (nearly 1000 emails) anyway.
Nick