The Creative Commons

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If applications like iTunes present themselves as the ‘proverbial coffin’ for the music industry, Creative Commons provides the nails to hammer it shut – and change the way we produce content forever – just like Wikipedia re-shaped the encyclopedia.

Creative Commons licenses allows you to publish your work online, while letting others know exactly what they can, and can’t do with your work. You keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit.

CC is already having an absolutely enormous impact on the creative production environment, for instead of having to use library music – or processed tracks offered up in Garage Band or Sound Track Pro – video production houses are now be able to access a whole world of talent.

CC applies to almost everything. It strives to provide undiscovered talent with a global stage – via the Internet. How will it apply to your marketing collateral?

The photographs you commission tomorrow; the words you have your copywriters draft; the video content your production companies deliver – is it Creative Commons?

What’s the impact?

Guest Author: Brett Clements from Platinum HD

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11 Comments

  • Peter Ricci
    Posted July 30, 2010 at 11:36 am 0Likes

    Great article! Agents should publish all of their materials using one of these licenses. Would also give them a clear path to take legal action against any other agents copying their photos, videos or copy. We know from previous articles that this has been a problem in the past.

  • Peter Ricci
    Posted July 30, 2010 at 11:38 am 0Likes

    Here is a good article on the subject on Wikipedia which covers basic licenses.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons_licenses

  • Greg Vincent
    Posted July 30, 2010 at 12:00 pm 0Likes

    Creating good content will always be critical but R&D (Rip Off & Duplicate) seems to be more & more common place these days.

    As per the Wikipedia link under attribution PLUS with so much content now being shared across the web it’s important to…

    # Cite the author’s name, screen name, or user ID, etc. If the work is being published on the Internet, it is nice to link that name to the person’s profile page, if such a page exists.

  • Michael
    Posted July 30, 2010 at 12:08 pm 0Likes

    Using somebody elses photos is quite a problem. It is very easy to copy photo from internet.

    I have never thought about using creative commons for real estate. Idea worth of exploring.

  • Greg Vincent
    Posted July 30, 2010 at 1:37 pm 0Likes

    Timely post Brett. It’s interesting to see that YouTube Has Just Increased its Video Time Limit to 15 Minutes.

    As per this article on Mashable http://mashable.com/2010/07/29/youtube-15-minutes/ they’re questioning ” So why add the extra five-spot now? Well, on the YouTube blog, the video-sharing site explains that it

  • Laurel L. Russwurm
    Posted July 30, 2010 at 3:55 pm 0Likes

    It’s easy to search either Flickr or Google Images (and probably most other search options too) using “advanced search” so that you can find images licensed through Creative Commons for reuse. Wikimedia Commons also has a lot of usable images. If I don’t have time to photograph or manufacture my own images to illustrate my blogs that’s what I’ll use. My noncommercial blogs are creative commons licensed as well.

    I must say I hadn’t thought of using CC music for soundtracks before. I’m planning a book trailer for my novel so that’s a particularly interesting idea.

    CC licenses are wonderful because they leave creators free to create.

  • Nick
    Posted July 30, 2010 at 4:00 pm 0Likes

    CC is great, although it doesnt actually stop anyone from ripping off your stuff.
    A article from yesterday about someone who’s photos were copied for commercial purposes when the licence was non-commercial only: http://ask.slashdot.org/story/10/07/28/1744245/What-To-Do-About-CC-License-Violations

    I’m not sure how it could be applied to real estate effectively.
    Generally its great for generic stock photography which can be re-used easily. Real estate photography is generally very specific for one house in particular and there wouldnt be too much point in re-using it elsewhere.

  • PaulD
    Posted July 31, 2010 at 10:55 am 0Likes

    Obviously, copyright means nothing to people like RP Data. I noticed recently a floorplan that we created a couple of years ago (with our watermark on it) appear on another agents website, for a subsequent sale of the property. It also contained (this time) the RP Data watermark as well. Any comments on that situation ??

    When I say “we created” I mean exactly that. There was no third party who drew up the floor plan – it was done in house.

  • real estate website design
    Posted August 3, 2010 at 9:12 am 0Likes

    For anyone concerned about their content being ripped off across the web (images are a little trickier, but try using watermarks) then take a look at Google Alerts. Setting an alert for a particular phrase allows Google to notify you immediately of any content that is published online – and its sent directly to your inbox daily. I use it for my own stuff, and its helped me find (and take down) a lot of blackhat sites that rip off or steal content.

    http://www.google.com/alerts

  • PaulD
    Posted August 3, 2010 at 10:27 am 0Likes

    Yes, I already use Alerts, and it is a good service. It is interesting to see where and when advertising appears, and when people use your office name for tags in private advertising.

  • Greg Vincent
    Posted August 3, 2010 at 1:54 pm 0Likes

    Alerts is also very good for managing your online reputation.

    On the topic of copying content and having 2 students in the family, it’s interesting to see in this article ‘As Internet influence has grown, students less aware of plagiarizing’ and ‘the number who believed that copying from the Web constitutes “serious cheating” is declining.’

    http://www.cleveland.com/nation/index.ssf/2010/08/as_internet_influence_has_grow.html

    On the other hand, the source of the original content is becoming so important that some Journalists are now tweeting their scoops onto Twitter so that the news gets time & date stamped so they get credited with the story rather than waiting for the article to come out in full just in case they miss out on being identified as the initial source. (Scooping an important news story can have a huge impact on the traffic to their site and the back links they get.)

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