Week 7's lecture on Creative Commons and Open Source Software, was a follow on from week 6 and the discussion of ownership rights over the internet.
The main idea of the lecture was to research the variations of Copyright laws on the Internet and to gain an understanding of these laws in relation to material that individuals view, manipulate and create specifically for the web.
Many people have heard of Copyright laws and regulations, but what about other licences that allow the general public access and manipulate content freely. Yes, there are such laws and these are known as Creative Commons and Public Domain licences.
Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation that, 'makes available standard licences and tools that enable creators to make their works available on more flexible terms.'
Initially this means that any work on the internet that lies under a creative commons licence, in certain terms, can have its content used again, manipulated or expanded by others. In other words, compared to a Copyright Licence a Creative Commons licence has 'some rights reserved' as opposed to 'All rights reserved'
Following the Creative Commons licensing is Public Domain content. Content that comes under Public Domain is not covered by intellectual property rights, which means its content can be manipulated and recreated without breaking or coming under any laws or reserved rights.
Where did Creative Commons initiate?
Creative Commons and the relaxing of copyright laws came from the Free Software Movement.
The Free Software Movement is a movement that was created by Richard M Stallman, which allows individuals the freedom to copy, study and improve software.
Stallman founder and creator of the Free Software Foundation had a goal and this goal was to provide 'A completely free Unix-like operating system made totally from free software.'
This free software was allowed for sharing and changing of software codes in order to improve program reliability and succ
essfulness. Thus, open source programs were born.
In addition, this movement and creation of open source software comes under 3 principles.
0: The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
1: The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs.
2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour.
3: The freedom to improve the program, and to release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
What is Open Source Software?Open Source Software is initially 'free software'.
Open Source software is usually created due to lack of interest or successfulness of propriety software programs. For example Internet Explorer is a propriety software program, it's Open Source software competitor is Firefox, a free internet browsing system.
The difference between Open Source Software and Propriety software is that Propriety software's contents is disclosed and not available to the general public. Whereas, Open Source Software is openly available to the public and unlike Propriety software the source code is freely shared.
In conclusion, without the introduction of Creative Common licensing and Open Source Software, the ability for individuals to have a choice, to share and to collaborate would not exist in the world of the World Wide Web and computer based age we live in, in society today.
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