SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) legislation is the big topic of the Internet right now. Totally understandable as it will have significant impact on what the future of Internet becomes. The whole Piracy topic can be a bit confusing and complex (CLICK HERE to see various articles about SOPA) but ultimately it deals a lot with Copyright law as applied to the Internet.
Reading about SOPA helped me learn about something I was not aware existed, the ”Creative Commons License“. The group’s mission statement says: “Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.” Essentially they’ve developed tools that allow artists, authors and creators multiple levels of copyright restriction regarding their content on the Internet. Instead of applying the single traditional Copyright standard of “All Rights Reserved” – these tools give everyone (from individual creators to companies and institutions) a simple, standardized way to retain their copyright while allowing certain uses of their work — a “some rights reserved” approach to copyright.
The Info-graphic viewable by clicking on the image to the right contains very useful “How To” steps for Google search users. This creative work was established and copyrighted by a university using this “some rights reserved” approach.
Of the 6 different licenses available it is being shared under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, the details of which are explained here. So while the future of Copyright law regarding Internet content continues to be determined by politicians, click on the image to access a very useful Info-graphic about “Getting More Out Of Google”. And after you seek out the details via Google – be sure to contact your elected representative and express your opinion of how the Internet should be governed.
