Why I share my content

June 11th, 2009 by sridgway in copyright, creative commons

video by sridgway

I use a photo sharing service called flickr to upload and share my photographs and some videos with my online networks. Like many web2.0 media sharing services you can ascribe a creative commons licence to the content so that anyone can use your material so long as they follow the conditions set out in the licence. I have chosen to use Attribution 2.0 Generic which allows others to use the content so long as they attribute me when it is reproduced. This is a great way of adding to the global repository of free content available to content producers. For example I frequently use CC images from flickr on blog posts in myLearning with attribution to the author.It’s a great source of content for educators. The default licence on flickr is however All Rights Reserved which does not allow anyone to use the images in this fashion, it’s a simple process to change the default and I encourage other flickr users to check their licence settings and consider changing it to CC

I was inspired to write this post as I received a comment on one of my videos (displayed above) from the National Science Foundation who have used the video as part of an educational video on how snakes move without legs. You can see the final result on theirwebsite here

I was thrilled to see a video I took as a holiday snapshot used in an educational resource and has reaffirmed my commitment to sharing.

One comment I would make is that the attribution for the source content is not clear on the final video, while they made a comment to this effect on the source video in flickr, under the licence agreement it should be clearly stated at the distibution point of the remixed content. A small quibble but attribution is something often forgotten of not made clear enough.

If you would like to know more about the benefits of creative commons licencing to educators watch this great resource.