Posts tagged Copyright
Egypt, Antiquities and Copyright
Dec 30th
Mickey Mouse Copyright Laws. Based on a photo (cc) Liber.
One of the advantages of being slow in writing is that you can look at what everyone else is saying about something. Often people will have thought about the same problem and already anticipated problems in your own line of thought, so you can avoid making a fool of yourself. Other times it’s a surprise, and this is one of those times. News from the BBC is that Egypt is ‘to copyright antiquities‘.
Egypt’s MPs are expected to pass a law requiring royalties be paid whenever copies are made of museum pieces or ancient monuments such as the pyramids and this law will apply around the world.
To a greater or lesser extent other bloggers think they can’t do this and they can’t enforce it. In contrast I think they can and they can. This isn’t just my very basic understanding of law. It’s also the fact that museums in the West have been doing this, more or less, for years. Below is where I make a fool of myself. (more…)
Rethinking Creative Commons
Jan 26th
I remember seeing this article on the Stoa suggesting that –NC was a bad thing for Creative Commons and stifled the use of photos. I remember thinking to have a look, but never got round to it. Now I’ve sat down and read through the whole thing.
I’ll be honest I don’t understand Creative Commons. I realise it’s a way of licencing material without losing all rights to it, but when I’m given an array of modifiers, –BY, –SA, -ND and so on I just went for what I thought was the safest option. It’s always easier to turn a no into a yes than the other way round. My photos, where possible, have been licenced as BY/NC/SA. All the licences have the attribution clause, so BY is a no-brainer.
SA is share-alike. I could have chosen ND, no derivatives, but that seemed needlessly restrictive. I could forsee that people might want to re-use the photos by adding labels or highlighting features. I also chose NC for non-Commercial. The reason for this was that I didn’t want someone to lift my work and sell it for profit. It’s not likely, but it’s the principle.
Erik Möller has four points why this NC clause is a More >
