ICT for Peacebuilding (ICT4Peace)

Exploring the use of information and communications technology for conflict transformation

Creative Commons for ICT4Peace, Groundviews and VOR Radio

CC

Inspired by the Creative Commons and the innovation & freedom it brings to the oftentimes ossified realm intellectual property rights, I was very interested to learn of their new Version 3.0 licenses.

VOR Radio, which was launched with a Creative Commons 2.5 license, will be shortly upgraded to a 3.0 license.

I’ve also made this blog, and Groundviews, now come under (different) Creative Commons licenses. Because of the nature of Groundviews, I began with a license that I hope I can with the passage of time and the gradual acquiescence of the content providers (authors), change into a more open license. This blog on the other hand allows for the re-use of content, so long as it with full attribution.

As it noted on their website:

Too often the debate over creative control tends to the extremes. At one pole is a vision of total control — a world in which every last use of a work is regulated and in which “all rights reserved” (and then some) is the norm. At the other end is a vision of anarchy — a world in which creators enjoy a wide range of freedom but are left vulnerable to exploitation. Balance, compromise, and moderation — once the driving forces of a copyright system that valued innovation and protection equally — have become endangered species.

Creative Commons is working to revive them. We use private rights to create public goods: creative works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and open-source movements, our ends are cooperative and community-minded, but our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them — to declare “some rights reserved.”

Thus, a single goal unites Creative Commons’ current and future projects: to build a layer of reasonable, flexible copyright in the face of increasingly restrictive default rules.

Here’s an interesting video that explains it further.

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