What is Creative Commons?

Welcome to another informative article
By Sharon Housley

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that allows
artists, authors, publishers and musicians the option of
creating and defining a flexible copyright for their
creative works. Creative Commons was officially launched in
2001 by a group of intellectual property experts, lawyers
and web publishers. Creative Commons licenses cover art,
music, and writing, but is not designed for software.

A Creative Commons license allows creators to place
conditions on their copyrights. Traditionally, copyrights
restrict the rights of others from modifying or distributing
copywritten works. Creative Commons licenses offer
flexibility by allowing the creator (copyright holder) the
ability to choose what limitations they want in place with
respect to specific copywritten works.

How Creative Commons Works
Creators login to the Creative Commons System and select
what restrictions, attributes or modifications they wish to
assign to their creative works.

The Creative Commons site will then produce a Creative
Commons license for the creative works expressed in three
ways. Creative Commons will provide: a commons deed clearly
stating the licensing rights in plain English, legal code
for the license, and a digital license code. The digital
code can be embedded into websites and search engines. Yahoo
has a new Creative Commons search which identifies works and
recognizes any licensing conditions. Searches can be
conducted for different types of licenses. The Creative
Commons site also provides a website icon that clearly marks
the creative work as Some Rights Reserved or No Rights
Reserved.

A variety of license options exist for the copyright holder.
Assigning a Creative Commons license does not mean that the
copyright holder is relinquishing rights to a piece of art,
it merely means some conditions could be placed on the use
of creative works.

Examples of Creative Common License Options
A Creative Commons license enables copyright holders to
grant some of their rights to the public while retaining
other rights.

NonCommercial - A non-commercial license lets others copy,
distribute, perform creative works and derivative works, but
only for noncommercial purposes (anyone using the creative
works cannot profit from it).

ShareAlike - A ShareAlike license allows others to
distribute derivative works under a license identical to the
one held by the original copyright holder.

NoDerivative Works - A NoDerivative Works clause allows
others to copy, distribute, display and perform the exact
copywritten works and no derivative works can be created.

Attribution - An Attribution license means creative works
can be copied, distributed, displayed, or performed and
derivative works can be created, provided that appropriate
credit to the original copyright holder is given.

Many artists feel that a Creative Commons license increases
their exposure but still allows them to retain their rights
to the creative works, striking a balance between ownership,
credit and use. Ultimately, a Creative Commons license
enables copyright holders to grant some of their rights to
the public while retaining others; with Creative Commons the
copyright holder retains the flexibility to control the
rights to their creative works.

About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll
http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing,
publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon
manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a
wireless text messaging software company.

Corporate Internet Radio - Not Just for Listeners Anymore

Welcome back !

First there was radio, and we listened with
our ears. Then there was television and we watched with our
eyes. Computers allowed us to learn with our hands. Today,
through Corporate Internet Radio, we have the best of all those
worlds combined, leading to a 400% increase in user information
retention.

The Corporate Internet Radio toolset combines the tools and
experience of two communication-focused companies with
templates and a customizable process. MentorU.com, a company
that focuses on rapid content delivery from business experts,
teamed up with wsRadio.com, who produces and broadcasts
Internet radio shows.

The partnership developed as MentorU started broadcasting a
weekly Internet radio show through wsRadio.com, called
"Business Best Practices Radio" in September of 2004 .The show
featured Jesse Wacht, co-founder of MentorU, as host and Howard
Putnam, former CEO of Southwest Airlines when it was a startup,
as the contributing editor and monthly Q&A Show participant.

Said MentorU's Wacht, "Since 1999, our experience in
producing web conferences and rapid online learning content,
with 40 other experts like Howard Putnam, kept us focusing on
the message and the messenger. In 2001 we expanded that to
transmitting industry and internal content for companies within
elearning centers. The last two pieces were our rapid
multimedia authoring tool combined with the wsRadio show."

Still airing every Friday at 8am PT, "Business Best Practices"
was the first show to combine online lessons with archived
interviews as a more time effective and "recipient controlled"
way to acquire knowledge. Chris Murch, President of wsRadio,
commented " The concise and targeted online lessons that
Business Best Practice Radio was providing its' listeners
before and after the show via its' web site, created a new
value proposition for a radio show segment.

This led us to nine months of weekly discussions about how a
private radio show could be used to more effectively replace
many current uses of more expensive but less effective
conference calls and web conferences, as well as the value of
enhancing a company's current training, marketing and
internal/external relationship development strategy."

Said Murch, "Professionally produced radio interview
segments always have to be short, concise and targeted, so as I
listened to the communication of knowledge objectives Business
Best Practice was trying to help clients fulfill, the potential
to use a private radio show in a new way became obvious. But
it's really the CEO feedback on the user friendliness, impact
and digestibility of our new communication delivery approach
plus Howard's input that helped us finalize a simple package
and plan for rapid implementation".


Jesse Wacht, the "Bottom-line Guy" of http://www.MentorU.com
and http://www.RapidKnowledgeDelivery.com, where you can see
and hear how at http://www.RapidKnowledgeDelivery.com/overviewA

jwacht@mentoru.com