Creative Commons? What is that you say?

The keynote speaker was probably the most articulate and informed one I've ever attended throughout my career: Mr. John Wilbank is the co-founder of a company called "Creative Commons (cc)." John's presentation was lively and information-packed as well as quite provocative. Creative commons? Of course your head is trying to wrap around the concept and I'm sure you may have a number of potential operational definitions. This concept is one that is quite foreign to academe - the sharing of materials and intellectual property without a copyright -- all rights reserved. John noted that: "...copyright law wasn't written for a paperless interconnected world." Believe it or not, MIT has creative commons licenses and they haven't lost any ground in terms of scholarly reputation or productivity. How many times have you seen students you may have thought to be plaigiarizing on-line yet readily accessible materials and found it a "grey" area yourself? Now, don't get too rattled quite yet. Actually, John and his colleagues as well as MERLOT have collaborated on this and it is an ingenious method of providing attribution while sharing learning objects to better educational standards world-wide. Under creative commons licensure, one could actually say "some rights reserved." Wouldn't it be great if you could use materials being taught with at say Harvard, Purdue, University of Michigan or California State? Of course it would. How might I access these materials and include them in an on-line or in my real-time lecture? Well with the advent and wider acceptance of a "Creative Commons" we all can and will be able to freely share our intellectual property while retaining ownership and authorship rights. John presented a variety of sharing options that still maintained the integrity of the material owneship/authorship. These methods of creative commons are actually bonafide licenses for use and have all the legal mumbo jumbo necessary to be highly accepted and totally binding and lawful: Attribution: free to share, copy and distribute or remix as long as one clearly indicates who the author is. You're not giving up your copyright -- you're simply enabled to legally refine it. Please enjoy these couple of sites and watch the video I've embedded here. It really is the wave of the future and it is likely time we start to ride it. Look to www.creativecommons.org for more information. YOU TUBE VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DKm96Ftfko