links | licensing
with the advent of the internet, protecting creative work (music, photographs, etc.) has become big news and big legal business, often drowning out and suffocating new creativity and hindering ventures into finding new ways to share creative works. creators of new works have a right to have their work protected from use by others (copyrights) and to set the terms of any subsequent use of their work (licenses), including allowing others to use their creations, but (optionally) place limits on that use. my about page has more information on how i apply these principles to my own work, but here are links to some alternatives.
any discussion about licensing must also make reference to copyrights.
a
copyright gives the author of an original work sole exclusive right to that work. in
canada this right exists in any work once it is completed, without formal registration and lasts fifty years from the author's death.
the International Berne Convention (1886) for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works states that works are protected as soon as a work is created, without any formality in all countries. this means that
international copyright protection is automatic.
the general public license is a free,
copyleft license for software and other kinds of works. it is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program and to make sure it remains
free software for all its users.
the
creative commons provides free, easy-to-use legal and technical tools that give everyone a simple, standardized way to pre-clear copyrights to their creative work.
CC licenses let people easily change their copyright terms from the default, restrictive 'all rights reserved' to a more flexible 'some rights reserved.'