Week 9: Thing 23: Copyrights

I find it very interesting that the California Librarians included a segment on Copyrights on their last Thing #23 entry. While reading the blog entry one link led to another link and off I went into the world of some very controversial topics like Yoko Ono's lawsuit against Ben Stein's new movie Expelled. After taking a few steps into the outer fringes of this copyright topic...I stopped and thought about how I got there which led me back to the resources that were chosen to represent this topic. Take for instance the YouTube Copyright video on the Thing #23 blog entry. I guess I missed the point in the beginning because all I could think of was how did the creators of this video get away with posting this on the web...they had the FBI warning....they used the animated Disney logo... claimed no collaboration with Disney....and they remixed who knows how many Disney films. I was even debating if they exceeded the 10% rule. A great intro to Creative Commons! perhaps?

I can see that this discussion is pertinent at the end of this program if it addresses the copyrights of what we create with these tools. (That is if we have any left...I will admit I am one of the masses that just clicks on the "accept" button and rarely reads the contract.) Although it shouldn't be, it is surprising to me that someone is doing something to protect such rights, I assumed from the first time I added anything to the net in the very early 90s that if I put it on the net it was no longer mine. Creative Commons is a great idea not only because it makes clear to the reader/user just what the author/creator is allowing you to do with their work but it also supports the vision of collaboration and the advancement of thoughts, ideas and media in the Web 2.0 environment!

What I still wonder about is the traditional copyright discussion that was not initiated. Like for instance when I decided it would be a good idea to create Avatars for each day of my library orientation class unit. I added the graphics to my wiki and then started to wonder about acceptable use which prompted me to explore whether Yahoo allowed such use. I found a page on the Yahoo site protecting the use of its images including avatars (with a detailed usage permission form). In my travels I also found another Yahoo webpage providing a wide variety of acceptable uses for these cute graphics. When I went back and viewed some of the Yahoo avatars in the Web 2.0 blogs I found that some had the yahoo webaddress at the bottom and others did not (including mine). This led me to also think about why it was so easy to imbed a YouTube video right into our webpages or blogs. Is the YouTube logo on the bottom of the screen enough.....or must we still cite the source? It seems like these web tools have made it somewhat foggy or too easy to forget about our traditional way of crediting the works of others. (i.e Flickr ...image generators).

I'll admit it .....I am somewhat confused and somewhat surprised that it was so easy for me to forget about my traditional methods of crediting sources used. ...I have a lot more to learn about this topic....another life long learning topic.