Creative Commons Organization

            I was practicing my ukulele one day and decided to experiment with songs. I chose the notes and lyrics of a song by The Fray, and used it with the beat of a song by Lil’ Wayne. I thought to myself, am I allowed to post this on youtube? Technically it is two songs that I did not create, but I did create the mash up. The organization Creative Commons (CC) allows this to be possible. I do not have to try and gain copyrights for me just simply playing around on my instrument. CC understands this concept and is dedicated to allowing a range of creative works available for other to build on legally and to share.

            
              A board of directors that are leaders, experts, technologists, investors and so forth currently leads CC. These members contribute greatly and creatively to our society. In 2002 CC released its first set of copyright licenses free to the public. Over the years CC and its licenses have expanded and have been ported to over 50 jurisdictions.
CC was founded in 2001 with the support of the Center for the Public Domain (Creative Commons). The Public Domain is a center defining the lines of intellectual property rights (Public Domain)

            The CC organization seems like a perfect solution for artists, but there are limitations.  When dealing with art there is no kind that is the same. Each piece has its own virtue, idea, and message. Therefore when deciding it a piece of art is crossing the lines of copyrighting, it is sort of grey. There is no definite law as to what is illegal and what is legal. According to the CC website the problem lies in OER, which stands for open educational resources (Creative Commons). This explores ways of dealing with problems and trade-offs in relying on copyright exceptions and limitations. It does not provide concrete solutions to the problem as of now.

            There is a compiled list of current applications that use Creative Common licenses online. The types of applications include photography, graphics, blogs, web, authoring tools, and mobile. Each application is a software package and we application that people use everyday. What intrigued me the most was under mobile applications it says iPhone 4 cases. iPhone is already a strong brand that is a copyright of their own, but when an e-store is showcasing iPhone accessories, then it needs the help of CC.

SoundCloud is an application that I would like to further explore. SoundCloud is a website used to upload and share music for free. I chose this copyright because I use SoundCloud every day. I go on music websites or Facebook, click an artist or song I like, and it almost every time leads me to their SoundCloud page. Knowing that SoundCloud is a part of CC, I appreciate the work of this organization much more (Creative Commons). If I weren’t able to download music for free then I would be lost. CC provides not only the creative rights to artists, but also the freedom to spread those rights.

Works Cited

"Creative Commons." Creative Commons. Creative Commons. Web. 1 Dec 2013. <http://creativecommons.org>.

"Center for the Study of the Public Domain." Duke Law. Duke Law. Web. 1 Dec 2013. <http://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/>.