Does Creative Commons make us more creative?

The photo accompanying this article has nothing to do with the actual written content. Sort of. It’s a photo that I came across on Flickr, taken by Ben Fredericson, and being a sucker for bokeh I saved it on my computer.

The photo was posted on Flickr under a Creative Commons license, allowing others to use it pretty much any way they want to, as long as they credited the photographer.

This is possibly the simplest, and most common, way in which Creative Commons comes into play on a daily basis on the Internet. And that is just the tip of the iceberg.

What is Creative Commons?

A lot of people probably don’t know that Creative Commons is actually a non-profit organisation. Based in Mountain View, California, Creative Commons was founded in 2001 by  Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred, in an effort to make creative works available for re-use. Creative Commons’ slogan sums it up perfectly, “Share, Remix, Reuse — Legally.”

Creative Commons encourages artists and creators to share their work under a Creative Commons License. This is where it starts to get a bit complicated because there are several permutations to the license, and you have to understand each one before deciding which one is right for you.

Creative Commons Licenses

There are six main types of Creative Commons Licenses.

Attribution: This license gives over the most rights possible. It lets your share, remix, and build upon the work, as long as the rights holder is credited. You can also use the work for commercial purposes.

Attribution Share Alike: This license is identical to Attribution, with the added condition of licensing your new work under the same terms. This is the license used by Wikipedia.

Attribution No Derivatives: This license allows you to share the work, both commercially and non-commercially as long as it is unchanged and is credited.

Attribution Non-Commercial: This license allows you to remix, tweak and build upon the work, as long as it is credited and is for non-commercial purposes. The new work does not have to be licensed in the same way.

Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike: This license is identical to Attribution Non-Commercial with the added condition of licensing new creations under the same terms.

Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives: The most restrictive license allows you to share the work, as long as it is credited, non-commercial, and is not altered in any way.

It should also be understood, before choosing to use a Creative Commons license – it is non-revocable. If you choose to allow people to share your work, and decide at a later point in time to remove the license, any copies that exist in the wild, will stay right there. You can’t stop people from using them. Which in reality means that even under the most restrictive license, once your image is out there, it’s out there for good. Removing the license only stops users from downloading your copy.

What is the difference between Creative Commons and Public Domain?

Public Domain and Creative Commons are not to be confused with one another. Works in the Public Domain are free to use without any restrictions. Shakespeare and Beethoven’s works are an example of literature and music which exist in the public domain. An creative copyrighted work enters the public domain a certain number of years after the creator’s death, but the exact time period differs from country to country. For example, works in the US are copyrighted for the life of the author, plus an additional 70 years after death.

Works in the public domain can be used in any way you want – sharing, remixing, adapting – the sky is the limit. Just like with Creative Commons, the ability to produce derivative works is a catalyst for creativity.

Where can you find Creative Commons content?

Creative Commons content can be text, images, videos, software – in other words – just about anything. So where do you go to find that content?

Videos

YouTube recently introduced a creative commons licensing option for its users. YouTube is providing only one Creative Commons license, namely Attribution, the license which gives pretty much free reign over what you can do with the content.

Go to YouTube’s Editor where you can access a fully searchable database of thousands of videos contributed from YouTube users, as well as organisations such as Al Jazeera and Voice of America.

In addition, YouTube makes it easy to edit, rotate, combine, remix and add effects to the videos right there on the site.

Video artists and citizen journalists both have a lot to gain out of this move, and it’s a perfect example of how Creative Commons is a breeding ground for creativity.

When sharing your creations on YouTube, you can also license the video under the same terms, even though you aren’t obliged to. If used the right way, we could end up with a domino effect of hundreds of thousands of videos all licensed under Creative Commons freely available on YouTube.

Photographs

The most obvious place you can go to find high quality Creative Commons photos is Flickr. With almost 190 million photos and counting on Flickr, it’s interesting to see which types of licenses are most commonly used. With about 55 million photos each, Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives and Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike are the most popular options.

It is understandable that an artist or photographer would not want their work to be used commercially without payment. But for bloggers, non-profit organisations, and even digital and photo-manipulation artists, there’s a wealth of images to choose from. And with the help of third-party services like Compfight, it’s even easier to navigate the smorgasbord of awesome photographs.

You can also use Google  to find Creative Commons images, amongst other things. For images, go to Google Image’s Advanced Search, and at the bottom of the search form, go to Usage Rights to choose from several options in the drop-down menu.

Text

Besides the obvious example of Wikipedia, there are other content providers who have licensed their work under Creative Commons, such as Al Jazeera Blogs. Al Jazeera has been at the forefront of making all of its content available for re-use, including videos on YouTube and photographs on Flickr.

Other examples of text freely available online for re-use including WikiTravel, as well as a long list of fiction and non-fiction books.

Audio

Nine Inch Nail’s Trent Reznor is one of the musicians who has always been far ahead of his time in the way the band’s music is disseminated, and has even earned them the label, The First Open Source Band. Nine Inch Nails released the creative commons album Ghosts I-IV in 2008.

The experiment didn’t do much for the music industry’s claims that peer-to-peer file sharing is detrimental to their sales. The license that Nine Inch Nails chose for the album allowed users to share it in any way they chose, as long as it was non-commercial. Meaning if you wanted to put it on the ThePirateBay, so that others could download it from you, you were free to.

Despite that, the album earned $1.6 million in its first week alone, and topped Amazon’s list of best-selling albums for the year.

They also created something of a film festival, inviting fans to create videos accompanying the music.

How does Creative Commons make us more creative?

Nine Inch Nails’ move with their Creative Commons album and film festival is the perfect example of the positive effects of the practice. Using their fame and fan-following, they were able to spark an artistic movement.

If a photograph, a work of art, or even software, is licensed under Creative Commons, it gives other users a springboard to work from. It’s the encapsulation of inspiration.

When you can create derivative works from a photograph, for example, it becomes like a creative brainstorming session, where two people can contribute to one work of art, regardless of their location, nationality or even language.

If a writer licenses their work under terms which allow for remixing, an indie film-maker could potentially create a movie based on the work. That kind of access to creative information to work with is priceless.

Because of the non-commercial aspect, Creative Commons can also push us to create art for art’s sake, and no other reason.

In other words, Creative Commons brings out the best in us.

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PPC Versus SEO: Where Is It More Advised To Put Your Cash On?

There is a good rationale for an SEO services provider to not present Pay Per Click or PPC campaign. Both are dissimilar styles at reaching position with a site. In truth, should you be considering the SEO vendor with which to sign up, the only approach to determine if the company is worth its salt is by checking its standing place in the search engines. If this company is as good as it claims to become, then it should be nowhere else but on the first.

But then you should make sure the way it got there. Is it by SEO, otherwise did this vendor perform PPC? It is important you confirm on credibility of outcome as then you can see this SEO services provider might be relied upon. They have delivered the status results for itself, to allow them to give the outcomes to you.

PPC Versus SEO: The Instant Hit Against Slow But Sure Results

There isn't any question you receive direct traffic from PPC. The outcomes are completely evident in barely five minutes after you swipe in your credit card. But then, how much money have you ought to spend? Most new businesses or undersized companies have a cash crunch to deal with. If the business is simply starting and you aren't investing 50%-60% of the internet promotion cash for SEO, then you'll have a problem with permanent outcome when you pull out the plug off PPC.

PPC Versus SEO: Making A Sensible Decision

SEO requires two-three weeks to begin something and 8-9 months to find out firm outcome. So you can understand PPC versus SEOis a matter of time and cashflow. Why does it take time to make SEO transpire? In any case, imagine we are a car mechanic and you brought in your auto to us and we both learn about that while your vehicle is good and shiny on the surface, the engine is just not starting. We open the hood and repair the broken down pieces, place items that weren't in place, and ensure your motor works. In SEO terminology, we understand your CMS, repair it, also allow it to become a rock-solid SEO platform. This takes schedule.

When your web site has become Google friendly, we begin developing SEO-focused content. Google then has to come find the content we formed. Google will check your new website a couple of times a week. Over time Google comes back to your website at shorter intervals making sure that the content you post right now can get listed 2 minutes afterward. Therefore, the outcome in language of lasting rankings for unlimited key words are exponential in 6 months into the time which you accomplish market leadership. You simply can't get this from PPC.

Our content-driven SEO solution is the only rock-solid platform on which we make our clients #1 on Google. If you are looking for seo marketeer Singapore, we suggest going for solid SEO experts. Talk to us today. (ref 5823). Free reprint available from: PPC Versus SEO: Where Is It More Advised To Put Your Cash On?.

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Thoreau’s Guide to Living More by Spending Less

There are lots of reasons for living a more minimalist life. By owning less you reduce your impact on the environment, you spend less, and you live more simply.

For Henry David Thoreau, the reason for spending less boiled down to a simple formula. It’s what I call “the life calculation.” Here’s how Thoreau describes it:

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Why live more simply? Because the more stuff we buy, the more we end up exchanging our life for the things we own. This is a radical way of thinking about cost. Normally, we think of cost as a measure of dollars and cents. The latest iPhone costs $399. A new Toyota Prius costs around $25,000. A house on the beach in Malibu costs $20,000,000. You get the idea.

Thoreau’s key insight is that the things we buy don’t just cost money, they cost us time, effort, and sacrifice. They cost us our life.

Example. Let’s say you decide to buy a million dollar house. Thoreau would say that the real cost of the house isn’t one million dollars. The real cost is the number of years of work required to pay it off. So if it takes you 40 years of long hours working a job you hate to pay off that house, then it’s real cost is not one million dollars, it’s 40-years of life.

How can we apply Thoreau’s “life calculation” to our daily lives? Here are three steps that might help:

1. What’s Your Work Time Worth?
   The first step in applying the “life calculation” is to calculate the value of your working hours. Let’s say you make $50,000 a year working 40 hours a week. After taxes, you end up actually seeing $35,000 (this will depend on where you live, number of dependents, etc.). Assuming you work 50 weeks a year, the monetary value of each working hour is around $17.


2. The Shift From Dollars to Life.
   Once you’ve nailed down the rough value of each working hour, you can begin shifting away from thinking dollars to thinking life. You do this by calculating the life cost of all those things you wish you could buy. So that new MacBook Pro you wish you had no longer costs $1,800. If each hour of work is worth $17, it now costs 105 hours (almost three weeks) of life. That new house you wish you could buy no longer costs $500,000, it costs 29,411 hours of life (roughly 14 working years of life, and that’s assuming that the house is the only thing you spend your money on).


3. Consider trading things for life.
   Once you’ve calculated these actual life costs, think seriously about the trade-off between things and life. For Thoreau, the trade-off was simple. He always chose life over new things. As he says, “There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living.” But you may decide that certain things are worth the life sacrifice. This doesn’t mean you’ve failed at spending less and living more. Quite the opposite. It means that you have made a reflective choice to sacrifice a portion of your days and hours for the things you own. You’ve made a conscious choice. The real danger Thoreau points to arises when we lose consciousness of this choice, when we buy without ever considering the amount of life exchanged for our latest purchase.

Of course, many of us work on a fixed schedule. We cannot call in one day and decide that we are going to exchange the next month of earnings for a month spent walking through the woods.

This may be true. But it’s also true that employers are becoming more flexible. I just had lunch with a CEO who told me, “I would be happy to let an employee take a few more weeks off for a cut in pay. But nobody has ever asked for it.”

What do you think about Thoreau’s “life calculation”? Would it help you spend less and live more?

Written on 5/18/2011 by Nate Klemp. Nate earned his PhD at Princeton and is a professor at Pepperdine University. He founded LifeBeyondLogic.com, a website dedicated to exploring philosophy as an art of living. You can follow him on Twitter @LifeBeyondLogic and on Facebook. Download a free copy of his new ebook, Finding Reality: Thoreau’s Lessons for Life in the Digital Age.

Photo Credit: Fred Sheahan

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Hedge Fund Managers’ Pimple Popping Emergencies And More Catered To At The Core Club

Time was, you joined an exclusive Mahattan club solely for the purpose of saying you were a member. The food was passable at best, the dress code stifling, as were the rules about keeping cell phones and Blackberries turned off and should you dare ask a member of the waitstaff to pluck some stray hairs from your nether regions? Forget it. If you thought your dues were going toward having your every whim catered to, you thought wrong. Then one day, a few years back, someone said “Stop. You know what the ‘ultra-rich’ need? An exclusive club where they can not only keep their phones on but where they can call in back waxing emergencies at 3AM, too.” And thus, the Core Club was born.

Established in 2005 and today counting upwards of 1,500 members (including Steve Cohen and Anthony Scaramucci) who pay a $50,000 initiation fee and $15,000 in annual dues, the Core Club is a place you can wear jeans and a zip-up fleece, feast on Kobe sliders and call in trades from the dining room without anyone giving you shit for it. Best of all? Your code blue facial needs are taken seriously.

Where many traditional New York clubs maintain strict dress codes and prohibit business meetings, cellphone conversations and the use of iPads or PDAs, the Core club at many times of the day resembles a trading floor. “I’ve got a billion dollars to be deployed,” a member remarked to his lunch companion over a recent midday meal of $22 Kobe beef sliders and $36 plate of lobster salad with pea leaves and carrot coulis. “It’s there and we need to get it moved.”

And if a blemish should happen to emerge on a member’s expensively maintained surface, said Talya Taylor, a spa therapist, the Dangene crew is at the ready with skin-care triage: “In an emergency, if someone calls us and says, ‘I’m going to pop this pimple myself if you don’t see me,’ we get them right in.”

And that’s just an example. Anything you dream up to call in like a hostage situation they’re there to take care of, no questions asked. Overgrown cockbushes, beastly cuticles, skin that hasn’t been exfoliated for daa-yys. Got any needs/desires you’d never dare voice but would be blown away to find out Core can and does accommodate? Do share and prepare to be impressed. In related news, let’s all hope against hope the lines “I’ve got a billion dollars to be deployed, it’s there and it needs to be moved” and “‘I’m going to pop this pimple myself if you don’t see me” can both be attributed to the same member.

Core Club, A Portal To Power [NYT]

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