First of all, I apologize for the lack of content-production on my part. Right now I am juggling nine classes along with home life, so things have been pretty stressful. I want to make it clear that I am extremely envious of all of you who are able to sit down for hours and just hammer things out. This has never been possible for me with two kids and now a third on the way. Either I am being Mom or I am sitting down at the end of the day, fighting to keep my eyes open. Oh well. Suck it up, buttercup. Graduation is so close I can taste it and I am not going to allow a boatload of homework to hold me back from finally ending my career as an undergrad. I will be using today and tonight to effectively catch up on all necessary posts and get to the point where I can remain up to date in the class.
On to Intellectual Property. The WIPO website was very informative on the subject. I have found that googling can be iffy, but this website was legit in the fact that it belongs to the World Intellectual Property Organization. Here is a list of what WIPO does, in case you’re interested.
Intellectual Property consists of creations of the mind including inventions, literary and artistic works and symbols, names, images and designs. Intellectual Property is separated into two categories of laws that protect the different types of creations of the mind: Industrial Property and Copyright. Industrial Property is anything like patents, trademarks, industrial designs and geographic indications of source. Trademarks protect words phrases and symbols.
Copyright is the other category and it includes literary and artistic works such as novels, poems, plays, films, musical works, artistic works such drawings, paintings, photographs, sculptures and architectural designs. Everything produced is automatically copyrighted, even if it is not posted. Copyright laws protect both published and unpublished works. The author or artist reserves all rights to their works.
Creative Commons is interesting. Instead of having all of your rights reserved, you can get a Creative Commons license and have lets you have some of your rights reserved. This way others can benefit from what you produce, but you will still get credit for your work. You can choose which CC license works best for you. My immediate take on this is why? So I read into it and discovered that the big idea is to use the internet to its fullest potential by making it possible for people to share their work while reserving some of their rights and getting credit for what they’ve done. But why do you need to do this is your work is already copyrighted when it is created? Well, having a CC license on your work allows others to use your stuff, remix it, build upon it, whatever. I guess I just don’t see myself working hard to publish a book and then not maintaining all of my rights to all of my hard work. Same with my photography. But if you want to spread the knowledge love, CC is a wonderful thing.
As far as copyrighting things I produce on my blog, I wouldn’t mind using a CC license to allow others to use things I produce online. It’s like internet karma, I love Pinterest and every once in a while something I pin is removed for copyright reasons. Such is life, but its nice that overall Pinterest is a free-for- all sharing experience.
RSS Feeds are used to distribute links to content that you would like to have other people use, on your website. It is a way to syndicate your content. Like Dilbert.
