Creative Commons

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Prior to this week's assignment, I was only vaguely familiar with Creative Commons.  I had an assignment for a previous Wilkes class where we had to find images with Creative Commons licenses to use.  I did not know the importance of such a license, and how easy it was to license my own work.

I know firsthand how frustrating it can be when someone uses your work and does not give you credit.  I write a blog called Miscellaneous Manicures, which is all about nail art.  Around the time of the Super Bowl, a salon in Baltimore took an image of one of my Baltimore Ravens nail designs, and used it to advertise their salon.  They cropped the image to remove my watermark, and advertised that my design was one they offered clients.  Unfortunately, at that time I did not have a Creative Commons license, or any sort of disclaimer.  Now that I know how easy, and important, it is to license my work, I have remedied that!

For this blog, I chose the most restrictive license.  I would obviously want people to attribute my work, and I would not want anyone using my work for commercial reasons without getting my permission.  I also chose to have no derivatives.  Looking ahead to the assignments that I will be completing on this blog, I think it is important that my work and my ideas stay in their original form.

Now that I am more familiar with Creative Commons, the types of licenses, and how to generate a license, I will be using the Creative Commons website frequently!  I think that sharing this process with my students will help them get a better understanding and appreciation for the process of using things found online.