Regular readers of this blog will know I’m a huge fan of the Creative Commons, both in terms of their licenses – which allow artists and other creators to explicitly and legally state which rights they wish to share, and which they wish to retain, rather than having to rely on the old default of either no rights (the public domain) or all rights reserved (traditional copyright licensing) – and in terms of their philosophy of a global commons which stimulates creativity, culture and connectivity.  Case in point this video by Jesse Dylan called A Shared Culture:

[Video CC BY NC SA USA 3.0. Full licence information and attributions for works featured in the film are available on the A Shared Culture page.]

In order to support the Creative Commons mission, the central office in the US holds an annual fundraising and awareness-raising campaign: why not Help Build the Commons?  As part of the campaign, also being launched is the CC Network, which looks to be some sort of CC-centric social profile-cum-networking page (the network looks a bit rudimentary right now, but I’m sure there are developments in the pipeline). And to kick things up a notch, instead of the CC-related still photography competition of the past few years, this year’s CC fundraiser includes a call for creative videos explaining/exploring/explicating CC in some way (and some way under 90 seconds long!).

Creative Commons licenses continue to be the single most important mechanism in allowing my Communication Studies students sharing their work with the world, complete with the legal protections they want (most often, attribution) whilst giving away certain rights, including the right to share and distribute, both philanthropically and as a means to build their own profiles as content (re)creators!  So, I’ve made my donation this year (you can see my CC Network page here) … have you?