Artistic Thinking: 2) Creative Commons and Public Domain

While trying to find websites for Public Domain, Creative Commons, Fair Use, and Open Source Shared images, music, video and even education, I came across some links to pass on and a few videos as well... Check these out:

Free Education sites:

http://oyc.yale.edu/about

http://www.khanacademy.org/

https://p2pu.org/en/

https://www.edx.org/

http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/

Videos:

Video about Open Education:

Copyright School by YouTube:

Copyright Basics: 

The next segments are taken from the site:
http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter8/8-a.html#1

Welcome to the Public Domain

The term “public domain” refers to creative materials that are not protected by intellectual property laws such as copyright, trademark, or patent laws. The public owns these works, not an individual author or artist. Anyone can use a public domain work without obtaining permission, but no one can ever own it. An important wrinkle to understand about public domain material is that, while each work belongs to the public, collections of public domain works may be protected by copyright. If, for example, someone has collected public domain images in a book or on a website, the collection as a whole may be protectible even though individual images are not. You are free to copy and use individual images but copying and distributing the complete collection may infringe what is known as the “collective works” copyright. Collections of public domain material will be protected if the person who created it has used creativity in the choices and organization of the public domain material. This usually involves some unique selection process, for example, a poetry scholar compiling a book -- The Greatest Poems of e.e. cummings.

There are four common ways that works arrive in the public domain:

• the copyright has expired
• the copyright owner failed to follow copyright renewal rules
• the copyright owner deliberately places it in the public domain, known as “dedication,” or
• copyright law does not protect this type of work.

Dedicating Works to the Public Domain Through Creative Commons

Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization designed to foster the public domain, helps copyright owners dedicate their works to the public domain. Copyright owners may dedicate their works immediately or they can choose to use the “Founders’ Copyright” -- the original copyright term adopted by the first copyright law in 1790. This consists of copyright protection for an initial term of 14 years after publication, renewable for an additional 14 years if the copyright owner so desires. The copyright owner fills out an online application and sells the copyright to Creative Commons for one dollar; in return, the organization gives the copyright owner an exclusive license to the work for 14 or 28 years.

Original authors can also choose to require that users of the works they dedicate attribute the works to the authors. Works dedicated to the public domain are listed on the Creative Commons website so people can easily find them. For detailed information, visit the website at www.creativecommons.org. O’Reilly & Associates, a major publisher of computer and technical books, uses the Founders’ Copyright for its publications (if their authors agree). This means that, 14 or 28 years after publication, hundreds of its titles will be released to the public domain. The Creative Commons website lists what will be available at http://creativecommons.org/projects/founderscopyright/oreilly.

Links to Public Domain, Open Source and Fair Use sites:

http://www.burningwell.org/

http://opensourcemusic.com/

http://osvideo.constantvzw.org/

http://archive.org/details/opensource_audio