Sharing Knowledge Is an Art

Creative Commons

Unlike money and other worldly possessions, knowledge grows within an individual only if it is shared. The immense knowledge one possesses stays with him and dies with him. But to keep it alive, to keep it growing, to enable it to develop and also to make the owner of such knowledge popular, there is an excellent solution called the internet. Through this global network you can reach people from all corners of the world and expose your works which resulted from your untainted talent in the cheapest and easiest way possible.

But when you speak of sharing knowledge there arises a few questions. Your knowledge, your talent and the works resulting from it can be exploited, can be claimed by any person that the work is theirs, and can bring you a feeling that after putting your work online you don't own the work anymore. Most of the people think that the best solution for this is Copyright. They think that copyrighting their works will protect their works and make them the proud owner. But is this the real solution? It is, when you want your works to be protected from infringement. But the very essence of sharing knowledge is lost here. You own your work and you display it for others to see. Are you really sharing anything by doing so?

If copyright is not the perfect solution in terms of sharing knowledge and also the creator getting wide popularity, then what other tool enables this? What will allow the creator to hold the copyright while still allowing others to use his/her work, to enable remixing, adapting and building up of the work, to restrict others from making commercial use of the work and above all to receive due credits for the original work? Well the answer would be 'Creative Commons'.

Now what is Creative Commons? It is a set of copyright licenses (six licenses to be more specific) which allows the creator to keep the copyright of the work, while allowing others to make use of the work, share it, remix it, and adapt it and so on. The most significant attribute of these licenses is that it is mandatory for the user to give due credits for the creator of the original work. In this way the creator owns his work and shares his work at the same time. Isn't that wonderful?

Each of the Creative Commons licenses enables the user to decide which rights they can act upon and which rights they can waive. This is very useful for amateur creators in any field such as Photography, Film-making, Music, Literature, etc to acquire wide acclamation using Creative Commons licensing. The licensing part is also very easy as it does not include great legal formalities. Thus sharing knowledge is through the internet can be best driven with the use of Creative Commons.