why the license?
Posted by popkitchen | Filed under politics, web 2.0
Have you heard about Yugosphere? Journalist of The Economist Tim Judah coined the term to explain the reviving of relations and economic cooperation between the countries of former Yugoslavia. Even a cynical Brit, Western Balkans sounded vacant and grotesque. Here is the article in the June issue of The Economist, the message of which could be interepreted as „you will killing each other for nothing“. Now, the old brands need to be introduced on the market. While the new generations of kids grew up.
But politics is not the topic I want to talk about, it is the authorship in the online sphere. This is a fixed term, as much as the Yugosphere, it seems. Generally, I understand blog writing as a compliation of mine thoughts and other people’s sounds and images, majority is something I want to share with others, rarely there is anything I perceive as a result of my (hard) work. I prefer putting my photos up, but since I write about pop culture, it is difficult to do that. I use whatever I can find. And I do not think about it.
Yugosphere made me think everything over. I googled „Yugosphere“ and alongside Economist and Balkan Insight, the results showed the blog called Free Malësia, which does not have anything to do with Malaysia. It is a blog of Albanian students in the US. What caught my eye, even more then the topic of the blog was the image used to illustrate the article about Yugosphere. It is a photo of Tim Judah, that I took on the discussion that took place last November on London School of Economics. It is featured on this blog. At that moment, it occurred to me that I do not expect to profit from my blogging engagement, but if someone is using text or images, I want to be credited.
For example, if you search for Tim Judah on Google Images, as he is one of the biggest experts on the Balkans, so if you are writing about him, you might need the photo, among other results, my blog comes up. I suppose this is where Albanian students took the photo. Which is totally find, as I am not indicating that my work can be used for non-commercial purposes, with attribution. This is why I “licensed” myself with the help of Creative Commons.
This also means that if I am using other people’s work, I need to apply the same rules.
Tags: creative commons, tim judah, yugosphere
