I try to regularly highlight sources of creative commons images on this blog, but it’s also important to understand copyright from the view of photographic stock agencies. One of them (their terms of use seems to prevent me from using their trademarked name or from reproducing a screenshot of their website) has recently launched stockphotorights.com, with answers to a lot of basic, but often misunderstood, issues.

Not just photos either. There’s a set of historical documents, another includes seals and artifacts.

Lawrence Lessig delivered the keynote It Is About Time: Getting Our Values Around Copyright Right, I’ve embedded it below and linked to the mp3 file.

Download mp3

[Image used courtesy of a Creative Commons attribution licence from Beth Kanter - story behind the photograph here]

Very short notice of tomorrow’s (Wednesday 6 May 2009) Digital copyright with confidence online seminar from JISCLegal. 

I joined their last ‘webinar’ on Web 2.0 and the Law for Colleges and Universities, they’ve got a really strong format and I’d encourage anyone interested to give it a try.

Here’s the programme for tomorrow:

2.00 Introducing the webcast and the law of copyright – John X Kelly
2.10 The Education Exceptions – Jackie Milne
2.20 Orphan Works – Lynn McHugh
2.30 Licences – Mahesh Madhavan
2.40 CLA Comprehensive Higher Education Licence – David Crook
2.55 A round up of the issues – Jason Miles-Campbell

3.00 Coffee Break!
3.05 Some frequently asked questions
3.15 Sourcing Resources – JISC Collections – Ben Taplin
3.30 Sourcing Resources – JISC Digital Media – Steve Hull
3.45 Viewers’ questions and panel discussion
4.00 Close

[Image created with wordle.net]

Having only discovered JISC TechDis last week, I’m planning to spend tomorrow afternoon, Wednesday 22 April 2009, watching their live webcast Web 2.0 and the Law for Colleges and Universities, 2-4pm.

Here’s the (free, no registration necessary) programme:

• 2.00 – What’s it about? Introducing the webcast, and the relevant law
• 2.10 – Scenario 1 – data protection, negligence
• 2.25 – Scenario 2 – accessibility, defamation, obscenity
• 2.40 – Scenario 3 – IPR, employment misconduct
• 2.55 – A round-up of the issues
• 3.00 – Coffee Break!
• 3.05 – Some frequently asked questions
• 3.15 – Framing an institutional policy
• 3.30 – The tutor’s checklist
• 3.40 – Viewers’ questions and panel discussion
• 4.00 – Close

Used properly Flickr can be great source for free creative-commons licensed photography. Last year Flickr took the process a stage further with the creation of The Commons, featuring major public photographic collections from around the world including the Library of Congress, Smithsonian, Imperial War Museum and the National Maritime Museum.

All photographs in the Commons collection are subject to ‘no known copyright restrictions’, meaning that the organisations have ‘reasonably concluded that a photograph is free of copyright restrictions’ – I recommend that you read the extended Rights Statement before using any of the images.

This leads to a huge archive of images we can choose to use, but I mention it today because the New York Public Library has this week joined The Commons, unveiling a whole new set of images on topics including:

Creative Commons are looking to answer their critics [see NC Licences Considered Harmful or Does the Noncommercial Creative Commons license make sense? for example], you can help them work towards a robust definition by completing their Non-Commercial study questionnaire [took me about 15 minutes].