Creative Commons Adds Deed Seal

By Jonathan Bailey • May 19th, 2008 • Category: Articles, Legal Issues, Prevention

In a story that we missed when it unfolded in February, the Creative Commons Organization has started stamping certain licenses with a logo that says “Approved for Free Cultural Works”. The objective, according to their announcement, is “distinguish among the range of Creative Commons licenses” and support projects as Wikipedia, that only accept free cultural works as part of their efforts.

The logos are only applied to Creative Commons Licenses that provide “freedom to modify without any discrimination against uses or users”. This eliminates any and all licenses with the “noncommercial” and “no derivatives” restriction.

This is the most recent step to differentiate between “more free” and “less free” licenses. The first took place in late 2006 when they changed the color of the more restrictive license deeds to incorporate more yellow, indicating caution.

However, this is the first clear change to the deeds that makes a clear distinction in the level of freedom the license provides. It remains to be seen how users of the more restrictive licenses, the ones that do not qualify for the seal, have reacted.

For more information on the seal and the definition of free cultural works, you can see the wiki page linked to the badge.

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Jonathan Bailey is The Webmaster and author of Plagiarism Today, which he founded in 2005 as a way to help Webmasters going through content theft problems get accurate information and stay up to date on the rapidly-changing field. He is also a consultant to Webmasters and companies to help them devise practical content protection strategies and develop good copyright policies.
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  • Hi Jonathon
    Long time no comment, I've been waylaid with uni and work. Good to see you're going stronger every time I've come by though. I tend to reference people over this way whenever the issues arise though. I'm amazed how many people (especially at universities) think that free means they can say they did it and not attribute the authors / creators / legal copyright owners.

    It would be good to see some kind of base level program out there explaining to students that plagiarism and theft don't just apply to an assignment at university. It's been a very frustrating year for battling that mental paradigm in people. Their first reactioin is usually just to try and hide the evidence and scrape the obvious code identifiers away.

    Any ideas on how this could be proactively pursued. Education is key to at least letting people know its wrong and they will probably be caught, if not now then eventually.
  • One thing I've learned on the university level is that most of the anti-plagiarism steps come out of a fear of a loss of reputation. If a school earns a rep for being easy on plagiarism, that hurts its reputation and harms the money stream from every angle.

    Schools need to realize that it isn't just academic plagiarism that hurts their reputation. Think of what Kaavya Viswanathan did for Harvard. If schools are to broaden their plagiarism curriculum, they need to see how plagiarism outside the walls can hurt them.

    Sadly, academia is motivated purely by selfish interests these days. The idea of actually teaching students knowledge seems to be a distant second.

    Sorry that I can't help more.
  • Yes I have to agree sadly. The international full fee paying student economy seems to have, in many schools, paved the way for this issue to proliferate.

    My sister, who works at a catholic university in Queensland, attended a cultural awareness course. She said many Koreans / Chinese for example believe that plagiarism is a mark of respect. They culturally believe that using your work is an honour to you. I find this in a Korean student on my software project for 3rd year - filching at all costs. And they don't accept criticism, he threatened to kill me for criticising him earlier in the semester (which is a concern).

    IMO we wonder why the software industry has gone to crap - we need to make that mark at the root of the problem. This guy, for example, has used other people's work for an entire degree by filching code and templates and designs. Academically WTF?

    It would be nice to see some kind of proactive effort put towards the academic sector. But I'm probably dreaming (after a bottle of shiraz and an exhibition opening).

    Anyway, how have you been going? Appears your doing well.
  • It is interesting that the problem you mention existed in a software-related field. The reason being that plagiarism there often leads to copyright infringement lawsuits and firings. Plagiarizing an office memo is far less likely to get you in trouble than plagiarizing your software code.

    The cultural differences are staggering and it is a part of the reason why respectable countries such as Korea, India and China have struggled on the international science scene. They have a reputation for unoriginal work and, even though most of their scientists/programmers/etc do their own work they can't escape the cloud of suspicion.

    The problem in academia, as you pointed out, is that if you do not write your own papers/code the teachers have no means to effectively grade your progress or your knowledge. They can't help you if you are struggling or fail you if you don't meet the requirements.

    Anyway, I've been doing well, Halloween is a bit of a crazy month for me due to Halloween activities, but I'm getting by.

    Hope that you're doing well!
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