Books and songs and art are all meant to be shared and enjoyed by everyone. But what is the right way to use and share these? The concept of open licensing, particularly Creative Commons, allows different media types to be reused, repurposed and shared in the right ways. Creative Commons licenses help ensure that the work of creators isn't stolen and used in ways that they do not want. Learn more about media licensing and who owns what.
Remixing existing media is common - in music, but also widely in video, images, design, and code. This technique has become more widely spread in recent years as access to media and creating and editing tools has become more widespread.
The idea of sharing your own media that you make to let others remix and remake it is called open licensing. The most common form of open licensing is called Creative Commons.
So, how can you find media that's licensed for your use and how can you contribute your work for others to share?
First, we need to know about licensing and copyright. As a society we've decided that we value intellectual property--- we believe that ideas have value and ownership, so we protected ideas and we called it copyright.
Copyright is the rules that give exclusive rights to the copyright holder to distribute, make copies and sell the work that they have made, whether it's a book or a movie or a song or a video game, a video, a painting, etc etc.
Licensing is the set of guidelines for how others can use the creative work. The copyright holder gets to decide on a license --- they decide how others will use their work.
In remixing, we want to give creators the option to share their work without being worried that their intellectual property is going to be stolen or that their work is going to be used in ways that they don't approve of.
For example, I have created some of my own media - lots of audio recordings, specifically, and like many creators, I want to maintain copyright but I also would actually prefer to be able to share them widely, so that students and makers and artists can you use the sounds to learn and create and make their own work.
So... I need a way to protect my intellectual property while posting the work on the internet to share... Thus, enter Creative Commons.