December 18, 2002
"Get Creative"

The Creative Commons project has posted a great Flash movie, “Get Creative”, that explains just how important their work is to the development and growth of anthill communities. The key idea? That CC licenses let you “skip the intermediaries” — find out immediately what you’re permitted to do, and what you’re NOT permitted to do, with somebody else’s work.

This is so critical for anthills because the very nature of anthills depends on being able to build on the work of others. If you can’t — if creativity is restricted completely, by default, for everything — you can’t stand on the shoulders of giants. And because CC licenses are also provided in a machine-readable format, you can actually crawl the Web specifically looking for materials you CAN use — sound clips you can incorporate into your brilliant mix, a painting that you can use on the home page of your Web site. It’s a really exciting idea, and “Get Creative” will help you understand why.

Posted by Jason Lefkowitz at December 18, 2002
About Your Host

Ant's Eye View is edited by Jason Lefkowitz, a consultant and Web developer in Alexandria, Virginia. Got a question, comment, or concern? Let me hear it!

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If you think anything I write here represents the opinions of anybody but myself, you need more help than I can give you. The opinions are all mine, folks. Nobody else's. ESPECIALLY not my employer's.

If that's too hard to understand... well, I'm sorry. There's only so much I can do. I'm not a therapist, and I'm not a miracle worker. (Unless you consider staying employed in this economy a miracle.) I wish I could help you work through your delusional belief that I'm speaking for anyone else but myself. Honestly, I do. But in the end, that's a monkey you'll have to get off your back on your own. Sorry.