4 Tips to Help You Share your Content

by Lyndi Lawson

Copyright and more importantly, Quirk’s advocacy of Creative Commons, are the focus of today's Quirk newsletter.

What no one has acknowledged so far is that while Creative Commons is all well and good, sharing your content freely is a scary prospect for many writers, musicians, course developers and pretty much anyone who publishes online content in any form. Setting your work free to roam the dangerous prairies of the Internet is a little bit like sending your 17 year old son to university 1000 kilometres away and resisting the urge to call him every 5 minutes to check that he’s getting enough vitamins and taking daily baths.

Fortunately, letting go is the right thing to do. There are numerous benefits to licensing your content under the Creative Commons. For one thing, your content (hopefully) has value that can benefit the world in one way or another. This feel-good factor is important, and sharing what you have created is an easy way to make a difference to the life of someone who otherwise may never have heard what you had to say.

Also, like the 17 year old (and depending on which Creative Commons license you choose) your content has the potential to outgrow you. While you have given it everything you can, there are always people out there with knowledge that is superior to yours, who can add value to what you started. Keeping it to yourself, when it has the potential to grow and evolve into something better, seems selfish. Just like parents need to let their children find their own identity, so online publishers need to let their creations develop organically to their full potential. The last thing is that allowing the replication of your content will ensure that it gets spread much further than it otherwise would, and gets exposure that it otherwise would not have had.  

Now that you’re convinced that using a Creative Commons license is the right thing to do, here are some tips to make letting go a little bit easier:

1). Bear in mind that Creative Commons exists to protect the owner of the work while still allowing your content to be shared with others.
This is the first step. Understanding this is essential if you are going to use Creative Commons. Remember that you are not relinquishing all of your ownership rights: Creative Common’s licenses give you the ability to dictate how others may utilise your content. This includes your right to decide whether others may copy your work, make derivatives or adaptations of it, distribute it or even profit from it.

2). Choose the license with which you are most comfortable.
One needn’t think that simply because you are supporting the creative commons cause, that you lose jurisdiction over what happens to your content. There are a number of choices to be made around what you deem to be acceptable. The first decision that must be made is whether or not you want your content to be used commercially, potentially for the financial gain of someone else. Once this decision is made, there are essentially three alternatives:  

• Attribution No Derivatives: The content can be used only in its original form. The creator must be credited and the content must include a link back to the content’s original location.
• Attribution Share Alike: This license allows for the alteration of the original content provided that the original creator is acknowledged and that the new content is re-licensed under the same license as the original content was.
• Attribution: This is the least restrictive license under which anyone can use or alter the content and re-license it however they choose.

3). Make sure that your content is indexed on your site first.
A lot of online publishers are scared that without stringent copyright, their content will be stolen and used without their consent or knowledge and without acknowledgement of the original author. This is a valid concern. The bad news is that whether you use a Creative Commons license or traditional copyright, there’s a good chance that people will use your content with no recourse - that is the nature of the Internet. One way to mitigate this to some degree is to ensure that the content is published on your site before you submit it to any other online publication services. This will allow the search engine spiders to index the content on your site first, allowing you to enjoy the ranking benefits before the content is reproduced. 
 
4). Install software that tracks your content so that you can see where it goes and who is reading it.
Although letting go is important, some measure of control is helpful. For example, in the case of your rebellious teenage son, you have enough financial control to ensure that he toes the line to some degree at least. When it comes to your online content, keeping track of where it gets reproduced is useful. Not only will this help you to ensure that your content is being used appropriately, but watching your content makes its way across the Internet is a sure way to monitor and manage the exposure that it is getting.

Tracking your content is easy - simply gain access to a free or paid for tracking service that searches for the phrases that you specify. Google Alerts is a good alternative for those looking for a free service, while Quirk’s very own BrandsEye Reputation Management tool retails from $1 per month and offers extensive monitoring and management services. 

And there you have it: A basic guide to using Creative Commons licenses AND feeling good about it.

2008/07/09 | permalink | comments (1) | trackbacks (0)

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