I intentionally left my last post to the end after completing the essay so I can freely comment on what I have learnt by choosing such subject.

As technology advances in a way where no one can predict even those who believe can look in to the next five to ten year s of coming technologies  but in no way can anyone predict further than that, therefore I have a feeling that these Creative Common licenses will evolve and change as new technologies emerges.

I personally have benefited for some years of open source software which I have used endlessly from CMS (Content management Systems) to software such as Audacity. These softwares and products all come under these licenses and personally I have never looked deeply in their  different categories, and thought that all opensource material is free to use as long as you give attribution which is the basis of CC, but other restrictions were unknown to me.

I feel I have benefited a lot from this module and it really added a great deal of information and knowledge in the law of technologies.

My concentration was mainly on the software laws because that is what interests me, but hopefully in the near future I will start to read more in the hardware laws in such cases as iPhone and Google phone to come.

While I was testing out Chrome and wanted to see what’s the difference between chrome and firefox I came across this article Google Chrome versus Firefox by Percy Cabello. The interesting piece is not in the article itself but in the comments of that article which also took me to a very interesting articles about Chrome’s end-user license agreement. Some argue it infringes the right of the users quoting the following:

“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.”

Others claim that part of the EULA hasn’t existed since 4 Sep 08. Google amended it to say:

“You retain copyright and any other rights that you already hold in Content that you submit, post or display on or through the Services.”

Check out the following links:

Link 1

Link 2

Hi,

Welcome all to my blog on Multimedia Copyright and IP.

The first blog will be about the subject generally, then the following blogs will concentrate on individual area of Copyright and IP.

To start off.  I have used a Illacrimo theme for this blog which is freely distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Coming from a graphic design background, I treat text as a block of graphics. For me to keep the creativity in my design un-interrupted, I cannot look at text like editors would look at it, otherwise I will loose the visual creative mind. But when it comes to licenses and using resources other than your own the graphic designer has to wear the hat of a lawyer and leave creativity aside to read through the small print. Otherwise a hefty fine can be on your door step which unfortunately happened to me.

The openness of the internet and the massive resources that it holds can be disadvantage to you if you not been careful on how to use it.

I once was designing a website for a small clothing company,  and I was looking for image of two hands shaking, so I thought I would look for one on the web and see if I can change it so it looses its originality. So I did. Four years later I received a letter from a well-known news agency detailing that I have used one of their photos without paying for it or crediting it and the amazing thing is that they outlined aspect of that image to the original, although the image was cropped and changed, some of its features was still present. The fine was for £1,500. Fortunately we had a good lawyer in the house and managed to send them an apology and waved the fine to £0.

For me it was a lesson never to forget, it could have been worse which is to loose my Job.

The moral of the story, no matter how good you might think you are in manipulating other work. Don’t do it, technology is well advance to find you.