I’m doing some writing at the moment and thinking about using a creative commons ‘some rights reserved’ license. Has anyone done this for their day job?

Traditionally they’d slap the little (c) on and think no more about it, but I do actually want to share this stuff and let other people repurpose it …whilst still retaining credit and original ownership. The CC thing seems ideal, but I’m guessing it will just confuse the powers that be and terrify anyone legal-minded. Any experiences?

Sadly, I know a fair bit about this from my day job.

And it’s an odd question, as anything you write for your employers they hold the rights, academia being a bit of an exception.

If it is your own work done in your own time on your own machine you can do what you like really, remembering that the Internet Generation has very little concept of IPR, (if it’s on t’internet it’s fair game etc etc)

Far from confusing the legal minds they will be poor minds if they don’t understand this !!

I’m not 100% sure as its been ages but have used this in an old job based round training material, think you can cherry pick from what I remember as to which bits people can use for common purpose i.e. ours was to take away training material and train their own teams but they couldn’t then re-use it as their own training material to run sessions themselves for profit so I guess non commercial purposes was what we chose.

It made more sense in my head….

Not sure it’s such an odd question. It wouldn’t be so far removed from the scenario above. I write something on how to use a widget. The widget gets sold alongside a Thingummy, only available from certain specialists. Or it might be sold alongside a Whatsit from other specialists. Or it might…

They both want to know about widgets, it’s in everyone’s interest this information is shared. Sometimes different badges get put on it. Sometimes the widget seller gets training, sometimes the trainers train people further down the food chain.

The powers that be from Widget Inc, Thingummy Corp and Whatsit Ltd have signed agreements, do a big handshake thing and lock it in Big Safe, never to be seen again. Meanwhile the people that actually make things work are busy making things work, without looking at contracts.

I want the ownership to be shown in these documents and a nice short statement of what’s acceptable in terms of re-use and re-purposing.

That make sense? Am I right in thinking you’re in Information Science hels?

Indeed I am.

Sounds a bit more like a patent reg, what you just said, as opposed to IPR.

IPR applies to creative works, they are quite explicitly defined.

This is a good site for webby stuff if thats your plan:

http://www.web2rights.com/