WLWYU (What License Would You Use?)

If I came up with something really great - I wouldn't even know how to begin to license it so probably what would end up happening is...

I create something cool. I don't know how to license it but am too cheap to hire a lawyer.  I'm also worried that if I hire a lawyer, that person would decieve me and sell my idea/product to someone else which would make the whole thing obsolete anyways so I would just wait, hoping that no one would take my idea.

Haha, I really doubt that I will ever have to ponder this question but I suppose it would depend on what it is. For instance, I have put a lot of work into instructional materials for my class. All of the tests/quizzes I use are of my own creation (I don't use a test bank from a book company), I have created all of my lecture notes and different activities I use.  When I have an intern or a new teacher needs some ideas - I will freely give all of these materials to them without expecting any form of payment or citation of where they received it.  This is mainly because I was a new teacher once too.  Those first few years when you have nothing - you are so thankful for any resources you can accumulate.  I want to help others whose ultimate goal is educating students.  Also, an unwritten teacher motto is "beg, borrow, steal...don't recreate the wheel."  Still today I constantly search the Internet, get ideas from magazines, and talk to other teachers to refine what I am doing.  If someone has created a lesson that is more effective and they don't mind if I use - thank goodness! One awesome resource for Social Studies teachers is NC Civic Education Consortium. Another resource is TPT (Teachers Pay Teachers) -  a website that allows teachers to sell material they have created to other teachers.  To me, it's like iTunes instead of Limewire.  Some downloads are free!

If it were something worthwhile, meaning that it could earn money then I would probably expend the energy to research, hire a lawyer that could do all the official paperwork for me. 


Below is a picture of a geyser in Yellowstone National Park. I found this picture on Wikimedia Commons. It was the "Picture of the Day" on December 19, 2010.  Anything on Wikimedia Commons is under the Creative Commons license and as the home page says "freely usable" material. 

With advancements in digital techology and software, people who are not necessarily professional photographers (income depends on their work), can take amazing pictures.  I think this is an example of this. The right person, at the right time - getting a really cool shot of the steam coming from a geyser which a rainbow in the background. Obviously, the photographer knew something about camera angle and framing the shot, etc because it is a good picture.  My guess? This is a normal person, probably proud of this picture, and just wanted to put it out there for the rest of the world to see and enjoy! :)

So, how does that compare to my WLWYU response? This person may not want to put the effort/money in to getting this picture copyrighted. This person may just want other people to enjoy the beauty of this moment they captured. I doubt that the photographer is professional because they would probably be working for a specific company and would thus "own" any images the photographer shot during their employment. 

I think it is pretty cool that we have this option.  We can have this discussion because there are options - which is a relatively new phenomenon.  The people who have created the Creative Commons licensing are helping to create a new world where the idea of "copyright" is being redefined.  This doesn't scare me as much as it scares a lot of people.  Probably because I don't have anything floating around with (C) on it!  When I apply this to my world ... I think of writing research papers.  I believe that we are going to also have to redefine citing sources.