Virgin Mobile, Flickr and Copyright

There's a storm brewing over Virgin Mobile's use of a Creative Commons-covered photographs from Flickr users in a recent Australian print campaign. While Virgin Mobile clearly notes in the ads, created by Glue Society, where the photographs came from, some are concerned the people in the ads should have been given the chance to sign a model release and the Flickr users and photographers should have at least been asked permission to use the photographs.

With everything just a right click away, the issue of fair use, attribution, copyright or whatever name you want to apply, is a slippery slope indeed.

Flickr users, including the older brother of one of the girls who appears in one of the photos, are debating the issue here.

Protect your Copyright

The recently launched Copyright Protect website acts as an online depository and independent registrar for any works of copyright in electronic format. Users can deposit any works of copyright with the site in order to have the time and date of the work certified and registered.

Copyright Protect aims to offer proof of the existence of a specific file, script, design, literary, musical or literary work at a specific time and date. By including drafts, working files, revisions, concept drawings etc in your submission, you are adding strong evidence that the work is in fact original.

The registration service is allegedly automated, secure and affordable. Once a work is received, the servers will time-stamp the work and generate a certificate of receipt indicating a description of the copyright work, as well as the exact time and date that the work was received.

Find out more.

Ubuntu way of copyright

"Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry"

Those were the fist words I read when I landed on this site that explained a very Ubuntu philosophy of copyright to me. We all know that is it almost impossible to police the Internet, but we can appeal to the good and the decent in us when we post something that we created.

Creative commons is a copyright licensing method for websites, blogs, photographs etc with All Rights Reserved and Some Rights Reserved options.

I don't know how this would hold up in a South African court, maybe someone can tell me, but I think in many ways cyberspace is a world of its own, with its own rules and regulations. It is a pity people only ready about Internet porn and bomb recipes - they don't read about people across the globe linking together and forming online communities, not based on gender or race or social status. These communities are usually based on shared interests.

Have a look at Creative Commons - it makes you wish the real world lived up to these kind of ideals.