License to remix

Recently, Michael Fienen wrote a lengthy but thoughtful and thought-provoking post over on .eduGuru about copyright and reuse issues (Copyright, Content, and Consumption).

Fienen’s focus was on whether the use of so-called “read later” tools like Evernote could be construed as theft of creative work or intellectual property. It’s an important subject and one that a Lawrence Lessig fanboy like me can appreciate. You should read Fienen’s post, because the topic could impact the way you read, share and save information online. And don’t gloss over the comments, because there’s more great info shared there.

But what caught my attention in a more practical sense was a point Fienen made near the end of his post. He asked readers to “please take the time to put a Creative Commons license on things you create … [t]o protect yourself and make it clear to others what you will permit.”

I’ve been blogging here for more than 5 years, and it wasn’t until that moment that I realized I had never bothered to license this blog and its content under Creative Commons.

That situation has been corrected. At the bottom of this blog’s sidebar is now a statement of license. It looks sort of like this:

Higher Ed Marketing by Andrew Careaga is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

If you don’t have a Creative Commons license on your blog or other intellectual or creative work, maybe it’s time you did.