Best Practices Using Creatives Commons License

Photo by Cambodia4kids
Creative Commons License

 

I discovered a new blog called Blogging Jewish Philanthropy by (hat tip Tactical Philanthropy blog).  This post titled "To My Readers: Avoiding Plagiarism, Understanding the Creative Commons License" made some great points about giving attribution in blog posts beyond a link.  Basically, use quotes to distinguish your words from the author words.  Here are the points made by the author Maya Norton

• Put my words in quotes if you are quoting text directly
• Cite me by name, journal title, and the URL of the post (Maya Norton, The New Jew: Blogging Jewish Philanthropy, www…)
• Leave me a message or send me an e-mail letting me know that you have done so– if we have the same interests, I would like to get to know you

I would add for blog posts, you can let the author know via track back - which I have done with this post and the one with a screencast from Harry about how he uses Creative Commons.

In addition, for photos in flickr, link back to the photo page and the license, although latter isn't required but  nice to promote CC

Also, when you find a link to something, it is a good idea (not required) to give Linktribution a term coined by Cogdog Alan Levine (hope I spelled it right this time).  That is if you didn't discovered the link but you discovered through another blogger, give them acknowledgment.  See my example in the first sentence above.

More about Open Content and Creative Commons licenses here

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Comments

[Xris (Flatbush Gardener)]

All good points, and all considerations I follow in my blog.

Folks seem to have a harder time with attributing photographs as well as they do text. It's a concern of mine, since I have a lot of photographs on Flickr.

Also, I've never figured out why or how to use "trackback" links instead of just linking to the original post. Do you have a good reference for this?

[flipthebucket]

Thanks Beth,
I subscribed to your blog earlier this week. I recently discovered Creative Commons licensing and I was very pleased to find it in the title of this post.
Thanks for passing on the advice from Maya Norton. Obviously all of us bloggers find ideas, links and content on other blogs and it is good to find effective and meaningful ways of recognizing others work without adding masses of extra content to our own blogs.
I found your blog about 4 years ago when I did a uni assignment on education and technology and I'm very pleased to discover it again.

A question for readers: Do you know anyone who is creating charity badges that can be used in Australia?

[Maya Norton]

Dear Beth,

Thanks for quoting me, I appreciate it.

One of my favorite things about the blogosphere is joining in a global conversation that is interesting, useful, and collaborative. Valuing the voices of others means respecting, crediting, and citing their efforts. That's what makes the conversation most fruitful.

Best wishes,

Maya Norton

The New Jew: Blogging Jewish Philanthropy

[Beth Kanter]

Flip the Bucket --

can you clarify your question? Do you need something that can be linked to an account so people from Australia can donate in aussie dollars? Or do you want a charity badge that can directly deposit the money into an the aussies's ngo merchant account? Or both?

I believe that Network for Good is only US nonprofits and the last time I checked the basic donation tool did not accept international currency - but this might have changed.

ChipIn can be linked to a PayPal account which can accept some international currencies or at least exchanges them. I've had several donors from Australia.

I'll ping a few people.

[Beth Kanter]

@flatbush -- I just linked the phrase trackback to a guide to trackbacks. It depends on your blogging platform - typepad and wordpress use it. There is a growing problem with Trackback Sp*m

[Beth Kanter]

Here's a url about trackback spam problem
http://cogdogblog.com/2007/11/25/google-we-have-a-problem/

[Xris (Flatbush Gardener)]

Beth: Thanks for the links! I've taken a look at a couple, and I'm still following through.