6: Creative Commons Pros and Cons

Creative Commons is an organization dedicated to allowing people to freely share their creative works with the public in order to be shared and built upon. In response to copyright, which says that “all rights [are] reserved” in a creative work, Creative Commons’ goal is to allow increased sharing through having only “some rights reserved” (“Creative Commons”).

With the Creative Commons search prototype, I was only able to search for images, and these images were from only a few select sources. For example, I searched for “music” as an example of a keyword and “bible” as an example of a text. For both examples, the only results that came up included results from the site Flickr and from public art institutes such as the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. When I tried searching for more particular words and phrases, barely anything came up.

My results after searching for “music” on the Creative Commons search prototype.
My results after searching for “bible” on the Creative Commons search prototype.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I searched further on Creative Commons’ website and found another search tool that searches across a wider variety of platforms for Creative Commons content. This time, with many more results, I was able to search for more specific things. On this search I looked up “EDM music” and “King James Bible,” this time finding a much wider variety of content as it searched through sites like Google and Google Images, YouTube, Wikimedia, and SoundCloud.

This Creative Commons search tool searches across more platforms and gives more results.

With this search engine, I came across interesting examples of music remix. On SoundCloud, I found a mashup of Maroon 5’s “Sugar” and Ain’t Nobody’s “Sing About Love,” which was actually very good and was favorited over 1,600 times. That was probably the search result that most interested me. Others included music on YouTube under the Creative Commons license, as well as YouTube videos on the King James Bible’s history, which, to me as someone fascinated by history, was very interesting.

This is the Creative Commons search results of “King James Bible” on Wikimedia.
The new search results allowed me to search a wider variety of subjects, with more results. Seen here is the result of Creative Commons “EDM music” on SoundCloud.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One definite benefit of Creative Commons is the site’s ability to allow creators to find content to remix that won’t interfere with strict copyright laws. Creative Commons allows creators to express themselves by remixing old work without having to worry as much about legality.

However, like Jordyn said, I believe that Creative Commons’ most obvious limitation is the limitation of the initial search bar. I had to browse the website further to find the search that enabled me to look through sites like YouTube and Google, rather than just Flickr, which is rather limited in its search results. I didn’t think it was particularly easy to use, which made it hard. However, like Jordyn said, I didn’t know what to use the site for or exactly what to search, which definitely limited what I did with the site, and other users may not have that issue.

Overall, if someone knows how to use the site, Creative Commons can be a great tool for creators to remix and share content. However, I believe it could benefit from a redesign that makes it easier to explore and find new content for people who may not already be familiar with Creative Commons.

 

Word Count: 505

 

Works Cited:

“Creative Commons.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 19 Feb. 2018. Web. 28 Feb. 2018.

“Search.” Creative Commons, Creative Commons. Web. 28 Feb. 2018.