On the page you will notice a new button- a Creative Commons license. This license covers everything that I produce on this blog- photos,text etc. except for items linked from other sites.
So what is a Creative Commons license anyway? I have chosen a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike license. I'll go through that rather long name one item at a time to explain what it means (or you can read the legal text).
The idea of the Creative Commons is to make sharing of ideas and building on each other's creativity a little easier.
Attribution means that if you use work from this blog somewhere, you need to credit me- by noting that I contributed material to whatever you use it in (eg. you place my images in a collage,and add a note saying image 5 row 4: peter le roux 2005)
NonCommercial means that you may not use material fro mthis site in something that will make you any money-so you can't take all of my images,bundle them together and publish a book- that's a right I have reserved for myself.
finally, the license says 'ShareAlike'- that means that any work you make that uses my material has to have the same license applied to it- it has to be shared freely as well. This is a bit sneaky, but I want to be able to benefit form the work you might have added to my initial work.
It's important to note what I don't restrict you from doing- you can copy as much as you like from this site, you can alter it as much as you like, so long as you give me credit, don't make money from it and let other people do the same.
Of course, if you have a pressing reason to do any of those things, you can write to me and get permission.
Why is this important?
Creative Commons licenses allow you to share your ideas freely with people, and let them develop their own creative ideas as well- CC licensed music may be remixed without any copyright concerns, for example (see CCmixter for a local project based on remixing CC-licensed songs). It's als oa good way to license your blog- it lets people quote your work freely, alter your postcards if they want to etc.
More information on Creative Commons HERE
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