How to Protect Your Own e-Content!
Do you mind if people take the song you created and mix it? Does it matter if someone takes your blog post and puts it on their website? Some people believe anything online is free and fair game to use as they please. But for most people that are creating original digital works, they want some sort of protection or rights.
In Qatar, there doesn’t really seem to be any laws or regulations that protect a digital content creator’s rights. There are certainly some copyright laws, but do they apply online? The answer is vague at best.
Recently many organizations have been adopting the Creative Commons license. Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that offers free, easy and standardized tools (licenses) for everyone – whether individual creators or large companies – to grant copyright permissions to the creative work.
Read the full post on Digital Qatar blog: http://www.digitalqatar.net/2010/04/11/protecting-your-digital-content-r... and tell us what you think: do we really need content copyrights as more and more of us share, bookmark and digg content?
and see how they have gone too far..
just like the excessive libel laws.
much creativity has stemmed from using what someone else has already created with fair use and reciprocal benefits . ( many remix songs and sampling was done this way ).As pointed out above creative commons licence is a great way to go.
Qatar .. I would have thought that blunt online censorship that Qatar is not "Officially" supposed to have would be a more important issue to address including freedom of speech. Or even spam as seen in the post above mine
I agree with your comments postermodern. In my post I note that it can be used now freely anywhere in the world, but what I am advocating is support or validation of the licenses by Qatar. Having government (or at least legal) support provides more strength to the Creative Commons licenses. There are already 50 countries that have "ported" their Creative Commons licenses to align with their existing laws - I would like to see this in Qatar. An important step is converting the licenses to align with the local language. But of course, but all means, use them now!
Postmodernman,
Thanks a lot for your thoughtful comment. Can you try posting again on the blog and let us know if you face any difficulties?
Creative Commons licenses are used all over the world. Your article assumes however that it would take a government decision to use it. These licenses are voluntary, it would defeat the purpose if the Qatar government mandated their use. I'd be interested to find out if any country has legislation relating to Creative Commons licenses - I'd guess big business and their money would have something to say about it's adoption.
The whole point is to create flexibility according to the needs of the writer and the consumer. It doesn't take government to mandate that, it takes voluntary cooperation. Even mandated laws depend upon cooperation for their enforcement.
I'd suggest the government only needs to be involved when there is the possibility of infringement of patent laws or other commercial losses.
In many ways, Creative Commons licenses are only useful for education and the arts. Science and business need more protection, thus there are patent laws to serve those needs.
If creators are happy giving away their content and having their creative energy recognized via a Creative Commons license, go to it!
btw: i tried to post this in your blog, but had many scripting errors on your side.
keep copyrighting everything. in the end you will not have even words to speak.