I was surprised last year to receive an e-mail from the journal Nature Genetics. They put one of my pictures that they found on Commons on the cover of the journal. I've received a couple of other similar but lower profile requests. Commons is definitely a great way to get your work seen.
On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 9:34 AM, Domas Mituzas <[email protected]>wrote: > > I got this email back in summer, 2007. Did I just steal a job from > professional photographer? Or would they just leave blank book cover? > Will this lead to a better bridge in future? Did I join a civil cause? > All I know now, is that I’m book cover photographer, albeit quite > cheap one. Also, by using CC license I simply used lingua-franca of > world I’m in - and now my content can evolve into shapes that I > couldn’t expect, and that would be limited by non-portable licenses. > > Other anecdote is way more internal. I have cheap point-and-shoot > camera (same one to shoot book cover pictures :) that I use during my > travels. It fits well into my jeans pocket, it doesn’t provide me any > self esteem in professional photography. Still, I get to places, I > take pictures, I place them on my flickr photostream, and I license > them under creative commons. And fascinating things happen - my > pictures appear on top of Wikipedia articles (like > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_buildings_in_the_world > ), without any intervention of mine. People just use it, I can sit > back, relax, and see how the contribution widens. > > Of course, there other different stories. My colleague (and manager) > runs a wiki about his own town, Bielepedia, and he wants to exchange > information with Wikipedia. Now he can’t, as well as quite a lot of > other free content community projects. Though of course, some may > believe license difference doesn’t mean much, in this case it means > that we’re building borders we don’t need nor we have intent to > maintain. > > I live and breathe Wikipedia technology, but I do not feel competent > enough to go and push content itself around, and it just shows up > there itself (oh, of course, there’s army of committed volunteers who > help with that). So, I benefit the project just by being creative > commoner, and I may benefit lots of other projects. We at Wikipedia > technical team are very open in what we do, and try to spread our know- > how in many directions. Documents I wrote about how we do things ended > up downloaded hundred thousand times, and I really hope that some of > that know-how will end up used and reused. > > I guess I’m taking this to extremes - I ended up talking to people in > government of Lithuania, journalists and non-profit activists. Imagine > a government, that would commit to open licensing for produced > content. Well, no need to imagine - US federal institutions release > information to public domain, but in Europe it is way more restricted. > Still, what one has to realize - at government level it is not only a > right to be given, it also has to be a right that has to be protected. > Nowadays that means going to copyright powerhouses that serve large > record labels and movie studios, and will charge for services, that > government has to provide for free (and does in other areas, like > looking for your stolen car). > > We have lots and lots of talks about knowledge-societies at government > levels, but we never get to the point, that every individual is part > of that, and first of all we have to teach those rights, and guard > them. But of course, to prove, that our rights have to be guarded, we > have to show how great our work is - and how powerful can our sharing > be. To achieve that we have to build bridges between license islands, > talk same languages, and of course, create. > > I’m a creative commoner. So should be you. > > P.S. So should be Wikimedia Foundation. I’m extremely excited about > the work being done to make it reality (thanks Erik, Mike, Mako, > everyone!), and you know my personal position on the matter by now :) > > > Cheers, > -- > Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]] > > > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
