Share the Wealth, Creative commons

With the invention of the internet, the ability to copy or protect an item has become really easy or really difficult. Some people or companies the put copyrights on their work and upload it to the internet, naively thinking that it is safe. Well they are completely wrong. It is so easy to copy anything from the internet and use it for personal use. videos, photos, documents, programs, anything is free game on the internet as far as I am concerned. If your web designer and IT guy can properly protect it before its uploaded, then it is too late. It will be downloaded and it will be used.

The creative commons license however is something that I respect and I would hope all other net explorers would respect as well. Creative commons licenses generally allow one to download legally a document from the internet and use it for personal or non-commercial use. Because there is no rule saying that you can't download it, that takes away 90% of the people who would normally only try to pirate something because they want to "fight the system", "stick it to the man" and call them self a hacker (though I doubt copying an image from a Google search counts as being a hacker).

Looking at the creative commons license from a student point of view, I find that it is awesome that people are selfless enough to upload their books or photos to allow students and schools to use them for educational purposes. As you may not find any school in Japan suffering from a lack of funding, you will most definitely find that school in America or any 3rd world country. There are schools that stress over how to get enough money for text books and supplies to last that school year. Letting the internet be a free source of knowledge is probably the best thing that we can do for mankind. The more knowledge we share the more innovations and advancements we can make as a species. If Memes can become a new international method of communication, then creative commons can be a new international method of education.

Here's a question. On Flickr, what does the creative commons license allow for someone to be able to do with someone else's photo?