Creative Commons and Intellectual Property Concepts

If you don't want to read and process and understand all the following information there is one super easy breezy way to *avoid* all that work!  Make sure every part of what you create, every element that goes into your work is yours and yours alone by creating everything yourself.  You want to have a bird in your image? draw it yourself or photograph it yourself or collage it yourself or or or.....

So, here is a link to the general Creative Commons site:  http://creativecommons.org/
and here is a link to the section describe the types and kinds of licenses the creative commons initiative is built around.

Basically, the idea is that we want to foster the kind of sharing that eventually fuels innovation and the generation of new knowledge both within fields that already exist as well as emerging and yet to emerge fields.

Information specific to Intellectual Property rights here in Canada can be found here:  http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/cipointernet-internetopic.nsf/eng/h_wr00003.html

The two above sites will give you a comprehensive overview of copyright as it's currently exists and some insight into how some folks are re-envisioning intellectual property rights.

But then there is always good ol' wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright