This week, we talked about intellectual property, copyright, and Creative Commons licenses. Before this, I did not really think about copyright when I was finding materials on the internet. I often assumed that if something was online, it was free to use, especially images. However, now I realise that most online content is automatically protected by copyright, and using it without permission may cause problems.
One concept I learned is Creative Commons, which allows creators to share their work under certain conditions. According to the Creative Commons, different types of licenses control how others can use, modify, or share a work. For example, some licenses allow commercial use, others allow non-commercial use, and others do not allow modifications. This helped me realize that not all “free” content is the same, and I need to pay attention to the specific license.
Another thing that stood out to me is the difference between “publicly accessible” and “public domain.” Just because something can be found on Google does not mean it is free to use. This changed the way I think about using online resources.