These days what we can and can’t do (legally speaking) is a huge mess. Laws change, lawsuits abound and we as educators are left scratching our heads. While luckily we have a bit more leeway in education than the general public, it’s a beautiful and terrifying gray area we are trying to navigate through. Understanding Copyright is a tricky thing, but I would like to introduce a wonderful movement called the Creative Commons which is an alternative to the traditional ways at looking at things. Once an individual creates some piece of work, whether that is a piece of writing, a song, a video, or whatever, it is automatically copyrighted. From what I understand this is meant to protect the copyright holder from abuses in use, copy, or display of their work- their livelihood. But sometimes creators want to give permission to others (in certain predetermined ways) without going through all that mess of giving and receiving permission. Watch the following two videos for an introduction to the Creative Commons solution.