One of the things that shocks people in Dayton Ohio- is my willingness to let my competition come take the Websitetology seminar and learn our “trade secrets” to web optimization. I also share my ideas for making Dayton a better place on my personal website, www.esrati.com all without worrying about people stealing my ideas. In fact, if they steal them, all the better, although I’d like to be rewarded somehow for them. In todays “expert economy” that reward can be as simple as proper attribution, That’s what the Creative Commons license is all about.

My online “friend”- D’Arcy Norman writes an eloquent essay on why he uses the CC license- and it’s well worth reading in it’s entirety- but here is a brief excerpt:

on creative commons licensing – D’Arcy Norman dot net
I don’t publish things online for fame, nor fortune. I started doing this primarily as an outboard, searchable brain. Over time, the network effects kicked in, and I’ve kept doing it for the additional reasons of sharing thoughts, experiences, and information with the rest of the class. The conversations that take place across the various bits of the social web have become far more important to me than simply publishing content. In order to honour the spirit of the network, attribution for use of content is required – a simple hyperlink – which then teaches Google, Technorati, and the rest of The Machine about the semantic connection between pages (and people).

As always, his insight makes me think about things I may not have thought about in depth- and it’s made me want to share it with you. The CC license isn’t hard to add to your site, and the principle of it is good common sense and a stand for good karma. Both of which are a very good thing these days.