Creative Commons Add-In for Office Released

Ctrl+Alt+De1337 writes "Creative Commons has announced the release of an add-in to Microsoft Office that allows the easy addition of a CC license to files created with Word, PowerPoint, or Excel. It was co-developed by Microsoft and Creative Commons and only works in Office XP and Office 2003. It can be downloaded from Microsoft's download center after a validation check, and CNet has a screenshot available of the tool."

Comments

Direct link to screenshot

[Anonymous Coward]

Direct URL to screenshot image:
i.n.com.com/i/ne/p/2006/ccprompt_466x359.jpg

Re:Why do you need an add-in?

[monomania]

"What would be far more useful would be a way to tag Creative Commons documents in web pages, and then if some search engine (Google? please?) would explicitly label Creative Commons results as such..."

There is; on the web badge code, the following (or, depending on the license, something similar) is encapsulated:

<rdf:RDF xmlns="http://web.resource.org/cc/"
        xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
        xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax -ns#">
<Work rdf:about="">
<license rdf:resource="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/2.5/" />
</Work>
<License rdf:about="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 2.5/">
      <requires rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Attributi on" />
      <permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Reproduct ion" />
      <permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Distribut ion" />
      <permits rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Derivativ eWorks" />
      <requires rdf:resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Notice" />
</License>
</rdf:RDF>

It's up to the browser/search engine/application as to what is done with it.

Re:Why should they need to?

[Ctrl Alt De1337]

If you don't attach a license with your work anyone can do anything with it without you being able to do anything about it.

This is the exact opposite of what the law says. If you create an original work of any kind, whether or not you register it with the copyright office it is still copyrighted to you and no one can do anything with it without your permission. If you don't put a license on it, then it is assumed that you are reserving all of your rights not waiving all of your rights.

Re:Not Office 2K?

[cnettel]

Task panes (i.e. non-modal dialog boxes integrated in the window border) were added as a new UI object in Office XP. Quite a lot of things that could have been made into wizards or plain dialog boxes in older versions are panes in XP/2003. I guess this download makes use of that GUI style as well.

"Smart tags" were also introduced in Office XP, the most popular one being the one where you choose the paste settings after you've seen the results of pasting with default settings, but it wouldn't make even less sense to package this functionality as a tag.

Re:Why do you need an add-in?

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

then if some search engine (Google? please?) would explicitly label Creative Commons results as such

From advanced search:

Return results that are:
- not filtered by license
- free to use or share
- free to use or share, even commercially
- free to use share or modify
- free to use, share or modify, even commercially
More info

Re:Why should they need to?

[QuantumG]

The courts don't care. They leave it up to the person being sued to prove they created it. Other than Microsoft, no-one registers copyright, and even when people do register copyright they register so little of the actual work that it's not possible to tell what work it is they are registering. In the case of computer programs, it is typical to register the first and last 3 pages of the source code.. Yes, that's right, pages.. wtf is a page of source code? Who knows.

Mod Parent Up!

[shylock0]

You're absolutely right. Microsoft has done a fantastic job of not only supporting old versions of their files, but supporting old versions of *everybody else's* file formats as well. Word is just about the only thing that will open my WordStar documents from the early 80s. This is something I actually trust Microsoft to do. If you're paranoid about it, keep hard copies -- or print to PDF.