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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."
Why would you want a "Creative Commons tool" for Office? Wouldn't it just be easier to add a page after the title page, like the copyright page, but instead explaining the license of the document? Why do you need a program to do it for you?
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, and encourage people to listen to, view, combine, mash up (shudder), and otherwise use them.
ttuttle is a rankmaniac
There is something very wrong with our copyright system when people have to attach a licence to all media they create in order for others to use it... Perhaps I should start wearing a badge that reads "Your eyes and ears have permission to consume my copyright material (e.g. My voice, and face."
... ?
Why isn't media created free/public domain unless its creator wants it protected?
God forbid that Microsoft should encourage anyone to use their own product or anything. Such a shame that no one is able to write CC-covered material with any other product anymore, thanks to the exclusive arrangement that CC no doubt made with Microsoft.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
What's the point of posting on a website not under your control?
"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.
CNet has a screenshot available of the tool.
That screenshot looks nothing like Ballmer!
Because you're licensing the content not the format it's presented in. People generally copyright the text on a website or inside a book, not that the book was printed on white paper using a serif font or that your website is running on Apache or IIS.
What if I improperly tag a document with a Creative Commons license? For example, say I am an employee in a large office. Lets make it a government office just for spice. I create some document of some importance to my boss. I have done it as a work for hire. I have done it in a government office, but it is not intended for publication. Somehow, I manage to tag this document with a CC license. I send it around for review, and the information in it is rolled up into a document that IS intended for publication. It wasn't my document to license out, but the license is now bundled up in there. What, if anything, happens next?
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
It is there to get you used to the idea of DRM. It is actually part of the DRM system integrated in Office. Sooner or later, users will be presented with a far more complex DRM tool to choose an appropriate license and protection scheme. Standard users are protective about their ideas, thoughts and works. If they are asked by Office, if they want to share it with the rest of the world or put a restrictive license and protection on their creation, they'll click on "It is mine, my IP, nobody else should reuse it".
I really think this is only just the beginning of a broader DRM tool.
No, just the angry, belligerent, and or annoying ones.
Cogito, ergo sig.
Please don't use this plugin if you are releasing your content under a free Creative Commons licence. No document is free if it's encoded in one of Microsoft's proprietry formats. You are much better off to use the online Creative Commons licence chooser, and copy the text to a document written in OpenOffice.org, TeX, Gnumeric, HTML or the like yourself. This way, you will know that all your potential audience is able to read the document (even if they have to download some software first), even in ten years time when Microsoft Office XP is no longer supported and the current version makes a hash of old files.
Look out!