Thursday, August 14, 2008

Knowledge is power

Everybody knows that knowledge is power. Who gets right information in hand can take action earlier in a right way. It is true in investment market and human resources market.

When we think about knowledge and information, the authors deserve their own right for generation of such treasure. Protection of authors' interest is the one of the key principles of copyright. However, if we think in another way, say the users of information, they can only reach it when copyright is resolved. Many precious things are not released due to copyright issue.

In certain sense, copyright becomes an obstacle of information and knowledge flow. Creative Commons becomes an important tool for authors to share, mix and reuse materials legally. It is different from copyright and public domain. Public domain means that there is no rights reserved for the materials under it. Copyright means that there are all rights reserved for the materials under it. Creative Commons just reserves some rights for the materials. It is far more flexible for authors. They have variety of options.

Then it is easy to release information and knowledge with appropriate protection of rights. It also release power to the users. When users get more power, their influence and their expertise would grow fast. Eventually, the world would evolve faster. That is the reason why the western societies evolve faster and faster. It becomes very hard for others to catch up.

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