You are not alone!

Well, if you want to use work legally and not go through the hassle of looking for copyright information about the audio or visual content you would like to use, you are not alone.

One way that vloggers have gone about avoiding copyright issues is to use Creative-Commons-licensed material. CC is a nonprofit organization that “provides free licenses and other legal tools to mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof” , It was founded in 2001 with support from the Duke Law School’s Center for the Public Domain. As of 2008, there have been over one hundred thirty million CC licensed works.

As I have mentioned before, the very foundation of the vlog seemed to stem from creative expression and sharing. More access to video technology over the past few years have increased the ability to make vlogs, and the Creative Commons movement has grown alongside it. Note that in 2003, there were three million licenses around, but in 2004, an estimated 4.7 million were around, and “licenses were also ported to 12 international jurisdictions”.

Because of the internet’s lack of boundaries and its simultaneous legal boundaries, it seems as if vlogging and the associated CC movement emerged as ways of trying to stay outside these boundaries. Unfortunately, as this fellow blogger has noted, it looks like the Creative Commons movement is still merely part of a subculture. Spread the word, everyone!