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Well done!
You have completed Copyright Basics!
You have completed Copyright Basics!
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We've reached the end of Copyright Basics, but there's just one last piece of advice I'd like you to take away from this course.
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Well you did it. You learned the fundamentals of copyright.
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You now know more about this subject than the vast majority of people in the world. You really do.
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Your work, your career, is going to be all the better for it.
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But please let me be clear about something.
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While copyright is law, you shouldn't be scared of it.
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It's also not a weapon.
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I mean there's plenty of creative people out there who think that the only point of copyright is to give you a way to sue people,
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like it's a notice you can put on your stuff just so you can take them to court later on.
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That's just such a negative thing. That's not what copyright really is.
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It's not the point.
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Like we talked about, copyright is meant to encourage you to make new stuff.
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You have the rights to whatever you create for as long as you're alive,
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and then the rest of the world gets to make full use of your work via the public domain.
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It's an incentive to keep creating, and where some see vagueness and ambiguity in the law, I see flexibility and even opportunity.
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You can keep your copyright, but you can still share your creative work freely with the world.
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It's that one step up above public domain.
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Use it how you want to, just make sure you give me credit for it.
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Make sure people know that I made it.
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That's a powerful idea, and it's the whole reason that WordPress or Wikipedia even exist.
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Copyright doesn't really mean restrictions. It means freedom.
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Freedom to do what you want to do with you create.
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So I want to leave you with 2 very simple words of advice.
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Don't worry.
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Don't panic as Douglas Adams would say. Keep calm and carry on. However you want to say it.
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Don't worry about getting sued or suing someone else.
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The chances of you ever ending up in a courtroom over something copyright related really are quite slim.
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For starters, you've made it through this course so you know how to properly use and license the work of others,
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and even if someone uses your work in a way that you didn't agree to, asking them to knock it off is easy. We learned that.
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Don't freak out if someone breaks your licensing terms.
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They probably just didn't know any better just like you might not have known any better before you took this course.
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Send them that email, explain yourself, and be nice.
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Getting all upset and trying to sound official and important is never as effective as just being yourself and asking politely.
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Don't worry about someone having the same idea as you.
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They're not going to create what you create the same way that you would create it anyway.
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They're not you.
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Plus even if you, say, release an iPhone app, and someone releases a similar app at the same time,
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they had no way of knowing that you had the same idea.
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It's probably a coincidence.
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There are plenty of apps out there that do the same thing, plenty of similar websites.
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Don't worry about being super protective of your idea.
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Focus on making that idea a real thing in the first place,
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and then focus on making it the best it can possibly be.
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Don't get caught up in that worry about someone stealing your idea or making a similar website
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or someone suing you or whatever.
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You'd never get anything done if you just worried about that all day.
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You'd never actually create anything.
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Copyright, as a law and as an idea, wants you to create.
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So don't worry. Take all of this knowledge that you have now about copyright and licensing and go put it to good use.
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Go make something amazing.
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