As far as i could tell, there are currently 2 other CC plugins for WordPress – wpLicense and cc-configurator – however both of them only let you set your license on a global level. That is, they let you pick one license for all your posts and pages throughout your entire site. I thought it might be useful if each WP user/author could choose between different CC licenses and be able to set them on a post-by-post basis. So, i modified the wpLicense plugin to do just that.

“The main purpose of this plugin is to give WP admins who run sites with multiple users/authors the option let these users/authors set specific CC licensing terms on a post by post basis.”

How it works:
It uses the CC api and the JsWidget to add a new section to the write/edit post page and then displays a small CC graphic/button and text on your published posts for all to see. The widget lets you choose the appropriate licensing structure and then your choice is automatically saved to a custom field the next time you click “Save and Continue Editing”, “Save”, or “Publish”. Then, it uses the CC api (details-license-uri-uri) to call some javascript that displays a small graphic/button and some text linking back to the definitions for the license you have chosen. Jquery was used to insert the new CC license section to the write/edit post pages as well as to open/close the new section. I also had to use Jquery to fix the tooltips for the JsWidget. Lastly, this plugin is optimized so that it will add only 1 DB query (the cc_js_result_uri) to each post that has set a CC license and stores it to a custom field for that given post – whereas the wpLicense plugin seemed to use 3 seperate db queries to set the global licencing for the site.

Screenshots:
Check out the plugin in action.

Download:
Click on the following link to download the plugin: per-post-license_v.02.zip

Requirements:
1. This plugin has been testing and works on WP 2.3.x using the default theme (but it is still a work in progess / comments and suggestions are welcome).
2. Your web server needs either curl (most have it installed and it’s the default setting used in this plugin) or URL file-access enabled (to be able to run file_get_contents() instead of curl).

Install:
1. Unzip and Copy the per-post-license folder to your plugins directiory and activate it.
2. Add the template function (see next paragraph) to where you’d like the CC image/button and text to appear on your post (this might be the single.php or footer.php template file).
3. Go to the Write post page or Edit an existing post.
4. Look for the new section marked “CC License” and click the small “plus” sign to open the section.
5. Select “A Creative Commons license” and choose the appropriate licensing structure.
6. Save the post and You’re Done!

WP Template Function:
Add the following function to the WP template file (like single.php, or footer.php) to get the CC license to appear on your post.

Template Options:
Right now, there are only 2 options that you can use with the cc_insert_html() template function.
1. The first is the $display variable. [$display=true ---> will show the CC license , $display=false will not]
2. The second is the $use_curl variable [default is set to --> $use_curl=true , if you explicitly set $use_curl=false the plugin will revert to the php function file_get_contents() which is not always enabled on all web servers]

CSS styles:
Here is a sample style you can use to center, add padding and margins, as well as a horizontal dashed separator (you can ofcourse use any style you like). You would add this code to your style.css file in your template directory.
#cc_code { text-align:center; font-size:11px; width:450px; margin-top:25px; padding-top:25px; border-top:1px dashed #ccc; }
You could also just use inline css and replace the < div id="cc_code" > and add these styles directly – something like < div style="text-align:center; font-size:11px;" >.

To Do:
- get rss/atom feeds showing CC license
- possibly add CC to header (if appropriate)
- option to set per author licensing (for all an author’s posts)
- option to set global default license for entire site
- option to turn off graphic/button and just show text
- option to choose/add an existing licensing structure (other than CC) by providing a URL
- create another template function to gather and list all posts with CC licensing (by title)

This time, it’s not the musicians, or moviestars, but regular bloggers that are being hit.

Whether it is a totally copied web design, or just plain old fashioned content theft, the issue of plagiarism on the web keeps creeping up. Often, there is vey little you can do to prevent these occurances, and if it does happen to you, the infringement usually isn’t worth the cost of taking legal action. But what i find most interesting is that today, more and more website owners are standing up for themselves and fighting back.

As an alternative (or in addition) to dealing with costly copyright lawyers, web owners can empower themselves by being proactive. Through the use of clever keywords and the awesome power of search engines like google, it is possible to expose these culprits to the rest of the web community. A good example of this type of effort can be found at Smart IT Consulting. Here the author does a very thorough jobs of advertising all kinds of information about the accused. Included is a brief description of what happened, followed by a list of the thiefs’ email addresses, the original source material as well as a reprint of the stolen content, complete with screenshots and Whois Information for the offending domain.

Smart IT Consulting is also where i first learned about Copyscape. They offer a free service that will search the web (using google APIs) and tell you if any of your content is being reproduced. All you have to do is enter the URL of your page that you want to check, and Copyscape returns a list of possible matches. Results are organized in a simple and clean manner, with many extra features, like highlighting the copied portions of text, a copied word count, even links to the actual paragraph in question. Naturally, there is also a paid version of this service called Copysentry that will search your entire site for you on a regular basis, emailing you the results, so you don’t have to enter each page individually.

That being said, i can’t help but feel a little bad for all those unknowing highschool students who are going to copy eachother’s term papers, only to find that the teacher has caught them using Copyscape. Oh well, live and learn.

To sum up (taken from a recent Wired article), “In a unanimous ruling, the justices said that Grokster and StreamCast Networks — the company behind the Morpheus network — can be held liable for copyright infringement if they encourage customers to illegally share copyright movies and music. The Supreme Court returned the case to the district court where the two software companies will be tried for inducing infringement.”

This post is just my attempt at keeping a tab on some of what’s been going on.

Debate:

• The Real Lesson of Grokster (Wired magazine, 06/29/05.)
  Position: “the entertainment industry could well wind up the biggest loser”;
  Reasoning: rely on the courts to secure product sales instead of finding new ways to “insert themselves into the new order”, and one day they might find they’ve been “frozen out forever”;
• The Court Has Ruled So Enter the Geeks (NY Times, 06/29/05.)
  Position: “it’s a completely alien mentality for profit-focused companies that still dream of being paid every time someone hears a song”;
  Reasoning: “geeks and fans are simply going to bypass a legal framework that was built for sales of sheet music and discs”;
• Grokster May Haunt Podcasting (Wired magazine, 06/29/05.)
  Position: “the Grokster decision leaves technology companies [like Apple] on shakier footing”;
  Reasoning: Podcasters might include unauthorized copyright material in their broadcasts;
• The day entrepreneurship died (Jason Calacanis, 06/28/05.)
  Position: “what is the point of building a technology business in the United States if you’re going to get sued for the *potential* illegal use of your product”;
  Reasoning: “people who are thinking of building a Web2.0 services company are going to setup shop in Asia or an island somewhere out of the reach of the US courts“;
• Grokster Loss Sucks for Tech (Wired magazine, 06/27/05.)
  Position: “the ruling will chill innovation and result in more gadget-killing lawsuits”;
  Reasoning: technology groups are left with an “unclear standard of what it means for a company to encourage, or induce, its customers to infringe copyright”;
• Canadians wary of Grokster case fallout (vincealexander.com, 06/27/05.)
  Position: “the decision will not have any immediate effect on Canada because the U.S. and Canadian laws are different”;
  Reasoning: the Canadian levy scheme “makes downloading from the Internet legal, as long as it’s for private use and done on an audio recording medium.”;
• Will Google survive Grokster? (boingboing.net, 06/27/05.)
  Position: “google could be held liable for delivering copyrighted materials”;
  Reasoning: “its business model relies on advertisements. And the more we use Google, the more money it makes”;
• Ten Years of Chilled Innovation (Lawrence Lessig [businessweek.com], 06/27/05.)
  Position: “this is a pretty significant defeat”;
  Reasoning: the ruling “will invite all sorts of strategic behavior that will dramatically increase the cost of innovating around these technologies”;

» Electronic Frontier Foundation
» Consumer Electronics Association
» Public Knowledge