A little bit of appreciation goes a long way

I think of being a content creator in the digital age a kin to a paralegal working at a law firm – one does all the work while the other reaps the rewards and benefits. In the law office, it’s the paralegals who do all the legwork, ie. the research, client building, filing, and follow up, while the attorney simply signs their name and receives the praise of a job well job. ^{[ DISCLAIMER: THIS IS AN EXAGGERATED OPINION OF THE ATTORNEY/PARALEGAL RELATIONSHIP BASED ON PERSONAL EXPERIENCES. HOWEVER, THE MAJORITY OF ATTORNEYS I KNOW ARE NOT LIKE THIS. ]} In most cases, the paralegal does receive some form of gratitude and appreciation from the attorney they work for, and for most paralegals, this small act of validation is enough, while others may decide to seek employment elsewhere, relocate to a different area, or pursue a different career calling altogether. This isn’t all that different, in my opinion, than a content creator who devotes massive amounts of time and energy into developing and perfecting their digital creations and sharing their work on the open web. When you pour time and energy into anything, it creates a kind of intrinsic value and the attention born into such a project is deserving of appreciation and acknowledgment. This is why it’s important to validate not just the work of the creator, but the creator themselves as well. One way of doing this is through proper attribution when we share or reproduce the work of someone else online, much like we would do if we were citing a reference in a scholarly research paper. Whether its in an academic setting or a virtual one, It’s important that we all give credit to the original authors and creators of the content we share online.

Personally, I’m much like the paralegal mentioned above who is happy enough just to receive the occasional accolades from the attorney she works for – probably because that was me for many years. However, now there’s a certain level of accountability involved. If I’m going to attach my name to something and share on the web for everyone to see and critique, I better make sure it’s good!

It’s important to me that I leave this world better than I found it. This ideal of making a positive difference, regardless of how small, is woven into my very identity, as I discussed in my last blog entry Who Am I?. Through a sense of altruistic purpose and the potential to reach more people through a broader media outlet, I am working to establish within myself and my community a foundation of hope built on empathy, authenticity, and charity. But I also I understand and value how precious and fleeting time is, and since I won’t waste my time on anything I wouldn’t be proud to put my name on, I believe it’s appropriate to license my work in a way that preserves the original intention but also allows others to share the message if they want to.

I’ve created a lot of online content throughout the years, and to be honest, never paid much attention to copyrighting or credit attribution, mainly because my circle of influence was always so small. However, now that my online presence is growing, so is the reach of my ideas, and likewise the need to be credited adequately and appropriately is also growing. There is value in the countless hours that go into creating and perfecting the stuff I put online, either for this class, or as part of my personal brand building on social media, even if the value is strictly relevant to me and measurable only in how much a moment of time costs when it’s something you know you can never get back. This is why I chose the creative commons license that I did. I don’t mind if people copy, share, or even make a profit off my work, as long as they acknowledge and appreciate the effort and time that I put into it.

Sharing is Caring: The Golden Rule of Copyright Laws

If you’re gonna use it, you must attribute it! Besides the immoral aspect of claiming someone’s hard work as your own, it is also illegal in the United States thanks to copyright laws which protect a creator’s intellectual property from the moment it is created and published onward. There’s no need to apply for a patent that could take years to be approved, or complete some lengthly form every time you upload your latest artwork to Instagram. You created it, and you get to decide how, if at all, it is used once it’s live in the digital world. At least, that’s the very broad concept of copyright protection laws. But the truth is, most of the content we see online today is merely a remix of some kind of yesterday’s internet fad. I can remember being warned that whatever I post on the internet will last forever, and that if I didn’t want it coming back to haunt me when I was older, then I shouldn’t put it online in the first place. Back then, this was partly because we didn’t have the same level of security or government monitoring [read censorship] that we do today. But also because most of us were just too excited to finally have an audience for our creative endeavors. As the first generation to experience AOL chats and message boards, where “ASL?” was common lingo to us, but foreign language to our parents, we knew no bounds in the amount that we shared online, despite the frequent dire warnings from our elders. And I think that kind of freely given, freely shared mentality is what fuels the open-source initiative in today’s digital environment. Except now, we are the elders and our children are teaching us a thing or two about being “cheugy”. (Don’t know what that means? I didn’t either – I had to look online for today’s lingo translations. )

When I think about how much things have changed between the days of dial up and Snake on your cell phone, I also recognize how much things stay the same. Information is readily available at our fingertips whenever we seek it, and the ability to share our thoughts and ideas across not only state lines, but also across political, cultural, and generational divides is truly a marvel of today’s digital advancements. But the driving force behind this incredible expansion of digital access and accessibility is something that has driven human growth since the dawn of the time – human connection. We, as members of the human race, all crave human connection and it is what drives us to keep reaching forward and pushing the lines of what we once believed to be impossible in the ever prevailing quest to feel connected, authentically, to another person. And as long as the desire to connect is still pressing the boundaries of our self-limiting ideals, then I’ll still be here, trying to tie it all together for the rest of us.