A way to get around copyright?

Before this blog was even up and running I had problems with copyright law. Professor King said on our first night in class that we each had to create our own blog so we could discuss online media issues and all I thought about was the visuals I wanted my blog to have. Nice colors, pretty fonts and lots of complementing photos. Blogging about Katie Couric? Nice, I could put a cute picture of her from usatoday.com to go alongside my post. But wait - is there a copyright on that photo? Am I legally allowed to use it on my blog? Doesn't everyone just steal everything off the Internet anyway? What's the big deal?

I've run into this before - I work for the student newspaper The GW Hatchet and last year for the Student Association elections one of the candidates copied one of the photos of him from the paper and used it for his flyers around campus. He ended up violating copyright law and had to pay us a pretty hefty fee for using it. After that I realized how serious copyright violations could be. This kid had to pay hundreds of dollars because he didn't take it seriously, or maybe he didn't even know about it.

But it's all about getting the credit that is due. In my mind, copyright became serious for people in my generation after file sharing systems like Napster and people who downloaded from them started getting sued for downloading free music from the Internet and therefore hurting the artist's profits. Copyright is everywhere in the U.S. - from movies to music to news stories to photos and what if you want to watch, listen, read or look at any of these? You have to pay the price. No wonder someone started a non-profit to make things easier on both the originator and the person who wants to use their work.

Creative Commons is a great compromise for people in my generation that have grown up using computers. We want to download everything and don't expect to have to pay. Creative Commons has found a compromise, which is exactly what we need. According to their Web site, the organization allows copyrigh holders to grant some of their rights to the public while keeping others through a variety of licensing schemes. Creative Commons saw that there was a demand for sharing online files without cost and sought to eliminate the problem. I think it's a great solution. What do you think?