I was just looking at Nashville Public Library’s website – very attractive site! They redesigned last year, and now have a great website, full of web 2.0-ish goodness.
And then I saw this in their footer: “Copyright © 2006 Nashville Public
Library, All Rights Reserved.” I don’t have a beef with NPL – the same type of thing can be found on my website and many others, too.
But I do have a question: is this really necessary? Copyright is generally placed on a website to say “ask before you use the stuff found on this website.” So why not go the extra mile and use a Creative Commons license? That way, instead of having a sign on your website that says stop!, you’ll have a sign that says “feel free to re-use our content – we wrote it for you, after all! Just let us know about it!”
It’s a small way to encourage your customers to start conversations – remember my Inviting Participation mantra?
