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Don't Worry
3:24We'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.
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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