Essay

School of Lifelong Learning

BSc (Hons) Multimedia & Technology

Module: Personal, Professional and Academic Skills 2 - 208SLL

Tutor: Andrew Mackenzie

Essay question:

Describe the different types of Creative Commons license.

Explain the consequences of choosing each type and give examples of different CC licenses in practice.

By: Mohammed Saif

Date: 25^th October 2008

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Introduction

Many people consider the internet as another medium of communication. For myself and many others the internet is a gateway to unlimited and undefined world, a world of laws and no laws, a world where you as an individual have the opportunities to present, sell, share information just the same as other big known companies.

Without going too deep in the openness of the internet this open wide world gives you the chance to produce, create an present your creativity and if you not careful your idea can be snatch by the second you put it up, unless you make sure it’s covered by some sort of copyright licence.

The beauty of the internet is you can share information, build upon other ideas and this is how the internet advancing so quick, one small idea could be picked up by another genius to become a household name, just like flicker, Google..etc.

Creative Commons licence was developed to protect these ideas, so it’s like a middle path between a full copyright -where you can not touch a product or build on it or even use it- to a full public domain (pd) -where anyone can use an idea and change it-. So in a nutshell with a Creative Commons license, you keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit.

Different types of Creative Commons licenses

Baseline rules [1]

There are six different types of creative common licences and they vary from strict to flexible. But they all have common rules which are:

Every license will help you

• retain your copyright
• announce that other people’s fair use, first sale, and free expression rights are not affected by the license.

Every license requires licensees

• to get your permission to do any of the things you choose to restrict — e.g., make a commercial use, create a derivative work;
• to keep any copyright notice intact on all copies of your work;
• to link to your license from copies of the work;
• not to alter the terms of the license
• not to use technology to restrict other licensees’ lawful uses of the work

Every license allows licensees, provided they live up to your conditions,

• to copy the work
• to distribute it
• to display or perform it publicly
• to make digital public performances of it (e.g., webcasting)
• to shift the work into another format as a verbatim copy

Every license

• applies worldwide
• lasts for the duration of the work’s copyright
• is not revocable [1]

Types of licenses and consequences of use:

Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd)

This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, allowing redistribution. This license is often called the “free advertising” license because it allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.2]

As an example Reuters Alertnet photos which I use regularly for the charity I work for, it uses photos which can be distributed and used for emergency appeals purposes as long as the photo is not cropped or changed and the name of the photographer is mentioned with a link to alertnet.org.

Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (by-nc-sa)

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. Others can download and redistribute your work just like the by-nc-nd license, but they can also translate, make remixes, and produce new stories based on your work. All new work based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also be non-commercial in nature.[2]

As an example I have used some CMS (Content Management System) templates like Joomla templates which fall under this category. But the problem I find with this license is that when you start to modify or tweak templates made by others sometimes it loses its originality and sometimes the product ends up something completely different. So restricting the usage of the same license is unfair in my opinion in this case.

Attribution Non-commercial (by-nc)

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.[2]

I find this license more practical and more flexible for both the author and the user. For the author it gives you the acknowledgment of your work and for the user it gives you more freedom of using other licenses and unlimited control.

Attribution No Derivatives (by-nd)

This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you..[2]

Attribution Share Alike (by-sa)

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.[2]

Attribution (by)

This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered, in terms of what others can do with your works licensed under Attribution..[2]

Who uses CC?

The users of CC licenses are growing by the minutes, all this adds to our benefit as users. Few years back if you wanted to build a website it would have taken you a bit of time or cost you a fortune for content such as text and media, but now thankfully to a lot of website such as flicker and others listed in (Other sources) you can use their content as long as you go by the Creative commons license that they have applied to their site.

Finally

I found that Creative Commons are a great way and an easy way to protect your work on the web. The majority of such licenses uses the moral aspect of the users and not their signature at the bottom of the user agreement to prove the right of use, and from personal experience as an author you gain user respect and contribution when you respect the users right of use.

Other resources [3]

Below is some websites categorized by type that uses Creative commons licenses.

Audio

ArtistServer.com - Thousands of MP3s for you to download and try out smaller bands.

ccMixter.org - A site to try your hand at mixing and mashing music that is all offered under the CC.

Jamendo.com - A music site providing free, full-length albums for you to download. You pay the artists what you want, or just spread the word about them.

PodShow.com - A site filling your MP3 player with Creative Commons licensed music, that allows you to discover old and new music alike.

SoundClick.com - A site for bands, both signed and unsigned, to be promoted. Offers free, downloadable, legal MP3s from some bands.

TheFreeSoundProject - A huge collection of CC licensed sound effects files.

General Searches

Archive.org - Known mainly for their “Wayback Machine” as a means for seeing old pages on the net, they have also collected together a huge collection of free-to-use recordings and texts.

Freebase.com - A community powered search engine to search the web for CC licensed work for you to use.

Google Advanced Search - Google gives you the option to include forms of licensing in your search.

Wikimedia Commons - The central clearing area for the Wikimedia projects CC files.

Yahoo Creative Commons Search - Yahoo allows you to search the entire web for what you need based on the licenses attached to the content.

Images

DeviantArt.com - A site for artists to display their works. Some are nice enough to license under CC for your use.

EveryStockPhoto.com - Indexes over 1.4 million Creative Commons photos for your use.

Flickr Creative Commons search - Search Flickr for all the derivatives of the Creative Commons licensing.

Geograph.org.uk - An attempt to photograph the entirety of the British Isles, and at the same time, license all the photos under the CC.

OpenClipArt.org - An archive of free-to-use clipart numbering around 11,000 pieces.

PhotoEverywhere.co.uk - A travel & tourism photo site offering stock photography for everyone’s use.

TakeIdeas.com - Share your photos, or find ones that inspire you.

Yotophoto.com - Indexes photos in the public domain and free-to-use licenses.

Texts

IntraText.com - A site featuring thousands of texts from 900 B.C. to this decade. Most works are under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

TravellersPoint.com - A wiki for travellers with a large collection of CC licensed travel related text.

UnearthTravel.com - Read travel guides about your favorite destinations.

Videos

Blip.tv - Allows video makers to assign multiple types of licenses to their content, users can search on each type.

Lulu.TV - A CC license site with embeddable videos

OurMedia.org - A video specific service run by archive.org, allowing users to host their videos under the Creative Commons license.

Revver.com - A video upload site very like YouTube, but all content defaults to the Creative Commons license.

SpinXpress.com - Share your video, audio, and images through various versions of the CC license.