Creative Commons 101

Jul. 07, 2010

Creative Commons Logo Undoubtedly most bloggers and other web content developers have at some point in their careers come across Creative Commons Licenses. While different people use these for different reasons, most content creators agree that there are definite benefits to this type of license. Unfortunately, while many people have heard of Creative Commons, few have a really clear understanding of what they are or where they come from.

What are Creative Commons Licenses?

In response to a need for an alternative to classic copyright licenses, Creative Commons was created by a group of copyright and intellectual property experts in the United States in 2001. The project created several user-friendly licenses which enable content creators to share their work while retaining their copyright(s) under certain conditions.

Why should you use a Creative Commons (CC) License?

There are several benefits associated with placing this type of license on your content:

It allows you to share your content within a community while retaining your creative rights
It allows the spread and promotion of your content across the web without the loss of copyright
It allows you to place a visible license with regulations on your content rather than just an assumed, “all rights reserved” license

Which license is right for you?

It is important to understand that by placing your work under a Creative Commons License you are by no means giving up your copyright(s). The CC Licenses allow creators to mix and match certain “allowable conditions” according to their specific personal and professional preferences. There are six different types of licenses and each one reserves different subset of copyright(s). The license is generated by the Creative Commons website and then attached to the creator’s work. You can view a full list of the creative commons licenses on the Creative Commons website here.

The licenses fall under four different license categories based on the following conditions:

Attribution – You let others make free use (distribute, copy, perform etc.) your work, and its derivative works, as long as you are given credit.
Noncommercial – Follows the same rules as attribution, except the works aren’t to be used for any commercial purposes.
No Derivative Works – You work can be copied, distributed or performed verbatim only. In other words, no derivative works can be created based on your original creation.
Share Alike – In this case you’re allowing others to distribute derivatives of your work but only as long as they use an identical license to the one that was put on your original work.

Creative Common Licenses are an excellent way for content creators to share their content while protecting their copyright(s). Thus far, Creative Commons has been a successful, user-friendly alternative to traditional copyright licenses on the web. While it is by no means a perfect solution, it addresses some of the issues that web content creators have faced with traditional copyright licenses in the past and continues to grow in popularity.

For More information on this topic you can visit the Creative Commons Organization website, or the Creative Commons Canada website at:

http://www.creativecommons.org
http://www.creativecommons.ca

Image by AJC1 on Flickr

Posted by Amberlie Denny at July 7, 2010 8:45 AM