The top 6 things we learned about Creative Commons (CC) Licensing
Natasha May and Mandy Frake Mistak, Teaching Commons.
Our educational developer community often works in collaboration – with other developers, faculty members, students, staff, and administration. We share resources, evidence-based practices, strategies, and stories to help each other. Recently, the Teaching Commons received an email requesting permission to use some of the resources posted on our website. This prompted a discussion about Creative Commons (CC) licensing and how we might share our work more easily while retaining credit for having written it in the first place. Consequently, we began our own investigation about CC licensing to determine whether this would be appropriate for our purposes. In this blog, we share the findings of our investigation in hopes that they might help you determine how best to share your own instructional material and work.
- CC licenses ensure that the authors get the credit they deserve for their work. The minimum requirement of any CC license is that users provide attribution to the creator when they use or share the material.
- There is a lot to consider, read, and learn about the licensing process and the types of licenses available, including legal code, however the CC Licensing process is quite simple. Upon visiting the org website, you will be required to answer a couple of questions about adapting and sharing your work for commercial or noncommercial use. Upon answering these questions, you receive your license. You may then copy and paste to your website or document.
- There are a number of important considerations to take into account before selecting and applying a CC license. For instance, considering the kind of CC License is important as once you select it is non-revocable. The top section of the Share your work page of the creativecommons.org website directs you to this simple process. What is important are the menu items in the right column on this page. This is where the details of the licenses are explained as well as the key points to consider. The good news is that the website is very thorough. Accompanying the license is a legal tool with official terms and language. However, there is also a “human readable” version of the license to help break down and clarify the meaning and language in the legal tool. The website includes a disclaimer stating that the “human readable” version is not a legal document.
- CC Licenses make it easier to share work. This means that upon the creation of a document or resource, the author decides how to share this work with colleagues, or more specifically, decides what the expectations are for those that will use and/or reuse this work. The author chooses the appropriate license based on just two questions: 1. Are you okay with others adapting your work and sharing it? In the answer to this question, the author can specify the terms in which others share their adaptations. For example, do you wish that those who use/adapt your work also use the same CC license? 2. Do you want to allow commercial use of your work? Once these two questions are answered, the author is given the corresponding CC license. The creativecommons.org website will generate an html code to be copied and pasted into the author’s website, or the website of the organization that “owns” the work, if the work being licensed is online, or a button may be downloaded with the corresponding statement copied in your document. Then anyone who wishes to use or adapt your work knows exactly what is allowed by the CC license you’ve chosen.
- CC Licenses allow an author to indicate precisely what is theirs and what is excluded from the license (like images etc.) Sometimes images are incorporated from the public domain into our work to make it more visually appealing. These images from the public domain, however, cannot be copyrighted. With the CC license, these images can be incorporated but stating clearly that the CC license does not apply to the images, or to other work that is excluded. For example, if an author co-produced something and only one author wishes to share it, it is still possible to share it with CC Licensing but with the disclaimer of what is covered under the CC license and what is excluded.
- CC Licenses can be applied to all kinds of work, including educational resources, music, photographs, databases, government and public sector information, and many other types of material. CC licenses are not recommended for software.
We have just skimmed the surface of what there is to learn about CC licenses. We’d be happy to hear from you what you know or want to know. Feel free to share by posting your comments or questions below. The FAQs page on the Creative Commons website may also be helpful.