Are you an artist, a writer, or anyone who releases some form of content on the internet? Well, if your content is of quality, and if you care about how your content is distributed, modified, or just plain used, chances are you’ll want to release that content with a license.
In this article I’ll introduce you to licensing your content, go in depth into the various different types of licenses available, and make sure you know exactly how to protect your content.
What is the Creative Commons?
Creative Commons defines the spectrum of possibilities between full copyright and the general acceptance of something being public domain.
Creative Commons isn’t meant to replace the Copyrighting system whatsoever. In fact, Creative Commons is meant to work parallel with the copyrighting process allowing the right holders the flexibility to offer up their content in a number of ways without risking someone else stealing that data or claiming it as their own.
Copyleft — A term to know.
“Copyleft is a play on the word copyright to describe the practice of using copyright law to remove restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions of a work for others and requiring that the same freedoms be preserved in modified versions.”
“Copyleft is a form of licensing and can be used to modify copyrights for works such as computer software, documents, music and art. In general, copyright law allows an author to prohibit others from reproducing, adapting, or distributing copies of the author’s work. In contrast, an author may, through a copyleft licensing scheme, give every person who receives a copy of a work permission to reproduce, adapt or distribute the work as long as any resulting copies or adaptations are also bound by the same copyleft licensing scheme. A widely used and originating copyleft license is the GNU General Public License. Creative Commons provides a similar license called ShareAlike.”
“Copyleft can also be characterized as a copyright licensing scheme in which an author surrenders some but not all rights under copyright law. Instead of allowing a work to fall completely into the public domain (where no copyright restrictions are imposed), copyleft allows an author to impose some, but not all, copyright restrictions on those who want to engage in activities that would otherwise be considered copyright infringement. Under copyleft, copyright infringement can be avoided if the would-be infringer perpetuates the same copyleft scheme. For this reason copyleft licenses are also known as “reciprocal” licenses.”
“While copyright law protects the rights of the creator by providing control of distribution and modification, the idea of copyleft is to grant subjective libre freedom to end users. Copyleft licenses specify clauses which explicity remove those restrictions the creator considers to not provide libre freedom to the end user. In software, open source copyleft licenses place the primary restriction that information helpful in supporting modification of software (e.g. source code) must be made available to a user with a copy of the licensed software and allows the original author to be acknowledged.”
Source: Wikipedia
Creative Commons Licensing
There are 4 main license conditions that you can apply to any of the 6 main licenses I’ll mention in a moment. Learning the conditions first will better help you understand the license -> usage relationship I believe.
- Attribution: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.
- Share Alike: You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.
- Noncommercial: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only.
- No Derivative Works: You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.
There are 6 main licenses that you can readily choose from when first licensing your content.
- Attribution: 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.
- Attribution Share Alike: 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.
- Attribution No Derivatives: This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
- Attribution Non-Commercial: 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.
- Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike: 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.
- Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives: 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.
GNU General Public License, Free Software Foundation
“The GNU General Public License is a Free Software license. Like any Free Software license, it grants to you the four following freedoms:”
- The freedom to run the program for any purpose.
- The freedom to study how the program works and adapt it to your needs.
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
- The freedom to improve the program and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
The Stipulations..
- You must conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy distributed an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty and keep intact all the notices that refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty; and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of the GNU General Public License along with the Program. Any translation of the GNU General Public License must be accompanied by the GNU General Public License.
- If you modify your copy or copies of the program or any portion of it, or develop a program based upon it, you may distribute the resulting work provided you do so under the GNU General Public License. Any translation of the GNU General Public License must be accompanied by the GNU General Public License.
- If you copy or distribute the program, you must accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code or with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to furnish the complete corresponding machine-readable source code.
You can also read about the other available but not as widely used Creative Commons licensing terms.
So, you have content that you’d like to license, and you still can’t find the proper way to do so? Just point your web browser to: http://creativecommons.org/license/
