WHAT ARE CREATIVE COMMONS? AND HOW DOES IT WORK

WHAT ARE CREATIVE COMMONS? AND HOW DOES IT WORK

Creative Commons, a non-profit group, is actively involved on a global scale, and its free licenses are used by creators all over the world to make their works available online.

These licenses facilitate the author’s ability to grant others advance permission to use the work subject to specified terms and conditions. Copyright safeguards any new works, whether they be journal articles, photographs, or anything else.

Protecting a work with copyrights stops others from making copies of it or posting it online, among other uses, and this is what Creative Commons aims to provide. With a Creative Commons license, the original author can specify the conditions under which others can use their work.

Creators can rest assured that the public will understand what they can and cannot do with their work when it is released under a Creative Commons license. As a result, they will only need the author’s approval for uses that are not covered by the license.

The great thing about Creative Commons licenses is that they all permit educational use of the works. Since CC works are freely distributable, teachers and students can use them without permission to make copies, distribute them further, and even alter or remix them.

When an author grants permission for others to use their work under the terms of a Creative Commons license, anyone in the world is free to do so.

When a piece of work is licensed under a Creative Commons license, it can be used in certain contexts without the need to get in touch with the author or negotiate terms of use.

Creative Commons licenses are the way to go if you want your work to reach the widest possible audience online. The rights granted are expansive to encourage collaboration, remixing, and the creation of new works. While Creative Commons licenses can be useful for increasing the number of people who can access a creator’s work, they may not be the best choice if you have any intention of profiting from the work in the future.

Any person who comes into contact with a work that has a Creative Commons license attached to it is hereby granted permission to use the work by the terms of the license, provided that the use of the work is consistent with the license.

The Creative Commons licenses can be broken down into six distinct categories:

Attribution;

Attribution – ShareAlike;

Attribution – No Derivatives;

Attribution-NonCommercial;

Attribution-NonCommercial – ShareAlike; and

Attribution-NonCommercial – No Derivatives.

The public domain dedication instrument and the other five licenses give authors a lot of coverage. Considering your motivations for sharing your work and the targeted audience’s intended use can help you determine the best option.

• Creative Commons Button with Attribution License

With a CC BY license, others can use the work for commercial purposes and reuse, adapt, remix, and distribute it. The only stipulation is that credit is given to the original author whenever possible.

• Creative Commons Button for Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA)

With the CC BY-SA license in place, others can use the work for both non-commercial and commercial purposes. You have to give credit to the original author, and if you make changes to the work and distribute them, you have to use the same license or one that is compatible with it.

• Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)

With this license, any individual or organisation may use, remix, adapt, and redistribute the work for any non-commercial purpose under the CC BY-NC license, but commercial use is prohibited. Provide proper credit to the original author(s).

• The Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License (CC BY-NC-SA)

A license button for the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial Share-Alike does not allow for commercial operations, and the CC BY-NC-SA license prohibits the use of the work for commercial purposes. Still, others are free to reuse, adapt, remix, and distribute it. If you make changes to the work and distribute them, you must do so under the same or an equivalent license. Provide proper credit to the original author(s).

• NoDerivs (CC BY-ND) Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives License

In other words, the CC BY-ND license permits others to use and distribute the work for any purpose, including commercial use, so long as they do not alter the work in any way. Provide proper credit to the original author(s).

• Creative Commons BY-NC-ND Attribution (CC BY-NC-ND)

No commercial use or alterations are permitted under the CC BY-NC-ND license, but the work may be reused and distributed in its original, unaltered form. Provide proper credit to the original author(s).

Public licenses are what Creative Commons (CC) offers. You can use them to specify the extent of others’ appropriation of your work. You, as the author, have inherent copyright protection over all of your works; anyone else who wants to use them must obtain your permission first.

With a CC license, you can easily switch from an “all rights reserved” stance to a “some rights reserved” stance. In legal terms, they are instruments to grant permission in advance for others to share and use your work under the terms you specify.

Among all licenses, CC BY is the most permissive. With this license, you can share the work with others, make changes, and even make money off of it, so long as you attribute the original work to the author and note if you made any changes.

Similarly, the CC BY-SA license is freely available. As the SA (share alike) abbreviation suggests, the modified work must be distributed under the same terms of reuse, i.e., the same CC license.

The CC licenses are less welcoming because of the NC (non-commercial use) and ND (no derivative works) restrictions.

 Conclusion

Creative Commons is a non-profit organisation and not a licensing entity; it is up to the copyright owner who uses the Creative Commons license to monitor uses to ensure consistency with the license grant and enforce against any breaches.

In contrast, other licensing entities and collecting societies license certain uses of their members’ work under certain conditions, monitor and ensure compliance with license terms, and collect and distribute royalties to the authors.