Creative Commons

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Creative Commons official logo from the Creative Commons website

Creative Commons Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization which set out to enable sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. CC licences are intended to work worldwide and within existing boundaries of copyright law; they do not replace copyright. The licences set out the re-use conditions for someone making use of another’s material.^[1] Together with its worldwide affiliate organizations and partners, it provides standardized and scrutinized license texts, translation into languages and adaptations for various jurisdictions. ^[2] In order to maximize ‘digital creativity, sharing and innovation’ Creative Commons built a set of free legal tools that constitutes ‘a layer of reasonable, flexible copyright in the face of increasingly restrictive default rules’. These legal tools are initially divided into two categories: First, a set of six licences, which is designed to help authors manage the exploitation of their creations and, second, the public domain tools whose goal is to facilitate authors in dedicating their works to the public domain or label and discover works that are already in the public domain. Creative Commons has pointed out clearly, on multiple occasions, that its goal is not to substitute existing copyright laws, but to ‘work alongside copyright’.2 It provides the means for the authors to make the passage from a system ‘all rights reserved’ to a ‘some rights reserved’ one.^[3]

History

The roots of the organization go back several years before the actual foundation. In 1999 Lawrence Lessig argued that the balance between public and private interests, and between the free flow of expressions of ideas and knowledge and state-guaranteed control and monopolies must at all times be carefully crafted, in the interest of both the society and the economy of a country, and that present tendencies favor monopolies and control too much. ^[4]

Creative Commons was founded in 2001 with support of the Center for the Public Domain. It was founded by Lawrence Lessig, Hal Abelson, and Eric Eldred. A board of directors leads Creative Commons; the board of directors is comprised of investors, philanthropists, entrepreneurs, and professionals in many fields like education, technology, and law. ^[5]

In December 2002, they released its first set of Copyright Licenses that were free to the public. The licenses were in part inspired by the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). In the years following the release, Creative Commons grew exponentially and were ported to over 50 affiliate networks.

In 2003, there were approximately one million dollars in use. By 2004, there were an estimated 4.7 million licensed by the end of the year. In that year, License 2.0 was released. In the following year 2005, Creative commons grew to over 20 million licensed works. Some improvements were made and License 2.5 was released before year-end. ^[6]

In 2005, Creative Commons created the Science Project. The project build commons based infrastructure for science; they identified and lowered “the through identifying and lowering unnecessary barriers to research, crafting policy guidelines and legal agreements, and developing technology to make research, data and materials easier to find and use.”

In 2007, the licenses in use reached approximately 90 million. On the fifth birthday of the licenses, License 3.0 was released. The education project was released. Like the science project, it created an infrastructure to make education tools and projects easier to use and share. In the following year, the licenses almost doubled, and Lawrence Lessig stepped down from his position of CEO.

After years of continuous growth, an important milestone was the migration of the Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects to use CC BY-SA in 2009.^[7] Licenses in use reached 350 million. Wikipedia migrated to Creative Commons: Attribution – ShareAlike as its content licensing. They released CC0.^[8]

On November 25, 2013, the launch of the new Creative Commons 4.0 Public Licenses marked yet another milestone for the development of the Open Content Movement. The new licensing suite aimed to be an international tool that fosters the development of the semi-commons. ^[9]

As of Novemeber, 2014, 882 Million licenses in use. As of 2015, there are more than 100 affiliates working in 75 jurisdictions around the world. ^[10]

Copyright and Licensing

While Creative Commons is considered to lead the copy leftist movement, they do not see themselves as being against [Copyright] entirely. Creative Commons promotes Copyright reform. Their website states that “while free licensing is important, it is not enough to reform copyright alone.” Creative Commons serves as an alternative or an accompaniment to copyright. ^[11]

The CC method of protecting authorship rights falls between open source and full copyright protection. Using the Creative Commons license, an author can choose to seek attribution, limit modifications, prohibit commercial uses, or demand that others similarly share any work derived from the protected material. ^[12]

"The point of Creative Commons is to provide a middle ground between two extreme views of copyright protection—one demanding that all rights be controlled, and the other arguing that none should be controlled. Creative Commons provides a third option that allows authors to pick and choose which rights they want to control and which they want to grant to others. The multitude of licenses reflects the multitude of rights that can be passed on to subsequent creator.” - Lawrence Lessig ^[13]

In 2009, Creative Commons released a new infrastructure for licensing called CCO. It allows artists, designers, educators, scientists, creators and “owners of copyright- or database-protected content to waive those interests in their works” and thereby place them in the [public domain], so others may “freely build upon, enhance and reuse the works for any purposes without restriction under copyright or database law.” CC0 is licensing infrastructure that works to serve the public domain. It is for creators that want to share their work in as whole a form as possible to be part of the creative process. Creative Commons users chose from a range or permissions available while retaining copyright. “While CC0 empowers yet another choice altogether, – the choice to opt out of copyright and database protection, and the exclusive rights automatically granted to creators” – the “no rights reserved” alternative to Creative Commons licenses. This caters to the copy leftists. ^[14]

The Licenses

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Creative Commons Chart

The CC licenses enable the copyright owner to allow certain types of usage—such as copying or modifying the contents—while constricting other forms of use, for instance by prohibiting commercial reuse. These licenses vary in the amount of restrictions placed on the reuse of the work. Beyond alerting individual users to their reuse rights, there is another important aspect to these licenses. Placing Creative Commons license code on digital content not only provides a human readable license, but also provides a machine readable version of the license, enabling computers to determine in what way the content may be reused. Machine readable licenses enable others to create automated services, based on the type of reuse granted by the content owner. ^[15]

The licences themselves are made up of three layers: the common deeds or human readable code which sets out simplified terms of re-use, the machine-readable code which standardizes the format for inclusion of the licence or citation in metadata, and underpinning this is the actual legal code. ^[16]

These main licenses, permitting free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work, are as follows:

- CCO No Rights Reserved, providing an opportunity to opt out of copyright and database protection;

- CC BY Attribution, allowing others to distribute or further build upon the creator's work, even for commercial purposes, as long as credit for the original work is given;

-CC BY SA Attribution or ShareAlike, allowing others to build upon the creator's work, even for commercial purposes, as long as the original work is credited and the new creation is licensed under the same terms as the original;

-CC BY ND Attribution - No Derivatives, allowing for the redistribution, either commercially or non-commercially, as long as the work is not changed, and credit to the original is given;

-CC BY NC - Non Commercial, allowing others to build upon the original work, for noncommercial purposes. The new work must acknowledge the creator, although as it is noncommercial, the derivative work does not need to be licensed on the same terms;

-CC BY NC SA Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike, allowing others to build upon the original work, for non-commercial purposes, as long as the original is credited, and the license of the new creation is identical to the original; and finally

-CC BY NC ND Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives. Considered the most restrictive license in the set, others may only download and share original work, as long as credit is given, but cannot change the original in any way or use it for commercial purposes.^[17]

Creative Commons in Education

The role of CC in classrooms has shown to play a positive influence for knowledge sharing. Previous research findings reveal that adopting the CC mechanism is helpful in shaping student perception of and interaction with the environment they are engaged in. For example, by using CC for collaborative projects reveals that students manifest a higher level of mutual support under a CC-integrated collaborative environment. The CC mechanism has mainly been employed to support informal online learning contexts such as the online discussion forum. Furthermore, students are engaged in the same learning task and sharing of course work may influence their learning performance assessment. ^[18] For schools, these options provide useful ways to share their own work but also convenient ways to avoid copyright violations in work produced by their teachers and students. It is important to remember, though, that these alternatives are only opt-in presently. It is up to the user to understand the specific license on any work before making copies. While these alternatives are useful, their application is still very limited. Standard copyright protection still applies to the vast majority of books, videos, images, and software—virtually all the content that schools use to aid in teaching, except for the doctrine of [fair use] which allows some felxibility. ^[19]

Debates and Discussions

Several authors have discussed the legal context around Creative Commons Licenses. Many criticize the “climate of overly broad ownership rights for creative works”, and argue that it hinders the use and reuse of creative works. The complexity of the current copyright system leads to high costs, which disadvantages individuals who do not have the same financial resources as corporations. Broadly applying Creative Commons licenses helps to create a “semi-commons of creative works” which enables a greater and more diverse usage—to the benefit of society. Other authors are slightly different in their approach, and try to understand the motives of CC licensors through surveys and interviews. Again, the conflict of interests of the different stakeholders are debated. Furthermore, some content owners place emphasis on the public benefits, while others are motivated by more personal reasons. Some authors arrive at more optimistic conclusions regarding Creative Commons licenses by looking at CC licenses and the changing role of intermediaries. The licenses are made machine readable, which opens new possibilities for those who enable all kinds of transactions based on the licensed works. The image sharing website Flickr.com is a well-known example: it enables end users to find pictures published under licenses that allow reuse.^[20]

External Links

Creative Commons Website

References

1. ↑ Gulley, N. (2013). Creative Commons: challenges and solutions for researchers; a publisher's perspective of copyright in an open access environment. Insights: The UKSG Journal, 26(2), 168-173. doi:10.1629/2048-7754.107
2. ↑ Hagedorn, G., Mietchen, D., Morris, R. A., Agosti, D., Penev, L., Berendsohn, W. G., & Hobern, D. (2011). Creative Commons licenses and the non-commercial condition: Implications for the re-use of biodiversity information. Zookeys, 150127-149. doi:10.3897/zookeys.150.2189
3. ↑ Giannopoulou, A. (2014). The Creative Commons licences through moral rights provisions in French law. International Review Of Law, Computers & Technology, 28(1), 60-80.
4. ↑ Hagedorn, G., Mietchen, D., Morris, R. A., Agosti, D., Penev, L., Berendsohn, W. G., & Hobern, D. (2011). Creative Commons licenses and the non-commercial condition: Implications for the re-use of biodiversity information. Zookeys, 150127-149. doi:10.3897/zookeys.150.2189
5. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/about/history
6. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
7. ↑ Hagedorn, G., Mietchen, D., Morris, R. A., Agosti, D., Penev, L., Berendsohn, W. G., & Hobern, D. (2011). Creative Commons licenses and the non-commercial condition: Implications for the re-use of biodiversity information. Zookeys, 150127-149. doi:10.3897/zookeys.150.2189
8. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
9. ↑ Myška, M. (2015). The new Creative Commons 4.0 licenses. Grey Journal (TGJ), 1158-62. "CREATIVE COMMONS. 4.0 [online]. Accessed 8 October 2014]. Available from:https://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0"
10. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/about/history
11. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/about/reform
12. ↑ Bathon, J. (2013). Staying on the Right Side of Copyright in Education. T H E Journal, 40(12), 21-24.
13. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5719
14. ↑ http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0
15. ↑ Snijder, R. (2015). Better Sharing Through Licenses? Measuring the Influence of Creative Commons Licenses on the Usage of Open Access Monographs.Journal Of Librarianship & Scholarly Communication, 3(1), 1-21. doi:10.7710/2162-3309.1187
16. ↑ Gulley, N. (2013). Creative Commons: challenges and solutions for researchers; a publisher's perspective of copyright in an open access environment. Insights: The UKSG Journal, 26(2), 168-173. doi:10.1629/2048-7754.107
17. ↑ Pejšová, P., & Vaska, M. (2015). Free Licences and Creative Commons: A Powerful Tool for Open Access Publishing in Grey Literature. Grey Journal (TGJ), 11(2), 89-97.
18. ↑ Chen-Chung, L., Chia-Ching, L., Chun-Yi, C., & Po-Yao, C. (2014). Knowledge Sharing among University Students Facilitated with a Creative Commons Licensing Mechanism: A Case Study in a Programming Course. Journal Of Educational Technology & Society, 17(3), 154-167.
19. ↑ Bathon, J. (2013). Staying on the Right Side of Copyright in Education. T H E Journal, 40(12), 21-24.
20. ↑ Snijder, R. (2015). Better Sharing Through Licenses? Measuring the Influence of Creative Commons Licenses on the Usage of Open Access Monographs.Journal Of Librarianship & Scholarly Communication, 3(1), 1-21. doi:10.7710/2162-3309.1187