| Creative Commons: a
user guide a book by Simone Aliprandi (version
2.0, May 2011)
|
|
 Version 2.0.
Finished in May 2011.
Please point out the URL www.aliprandi.org/cc-user-guide everytime you quote/mention this book. Please report any printing/translating error and every kind of suggestions at www.aliprandi.org/en/contact.  "Creative Commons: a user guide" by Simone Aliprandi is a book licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. |
home | read the book (html)
| download the PDF | get a paper copy | social networking |
WARNING: this html page is based on version 1.1 of the book. I N D E X PREFACE by Carlo Piana Simone is an artist and a fine lawyer. Frequently the outcome of this combination is a lawyer who ends up being an artist. On the contrast, Simone has chosen the hard way, the one that brings the least glamour. He has chosen to do good to humanity through being a lawyer and disseminating legal knowledge. His writings on copyleft and sharing the knowledge have been inspirational to many of us in Italy, and I have welcomed the opportunity to increase the audience by writing an English essay. I have been an enthusiastic reader of the Italian version, and this English one has undoubtedly more than met my expectations. In a down-to-business, no-nonsense, practical attitude, Simone drives us through the intricacies of the Creative Commons licensing in the real world. It is a new and at the same time old topic, that years of "intellectual property" mono-culture have hidden from sight of both lawyers and authors or developers, so much that we have to invent legal hacks to make ideas and software Free. Our ancestors did not worry about this: sharing knowledge was simple and straightforward, just as speaking, painting, playing music, building tools and things were natural. Nowadays, the same concepts seem to require a triple backward somersault to be put in practice in a legal framework that makes simpler to sell the unsalable -- an idea -- than sharing it. We have invented the most powerful instrument in history after the printing press to share knowledge -- the Internet -- and our entire legal system seems shaped only to prevent this knowledge from being shared. Artists and software developers are similar in that they frequently despise the law, sometimes not without reason. Both of them are in dire need of some accessible, coherent and correct guidance on the legal aspects because there is nothing worse than complete ignorance, barring imperfect knowledge. Simone's book is precisely what an artist needs to read to know what needs to be done. Not that legal advice will be entirely avoided, if anything goes wrong. However wise decisions can help prevent most or all of the negative consequences. Readers will find all of the above in this book. AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION This book (my first one in English) is an offspurt of a previous book which was published in Italian in October 2008 and which has had some success in Italy. Due to this it seemed useful to have an edition for a larger audience, outside the borders of my country. However, this English edition is not a mere translation of the Italian text, but it is an adaptation in order to make it more readable for an international audience. After my other publications about the copyleft culture (in the broadest sense), the inspiration for a book that is specifically dedicated to Creative Commons came from several years of my assiduous participation in mailing lists and public debates concerning the use of licenses: in fact, during these discussions a series of misunderstandings, which newbies regularly had, consistently emerged. This is the reason I thought that an operating manual (with no frills and technicalities) could finally resolve the situation. I hope that my work will serve as an incentive for the use and development of innovative models for the distribution of creative works, such as Creative Commons licenses and all the other related instruments. And now not only in the Italian context, but all over the world I hope you enjoy reading this book. My special thanks to: Julia, for her precious consulting; Carlo, for his useful suggestions; all the Italian people who have been supporting me since the beginning of the Copyleft-Italia.it project. CHAPTER ONE
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE PHENOMENON 1. Preambles At the end of the Nineties the world of artistic-cultural production (from publishing, music, cinema, to multimedia) realized it had come to grips with the most innovative social and economic phenomenon since the period of industrial revolution: the coming of mass digital technologies and global telematic connections. Till that period the copyright model (born in England in the 18th century during the industrial revolution and became popular in the following two centuries in most industrialized countries) weathered all the previous waves of technological innovation; however the impact of this final phenomenon has been more destabilizing. People began to no longer consider creative works (which are the real object of copyright protection) as one whole object together with their physical support on which it was deliverable. A novel, to be read, did not need to be printed on paper as a book since it could be diffused in many ways and through various channels, thanks to digital and telematic technologies; likewise a music track did not need to be printed on a vinyl disk or on an optical disk, nor did a film need a VHS cassette or DVD disk. In the same period in parallel with the mass proliferation of digital technologies and telematic communications, there was another cultural and social phenomenon, one of the most interesting in the last decades: we are referring to free and open source software (also known with the acronym FLOSS[1]) and the related coming of the copyleft model. It was in the information technology area (since the middle of the 80s) that the traditional copyright model, based on the “all rights reserved” concept, was really discussed. As a result an alternative copyright management model was found, implemented by enforcing innovative licenses. This new model had already come to a certain level of maturity in the information technology area, and it had already seen some interesting experiments in other areas of creative production. In fact, between the end of the 90s and the beginning of the new millennium, many pilot projects were activated which proposed licenses that had been designed for text, music and in general artistic works. It was in this new wave of experimentation that the plan for the Creative Commons project was drafted: a project which from the start was shown to be something more structured and far-sighted in comparison with the projects which had previously appeared. ______________________ 1- It means “Free Libre and Open Source Software”. 2. What Creative Commons is When we say in generic terms “Creative Commons”, at the same time we refer to a popular project and to the non-profit body which is behind it. a. The Creative Commons project
The project, born from the
initiative of a few jurists from Stanford University in California, is
actually very articulated; it is now present in over fifty countries
around the world and supported by eminent intellectuals from different
fields. Under its control there are other thematic sub-projects that
are really important for their cultural far-sightedness.The main objective of this project is therefore to promote a global debate on new paradigms of copyright management and to diffuse legal and technological tools (such as the licenses and all the services related), which can allow for a “some rights reserved” model in cultural products distribution. b. The Creative Commons Corporation
Since the beginning, the
promoters and the supporters of the project since the beginning
organized a non-profit body with which to trace the dissemination
activities connected to the project and thus to receive funding.From a juridical point of view the Creative Commons Corporation is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charitable corporation with its registered office in San Francisco. At the moment no other bodies exist that are connected to it. All the international projects do the local porting on the licenses, and the other Creative Commons tools are usually monitored by informal entities called “working groups”. They have to report directly to the Creative Commons Corporation coordinators, and they lean on pre-existent entities such as universities and research centers that are called “Affiliate Institutions”. c. The project spirit
At
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/History there is a short introduction
to the Creative Commons project and to its purposes: here below follows
the complete text.«Too often the debate over creative control tends to the extremes. At one pole is a vision of total control — a world in which every last use of a work is regulated and in which “all rights reserved” (and then some) is the norm. At the other end is a vision of anarchy — a world in which creators enjoy a wide range of freedom but are left vulnerable to exploitation. Balance, compromise, and moderation — once the driving forces of a copyright system that valued innovation and protection equally — have become endangered species. Creative Commons is working to revive them. We use private rights to create public goods: creative works set free for certain uses. Like the free software and open-source movements, our ends are cooperative and community-minded, but our means are voluntary and libertarian. We work to offer creators a best-of-both-worlds way to protect their works while encouraging certain uses of them — to declare “some rights reserved.”» This mission is well described in a picture where Creative Commons symbolically represents a median shading between the “all rights reserved” model (characteristic of the classic copyright idea) and the “no rights reserved” (characteristic of a public domain idea or of a sort of no-copyright concept).  d. Curiosity: the origin of “Creative Commons” name
Economist Garret Hardin
published an interesting article in 1968 entitled “The tragedy of the
commons”. In this article he displays his sharp interpretation of one
of the most debated economic-social dilemmas.In a nutshell, according to Hardin commons, i.e. those goods which are owned by nobody but which can be exploited by everybody, are always destined to a sad ending. He uses the metaphor of herders sharing a common parcel of land, «on which they are all entitled to let their cows graze. In Hardin's view, it is in each herder's interest to put as many cows as possible onto the land, even if the commons is damaged as a result. The herder receives all of the benefits from the additional cows, while the damage to the commons is shared by the entire group. If all herders make this individually rational decision, however, the commons is destroyed and all herders suffer».[2] Creative Commons theorists, and first of all Lawrence Lessig, argue instead that in the case of goods like creative and intellectual products, this problem does not exist because every creation increases its social value with the more people there are who can benefit from it. Furthermore, those goods are not liable to deterioration nor to a natural shortage because human creativity has no limits. Thus, we can validly talk about a “comedy of the commons”, where the goods at issue are precisely the creative commons. ______________________ 2- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons. 3. What Creative Commons is not There are numerous misunderstandings created about the role and the function of Creative Commons. Therefore it is necessary to debunk at once the most diffused and dangerous ones. a. It is not a public body with institutional duties
Creative Commons Corporation
as a civil law body, does not have any institutional role in any of the
countries where the related project is active. This does not mean that
some exponents of the cooperating community (and in any case also some
members of the board) have not had the occasion to contact the public
institutions of some countries in order to extensively inform about the
new problematic areas of copyright theory. However, this is only in a
perspective of cultural and scientific debate, not with a political
overtone.b. It is not a copyright collecting society like ASCAP, PRS or similar
One of the most diffused and
also misleading misunderstandings consists in mixing up Creative
Commons with an alternative version of a copyright collecting society,
which are present in every country and do not have the same exact
function.Quoting the Wikipedia definition, a copyright collecting society is «a body created by private agreements or by copyright law that collects royalty payments from various individuals and groups for copyright holders. They may have the authority to license works and collect royalties as part of a statutory scheme or by entering into an agreement with the copyright owner to represent the owners interests when dealing with licensees and potential licensees.»[3] Creative Commons does not have a contractual relationship with copyright holders and does not hold a representation or enforcing role with regard to authors' rights. ______________________ 3- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_collective. c. It is not a legal advice service
Neither the Creative Commons
Corporation nor the communities and working groups connected to it
provide legal advice or a legal aid service. Besides Creative Commons –
as we wrote above – does not have any intermediation role; thus it
cannot nor take the liability for the effects derived from the use of
licenses.To clear any kind of ambiguity, this is specified by an explicit preamble included at the beginning of every license[4]: «Creative Commons Corporation is not a law firm and does not provide legal services. Distribution of this license does not create an attorney-client relationship. Creative Commons provides this information on an “as-is” basis. Creative Commons makes no warranties regarding the information provided, and disclaims liability for damages resulting from its use.» ______________________ 4- In the “legal code” version. 4. The local porting of the licenses As we partially discussed, the Creative Commons project is set out in: - a central associational body, which is the official owner of the trademark rights, of the domain name “www.creativecommons.org” (and other connected domain names), and of the copyright on the official material published on the websites; and - a network of Affiliate Institutions that act as points of reference for the several national Creative Commons projects scattered worldwide. This “hierarchical” composition (that from some people's point of view can seem to be not very suitable to the spontaneous/collective nature of the opencontent culture) allows to check the correct porting of the licenses and to realize information and sensitization activities in an effective and coordinated way. All the national Creative Commons projects are organized in two divisions: one dedicated to the juridical aspects, such as the translation, the adaptation and explication of the licenses; and the other dedicated to the information-technology aspects, such as implementing technological solutions that exploit the Creative Commons resource. We can foresee a third division (crosswise two others) aimed at the sensitization and promotion of the Creative Commons philosophy; it organizes public events, manages mailing-lists and web-forums, creates informative material. The idea of “license porting” involves a translation of the licenses into various languages, but also a concurring adaptation of the terms to the different legal systems. The other types of open content licenses, although they are diffused in different languages from the original, include a clause that, in the case of unclear interpretations, the involved operator (a judge, a lawyer...) has to refer to the text in the original language, which is the only one with an official character. Other types of licenses instead do not worry as much about the interpretation aspect as for the identification of the governing law, stating expressly that the “XY license” is regulated by the Japanese (or French, or Italian, etc.) law. Creative Commons has tried to obviate both problems by implementing an important activity of “localization” of the licenses, that is devolved to the various Affiliate Institutions and monitored by the central body in the US. This way, the Italian, French and Japanese licenses are not mere translations of the American licenses, but basically independent deeds in accordance with the legal system of each country. CHAPTER TWO
THE LICENSES 1. Basic principles First of all, to avoid falling into the most common misunderstandings about Creative Commons licenses, we should set the tenets that are valid for all the open content licenses. a. A definition of “copyright license”
A copyright license is a
juridical instrument with which the copyright holder rules the use and
distribution of his work. Thus, it comes to a civil law tool which
(based on copyright principles) helps to clear up for users what can or
cannot be done with the work. The “license” term comes from the Latin
verb “licere” and generically represents permission, in fact its main
function is to authorize uses of the work.[5]______________________ 5- «The verb license or grant license means to give permission. The noun license refers to that permission as well as to the document memorializing that permission. License may be granted by a party ("licensor") to another party ("licensee") as an element of an agreement between those parties. A shorthand definition of a license is "an authorization (by the licensor) to use the licensed material (by the licensee)".» Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License. b. The license and the protection of the work
By clearing up the concept of
license we can understand how one of the main misunderstandings about
open content licenses is groundless: i.e. the one according to which a
license can be a form of protection of a copyrighted work. In fact, it
is not the license itself which protects the work; the copyright
principles protect creative works, while an open content license moves
exactly in the opposite direction. In effect, one of the main purposes
of an open content license is to authorize some kinds of use which
would not be normally allowed in the traditional copyright model (i.e.
the “all rights reserved” model).c. The license and the acquisition of copyright
For the same principle the
application of a license has nothing to do with the acquisition of
copyright on the creative work and even less with the proof or
protection of the authorship. The application of a license on a
creative work concerns a subsequent phase in regard to the acquisition
of copyright and to the obtainment of a proof of authorship. Therefore,
first of all the author gets the copyright on his work
(automatically[6]), then he decides to regulate his rights by applying
a license.______________________ 6- «Time was you had to put Big C [i.e. the copyright symbol: ©] on anything you wanted to copyright or else it entered the public domain - the commons of information where nothing is owned and all is permitted. You had to put the world on notice to warn them. That was Big C's job and it was a useful one. What changed? The law. By the late 1980s U.S. law had changed so that works become copyrighted automatically the moment they're made. The moment you hit save on that research paper... the second the shutter snaps closed... the instant you lift your pen from that cocktail napkin doodle... your creation is copyrighted whether Big C makes a cameo or not.» Taken from the script of the most famous Creative Commons informative video, called “Get Creative” and available at http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/getcreative/. d. Licensor and licensee
Let's start from the
presupposition that the only subject who has the title to rightfully
apply a license to a creative work is the owner of all its rights. The
subject is usually the author of the work, but he can transfer all his
rights by a contract to another subject (for example a publisher, an
agency, a production company...); in this case he would also lose the
possibility to choose the type of license to apply to the work. In
order to avoid misunderstandings (and since it is not so important for
our analysis what kind of subject would make this choice), we will
always talk about “licensor” to generically mean the copyright holder
who decides to apply a license to it.Moreover, as we have already mentioned, though there is no consensus about what kind of deed an open content license should be, it is certainly a document which produces effects on a variety of indeterminate subjects. These subjects can be mere end-users of the work (readers, listeners, spectators...); but in some cases (those licenses which allow for modification and re-publication of the work) they can also be active subjects in the virtuous mechanism of the open content phenomenon. Therefore, also in this case we shall use an all-embracing term which can indicate every potential recipient of the license: that is the “licensee”. We shall use the expression “licensed work” to represent the work to which the license has been applied. e. Writing a license
Since this is a civil law
issue (more precisely the contractual law), there are not any specific
procedures to follow or formalities to respect. Thus, every author (or
other copyright holder) is free to write his own personal license and
to apply it to his work. However, like every contractual deed, in order
to take advantage of all the tools and protections provided for by the
law, it is necessary to take into account the technicalities of civil
law. Indeed a copyright license is a legal document which needs
preparation and expertise.In other words, the concrete problem is that a poorly written license without the proper language or without important clauses, would probably not perform its function or could even have a boomerang effect on the licensor. f. The sense of the standardized licenses
If we rigorously exclude the
“do it yourself”, there are two possible ways: either the licensor can
consult a lawyer to draw up a license (but this could also be
expensive); or he can trust the standardized licenses that are released
by specific projects and non-profit organizations (such as the Creative
Commons Corporation, Free Software Foundation, Open Source Inizitive).An essential aspect should be clear: these organizations do in no way become the parties of the case, thus they are not liable for each application of the licenses; nor do they directly deal with legal advice related to the use of their licenses. These bodies only act as compilers and promoters of the licenses; it is possible to interact with the staff of these projects, sending comments, indicating case studies, starting public debates, but it is unthinkable that they should have to be involved in every single case. Every copyright holder who decides to apply a standardized license to his work should take full responsibility for it; therefore it is important to be well informed. 2. The three different shapes of the licenses In this paragraph we will show why the Creative Commons licenses is a cut above the other open content licenses. The clever discovery of the promoters of the project was in fact to release every license in three versions that are different by the form but connected by the essence. a. The legal code
The proper license (i.e. the
version that shall be juridically relevant) is the so-called “Legal
code”: a classic document for pundits, made up of several preambles and
eight articles, where the distribution of the licensed work is
regulated.Many people though realized that the average license user is not induced to read and understand a document like that: sometimes he disregards it intentionally, sometimes he does not have adequate preparation to do so. Therefore, the risk is that the licenses would be used inaccurately with little knowledge; that false information on their use would be easily diffused; or that a sort of mistrust would prevail so that authors and publishers would stay far away from these tools. b. The Commons deed
Hence Creative Commons
thought of designing brief versions of the license that are written in
clear language and structured with simple and schematic graphics: this
second “shape” of the licenses is called the “Commons deed”.However, it is important to remember that «the Commons Deed is not a license. It is simply a handy reference for understanding the Legal Code (the full license) — it is an easy readable expression of some of its key terms. Think of it as the user-friendly interface to the Legal Code underneath. This Deed itself has no legal value, and its contents do not appear in the actual license.»[7] Therefore the Commons deed in a fews lines condenses the sense of the license and makes a link to the Legal code along with the various available translations of the licenses. ______________________ 7- This disclaimer is linked by every Commons deed. c. The Digital code
Finally, the third “shape” of
the licenses is called “Digital code”, that is a string of metadata
which make the license easily traceable by search engines. To put it
simply, metadata is additional information which can be added to every
kind of digital file; this hidden information is only visualizable by
computer-based processes.Thus, Creative Commons developers designed an embedding system with which it is possible to incorporate the license into the file. It is recognizable by the main search engines that have developed the necessary suitable record tools. 
(this picture is taken from www.creativecommons.org)
3. The characteristics and the functioning of the licenses As we has already explained, the Creative Commons licenses are inspired by a “some rights reserved” model: that means that the copyright holder, applying a Creative Commons license, decides to keep just several rights of all the rights granted to him by law. a. Common features of all Creative Commons licences[8]
All Creative Commons licenses have many important features in common.i) From the licensor's point of view Every license will help you: • retain your copyright; • announce that other people’s fair use, first sale, and free expression rights are not affected by the license. Every license requires licensees: • to get your permission to do any of the things you choose to restrict (e.g., make a commercial use, create a derivative work); • to keep any copyright notice intact on all copies of your work; • to link to your license from copies of the work; • not to alter the terms of the license; • not to use technology to restrict other licensees’ lawful uses of the work; Every license allows licensees, provided they live up to your conditions: • to copy the work; • to distribute it; • to display or perform it publicly; • to make digital public performances of it (e.g., webcasting); • to shift the work into another format as a verbatim copy. ii) From the licensee's point of view When you use any CC material, you must always: • attribute the creator of the work[9]; • get permission from the creator to do anything that goes beyond the terms of the license (eg. making a commercial use of the work or creating a derivative work where the license does not permit this); • keep any copyright notice attached to the work intact on all copies of the work; • name the CC license and provide a link to it from any copies of the work; and • where you make changes to the work, acknowledge the original work and indicate that changes have been made (eg by stating ‘This is a French translation of the original work, X’). In addition, when you use any CC material, you must not: • alter the terms of the license; • use the work in any way that is prejudicial to the reputation of the creator of the work; • imply that the creator is endorsing or sponsoring you or your work; or • add any technologies (such as digital rights management) to the work that restrict other people from using it under the terms of the license. ______________________ 8- This paragraph is partially taken from http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Baseline_Rights and from http://www.creativecommons.org.au/materials/whatiscc.pdf. 9- For information on how to attribute a work, see the specific guide “How to Attribute Creative Commons Material” at http://creativecommons.org.au/materials/attribution.pdf. b. Structure and basic clauses of the Creative Commons licenses
Creative Commons licenses are
ideally structured in two parts: the first part indicates the
“freedoms” that the author wants to allow about his work; the second
part explains the conditions on which is allowed to be used.Regarding the first part (the “freedoms” that the licensor concedes to the licensees) we can say that all the licenses allow the copying and the distribution of the work, using the following words and the following visuals: 
«You are free to to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work»On the other hand, only some licenses (not all of them) allow the licensees to also modify the work, specifying this with the following simple phrase and visual: 
«You are free to Remix — to adapt the work»Regarding the second part (the conditions made by the licensor to use his work) we can say that Creative Commons licenses are articulated into four basic clauses which the licensor can choose and match to his needs.  Attribution - «You must attribute the work in the manner specified by
the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they
endorse you or your use of the work).»This clause is a feature in every license. It states that every time we use the work we must clearly indicate who the author is.  Non commercial - «You may not use this work for commercial purposes.»This means that if we distribute copies of the work, we can not do it in any way which is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation. To do this, we have to ask the licensor for specific permission.  No Derivative Works - «You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.»If we want to modify, to correct, to translate or to remix the work, we have to ask the licensor for specific permission. 
Share Alike - «If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you
may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar
license to this one.»This clause (as it is in the Free Software model) grants that the “freedoms” conceded by the author will be also kept on the derivative works (and on the derivative ones of the derivative ones, with a persistent effect). c. The licenses set
From the matching of these
four basic clauses we have the six sheer Creative Commons licenses,
which are named by referring to the clauses shown in the previous
paragraph.They are (from the most permissive to the most restrictive): Attribution >  Attribution - Share alike >  Attribution - No derivative works >  Attribution - Non commercial >  Attribution - Non commercial - Share alike >  Attribution - Non commercial - No derivatives works >  There are two essential points in this list: - the “Attribution” clause is present in every license; - the “No derivative works” clause and the “Share alike” clause are incompatible with each other (in fact, the first one denies the modification of the work, while the second implicitly gives permission to modify the work). At the official Creative Commons web-site[10] there is a more detailed explanation about every single license: 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. 10- Taken from http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses. d. The update of the licenses
As has happened for most of
the organizations which release standardized licenses, the text of the
Creative Commons licenses is subjected to irregular updates due to the
possible need to improve, specify, complete, or eliminate some of the
clauses. It can depend on various factors, such as the evolution of the
market and technological innovation that bring new topics to consider
in the licenses.At the date of the writing of this book (August 2010) the Creative Commons licenses are at version 3.0.[11] ______________________ 11- Not in every country. 4. Other special Creative Commons tools At the end of 2007 Creative Commons launched two new interesting projects which aim to enrich the supply of services besides the mere licenses. We are referring to two tools which play two different roles, thanks to which the licensors can communicate additional information besides the information that is already provided by the licensing process. a. CC Plus
As written on the Creative
Commons website, CC Plus is «a protocol providing a simple way for
users to get rights beyond the rights granted by a CC license».[12]Substantially, CC Plus is an integrated metadata system which adds further permissions in regards to those already provided by the license (specifying the relative terms and conditions). «For example, a work's Creative Commons license might offer noncommercial rights. With CC Plus, the license can also provide a link by which a user might secure rights beyond noncommercial rights -- most obviously commercial rights, but also additional permissions or services such as warranty, permission to use without attribution, or even access to performance or physical media.»[13] To better understand, let's reflect on one of the most typical cases: the case of an independent music label which publishes songs with a “Non commercial” license on its website. Thus, the songs licensed this way can be freely downloaded and used for non commercial purposes. All the same, for those who want to also make commercial use, the label decides to provide special conditions (for example the payment of a fee or the application of an advertising message); so it entrusts its legal office with the writing of a supplementary license in which there are the clauses that the licensees shall respect to make commercial use of the songs. The text of this supplementary license can be published in a special page of the label's website, but in order for it to be connected (also by the metadata system) to the text of the standard Creative Commons license, the CC Plus mechanism comes into play. Therefore, under the classic disclaimer where the application of the Creative Commons license is we will find the following phrase: “permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at...”; and here we will add the web address where the supplementary license is located. The same type of argument is valid for licenses which contain the “Non derivative works” clause, and to which the licensor wants to add some special terms to allow the modification of the work. Here is a hypothetical use of CC Plus:  More details about this tool are available at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CCPlus. ______________________ 12- http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CCPlus. 13- http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CCPlus. b. CC0 (CC Zero)[14]
CC0 is another interesting
project by Creative Coommons: it is a tool that allows creators to
effectively place their works in the public domain through a waiver of
all copyright to the extent permitted by law.CC0 enables scientists, educators, artists and other creators and owners of copyright-protected content to waive copyright interests in their works and thereby place them as completely as possible in the public domain, in order for others to freely build on, enhance and reuse the works for any purposes without restriction under copyright. In contrast to CC’s licenses that allow copyright holders to choose from a range of permissions while retaining their copyright, CC0 empowers another choice altogether – the choice to opt out of copyright and the exclusive rights it automatically grants to creators – the “no rights reserved” alternative to our licenses. In effect, we know that copyright and other laws throughout the world automatically extend copyright protection to works of authorship and databases, whether the author or creator wants those rights or not. CC0 gives people who want to give up those rights a way to do so, to the fullest extent allowed by law. Once the creator or a subsequent owner of a work applies CC0 to a work, the work is no longer his or hers in any meaningful legal sense. Anyone can then use the work in any way and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, subject to rights others may have in the work or how the work is used. Think of CC0 as the "no rights reserved" option. And how does it work? A person using CC0 (called the “affirmer” in the legal code) waives all of his or her copyright along with neighboring and related rights in a work, to the fullest extent permitted by law. If the waiver is not effective for any reason, then CC0 acts as a license from the affirmer granting the public an unconditional, irrevocable, non exclusive, royalty free license to use the work for any purpose In substance, it consists in a procedure thanks to which the author certifies publicly that he wants to disclaim totally and irrevocably to exercise his rights, so that the work can be considered immediately in a public domain status. It can be implemented by helping the author to “sign” (even virtually) this declaration of purpose and by keeping a public evidence of it. Here is the screen-shot of the CC0 procedure. ______________________ 14- This paragraph is partially taken from http://creativecommons.org/about/cc0 and from http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC0.  CHAPTER THREE
SUGGESTIONS TO CORRECTLY APPLY THE LICENSES 1. Basic advices for a correct approach As we have just seen, the praxis of applying licenses to our works brings a sort of self-management of our rights, which goes beyond the traditional network of intermediaries involved in copyright management. This is a relatively new praxis and is strictly connected to the evolution of the communication world came thanks to the digital and telematic technologies. In essence, each single author has to take on a gamma of assessments and decisions, which in the traditional system had always been a prerogative of specialized dealers who had the necessary expertise and practise. The risk that this important phase will be managed with imprudence and inaccuracy is very high; and this – as we have already mentioned – could turn into a tremendous boomerang also damaging the author/licensor himself. That is why – in spite of the disintermediation attitude which is innate in open content licenses – it is in any case a good idea to always consult with a professional who can at least clarify the biggest doubts. However, most of the licensing operations are generally managed by the licensor himself. Thus, before releasing the work with the chosen license, it is important that the licensor has an overall view of all the available tools, such as the official websites of the various projects which promote the licenses, the publications dedicated to these topics, the specialized forums and mailing lists. He should also attend the specialized events organized in this field. On the other hand, it is also important to know how to select the information found in less official channels, to avoid falling victim to misinformation. Therefore, it is essential to gather some information, in order not to risk experiencing unpleasant situations and then having to repair the damage too late with the help of specialized professionals. 2. Before licensing[15] The following list sets out some basic things that you should think about before you apply a Creative Commons license to your work. ______________________ 15- This paragraph is taken from http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Before_Licensing. a. Make sure your work falls within the Creative Commons license
Creative Commons licenses
apply to works that are protected by copyright. Generally, works that
are protected by copyright are: books, scripts, websites, lesson plans,
blogs and any other forms of writings; photographs and other visual
images; films, video games and other visual materials; musical
compositions, sound recordings and other audio works.Creative Commons licenses do not apply to things such as ideas, factual information or other things that are not protected by copyright. If you are based in the US, you can find out more about what is and is not capable of copyright protection at this site. If you are based in the UK, visit this site. If you are based in Taiwan, the relevant statutory provisions are Articles 9 and 10bis. b. Make sure you have the rights
Before applying a Creative
Commons license to a work, you need to make sure you have the authority
to do so. This means that you need to make sure that the person who
owns the copyright in the work is happy to have the work made available
under a Creative Commons license.If you are the creator of the work, then you are probably the owner of copyright and so can license the work how you wish. If you made the work as part of your employment, then your employer probably owns the rights to the work and so only your employer can decide to apply a Creative Commons license. If you made the work under an agreement, you need to check the terms of that agreement to see if the rights to the work were transferred to someone else. If you are combining pre-existing works made by other people (unless those works are in the public domain, and thus there is no one from whom permission is required) or working in conjunction with other people to produce something, you need to make sure that you have express and explicit permission to apply a Creative Commons license to the end result (unless your use of the pre-existing works constitutes fair use, and thus no permission is required). You don’t have this kind of permission in the case of, say, a Madonna CD or a Italo Calvino novel, that you purchase, because these are made available under “all rights reserved” copyright. You can only secure this kind of permission if you are in direct contact with the person, discuss Creative Commons licensing with them and they agree to a specific license; of course, if you are combining a work that is already Creative Commons-licensed then you will also have the rights, provided your use is consistent with the terms of that license! c. Make sure you understand how Creative Commons licenses operate
Before you apply a Creative
Commons license to your work, you should make sure you understand how
they operate. You can do this by reviewing the FAQ and/or ask specific
questions and voice your concerns on our discussion fora. Below is an
overview of some of the key elements of the Creative Commons licensing
model.How does a Creative Commons license operate? Creative Commons license are based on copyright. So it applies to all works that are protected by copyright law. The kinds of works that are protected by copyright law are books, websites, blogs, photographs, films, videos, songs and other audio & visual recordings, for example. Software programs are also protected by copyright but, as explained in the FAQ, we strongly recommend that you do not apply a Creative Commons license to software. Creative Commons licenses give you the ability to dictate how others may exercise your copyright rights—such as the right of others to copy your work, make derivative works or adaptations of your work, to distribute your work and/or make money from your work. They do not give you the ability to restrict anything that is otherwise permitted by exceptions or limitations to copyright—including, importantly, fair use or fair dealing—nor do they give you the ability to control anything that is not protected by copyright law, such as facts and ideas. Creative Commons licenses attach to the work and authorize everyone who comes in contact with the work to use it consistent with the license. This means that if Bob has a copy of your Creative Commons-licensed work, Bob can give a copy to Carol and Carol will be authorized to use the work consistent with the Creative Commons license. You then have a license agreement separately with both Bob and Carol. Creative Commons licenses are expressed in three different formats: the Commons Deed (human-readable code), the Legal Code (lawyer-readable code); and the metadata (machine readable code). You don’t need to sign anything to get a Creative Commons license—just select your license at our ‘License’ page. One final thing you should understand about Creative Commons licenses is that they are all non-exclusive. This means that you can permit the general public to use your work under a Creative Commons license and then enter into a separate and different non-exclusive license with someone else, for example, in exchange for money. What if I change my mind? This is an extremely important point for you to consider. Creative Commons licenses are non-revocable. This means that you cannot stop someone, who has obtained your work under a Creative Commons license, from using the work according to that license. You can stop offering your work under a Creative Commons license at any time you wish; but this will not affect the rights with any copies of your work already in circulation under a Creative Commons license. So you need to think carefully when choosing a Creative Commons license to make sure that you are happy for people to be using your work consistent with the terms of the license, even if you later stop distributing your work. For some creators and/or licensors, this is not an important issue. If you are an amateur photographer, and you’ve just taken a cool picture of Mt. Fuji, there may be little risk to you if you decide to make it available under our freest license that reserves only the right of attribution. But if you’re a musician who depends upon your music for your livelihood, you should think carefully before giving away commercial rights to your creative work. Many musicians have discovered that offering work for noncommercial use can be quite rewarding. But anything beyond that requires careful consideration. We all admire generous souls. But if you want to be generous, we want you to think carefully about it before you are. d. Be specific about what you are licensing
You need to be specific about
exactly what you are CC-licensing when you apply the Creative Commons
license to your work. We give you the option of identifying the format
of the work in the metadata (text, audio, video, image, interactive)
and you should use this. This enables more precise machine-readable
language.However, you should also think about exactly which elements of your work you are licensing. For example, in the case of a website, are you licensing just the text and images? Or also the stylesheets and the code that run the site? Similarly, if you make CC-licensed music available for download on your site, does the Creative Commons license apply to both the musical composition and the sound recording as well as any artwork and graphics at your site? And remember, as discussed under “Make sure you have the rights” above, you need to make sure you have the rights to each element that you license under a Creative Commons license. Take a moment to think about exactly what you are intending to license and then frame your metadata and legal notice accordingly, eg. “All images at this site are licensed under a Creative Commons [insert description] 2.5 license.” e. Are you a member of a collecting society? If so, does it allow you to CC-license your works?
You need to check with your
society. Currently, many of the collecting societies in Australia,
Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Spain, Taiwan and the Netherlands
take an assignment of rights (or in France what is called a “mandate”
of rights that nonetheless has the same effect practically as an
assignment) from you in present and future works (so that they
effectively become the owner of these rights) and manage them for you.
So if you are already a member of a collecting society in one of these
jurisdictions, you may not be entitled to license your work yourself
under a Creative Commons license because the necessary rights are not
held by you but by the collecting society. Please also read the FAQ on
the website of the Creative Commons project team for your jurisdiction
for more information about this issue in your jurisdiction.Creative Commons is reaching out to collecting societies in those jurisdictions where this problem arises to try to find a solution that enables creators of content to enjoy the benefits both systems offer. 3. How to choose the most suitable license a. Regarding the clauses of the licenses
First of all, it is important
not to be fooled by the idea that the terms of the license shall also
constrain the licensor. It is a fairly widespread misconception that an
author applies a license with the possibility to modify the work for
fear of being unable to modify it; or that he applies a license with
the possibility to commercialize the work because in the future he
intends to commercialize it.Such an approach makes little sense and reflects confusion on the basic functioning of the licenses. Let's keep in mind that the essential function of licensing is to communicate to licensees which uses are granted freely and under what conditions. The licensor, as the copyright holder, always has the possibility to do what is not permitted by the license. On the other hand, the criterion for the selection of certain types of clauses is usually reversed: if I choose the term "non-commercial" it is precisely because I want to reserve the right to commercialize the work for myself (or possibly for a publisher or an agency with whom I have contractual relationships), forbidding the commercialization to others. The same applies to the "No derivative works" clause. b. Regarding the updating of the licenses
From the point of view of the
licensor, we can say that it is best to choose to apply the most recent
available license, so that you can take advantage of the processing
implemented by the Creative Commons team of lawyers. It follows that in
the case of the publication of a new version of the license, it is
recommended to update the notice of the recall and the link to the
license.But we cannot exclude cases where the licensor considers that an older version of the license is better and he does not want to update the copyright notice. c. Regarding the jurisdiction
The choice of jurisdiction is
one of the most delicate aspects, since it requires some rudiments of
international law. Moreover, the legal aspect is further complicated by
the social and technological one; since Creative Commons licenses tools
are designed primarily for the digital world, it is really difficult to
circumscribe the life of the license to a specific jurisdiction in
advance.Let us explain better. Firstly, we consider that the criterion for choosing the most appropriate jurisdiction is not so much what the nationality of the licensor is, but rather the context in which the work will play the main part of his life. Thus, in a hypothetical case, if we have an Italian author who writes a novel in French, but the novel is primarily intended for the UK market, then the British jurisdiction will be the most indicated one. That is true at least in principle, but consider that the choice of jurisdiction involves some significant legal consequences: in fact, in a potential litigation about the use of the work, we must refer to the rules of the UK, and in some cases be ready to start a civil case before a British court. Among other things for experts sit is very difficult to make assessments for experts, since in the current globalized world of communications no one can predict for sure in what context the work will circulate predominantly in and for how long. These - mind you - are rather theoretical and hypothetical reflections; for a correct diagnosis it is necessary to assess each situation. 4. Legal suggestions Let's start with a simple but fundamental logical assumption, which is connected with the above about the underlying mechanisms of licenses. Since for centuries the reference model for the management of copyright has been the "all rights reserved” model, it follows that any work in which we run into responds to the model of full protection, whether a specific warning is shown or not. In other words, if surfing on the web we find a picture, text, music and we have no assurance that the rights holder has authorized their free use in some way, we must refrain from any operation, in orther to protect ourselves from possible injunctions and litigation for copyright infringement. Consequently, moving to the perspective of the rights holder, if we allow certain free uses of our work we should mention explicitly and clearly, so that any user (even random) of our work can understand our choice and can take advantage of it. a. The copyright notice
Whether works are in digital
format, or they are distributed on a physical medium, the most banal
and the most intuitive solution is to put an appropriate notice about
copyright in the work (or inextricably linked) to specify the three
essential pieces of information: the name of the rights holder, the
year of publication of the work (i.e. the year in which the rights
began to be exercised) and the type of license applied to the work.A correct example of copyright notice could be:
Copyright © Joseph Green 2010
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non commercial - Share Alike 3.0 license. The text of the license is available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 We should not forget any of these details and include the link correctly and completely. An inaccurate disclaimer (or a self-contradictory one) would undermine the function of communicating information with any legal value. However, we consider that, in the case of Creative Commons licenses applied through the insertion of HTML code into web pages (see details in the next paragraph), a draft of copyright notice appears at the bottom of our page. Nothing prohibits us from enriching this brief text with more information or from embellishing it by replacing certain words. What matters is that the section with the link to the license remains intact and the end result is clear and consistent with what needs to be expressed. b. Use of logos and “visuals”
As we have seen, Creative
Commons has put a lot of emphasis on the semantic effectiveness of the
visuals, that is those small icons and buttons with which their
evocative graphics identify the licenses and other various tools of
Creative Commons. In addition to those related to individual clauses,
there is a generic one (and perhaps the most common one) with the
symbol of Creative Commons that is the double circled C, and the
sentence "some rights reserved". Otherwise, it is important to bear in mind that these are elements that primarily have the purpose to embellish and disseminate, so that users can understand and recognize more effectively licenses and other instruments in the world of Creative Commons. However, logos and visuals do not have a legally-significant value in the sense that only using one of these visuals may not be sufficient to explain the willingness of the licensee if they are not tied to an appropriate disclaimer or (when possible) to a link to the text of that license. Let's look at the perspective of a generic user of our Creative Commons licensed work, who, without knowing in the least what a Creative Commons license is, gets a CD or a book that only shows the visual information to the license or - even worse - the generic button with the double C circled and the words “some rights reserved”. With these general directions the user cannot easily trace the real will of the licensor, and therefore the function of the visual information will not be sufficient. Instead, the issue is different if we move in the digital and online environment; if it is a work published on the Web, a simple button may be sufficient to inform the user when clicking on the button the text of a disclaimer or directly the license's text (either version “commons deed” or “legal code”) appears clearly and immediately. The issue becomes even more delicate if we make some considerations when it comes to trademark law and protection of distinctive signs. Indeed, as stated on the official web-page for the policies for using the CC trademarks, «the double C in a circle, the words and logotype “Creative Commons,” Creative Commons license buttons, and any combination of the foregoing, whether integrated into a larger whole or standing alone, are Creative Commons’ trademarks.»[16]. The purpose is to clarify that all brands (logos, trademarks, visuals) are subject to legal protection, and that the right holder is the Creative Commons Corporation. The users of the tools offered by Creative Commons can use them freely, but in strict compliance with the policies dictated by the body.  On the use of the Creative Commons logo, the aforementioned page dedicated to the policies explains that «Creative Commons licenses the use of its trademarked CC logo in the context of its Public Copyright License Marks (shown immediately to the right) on the condition that licensee use the mark solely to point to a Creative Commons license or Commons deed on the Creative Commons server or otherwise uses it to describe the Creative Commons license that applies to a particular work; and provided that, to the extent the licensee is using the mark in an online environment, licensee does not alter or remove the hyperlink embedded in such logo as made available on Creative Commons webpage».[17] Despite Creative Commons has shown some flexibility and tolerance in the use of its logos, we always have to keep in mind that any unauthorized use of a mark may entail - in principle - a legal dispute. So it is always advisable to strictly adhere to the policies of Creative Commons. For other uses not provided in the policies it is better to contact the project leaders to obtain specific authorization. ______________________ 16- http://creativecommons.org/policies. 17- http://creativecommons.org/policies. 5. The guided process for choosing a license For those who have not yet acquired sufficient familiarity with the licenses, Creative Commons has developed an interactive process to choose and apply a license which is the closest to the licensor's needs: it is in the official web site at http://creativecommons.org/choose/. Let us observe how the screen-shot appears at the beginning of the guiding procedure:  In essence, to make things simpler and more intuitive the site presents some questions to deduce which of the six Creative Commons licenses best serves our needs as licensors. The first question is "Do you allow commercial uses of your work?" and there are two possibile answers: "yes" or "no". The second question is "Do you allow modifications of your work?" and offers three possible answers: "yes", "no" and "yes, as long as others share alike". Subsequently, the screen provides the option to choose the jurisdiction. Scrolling down, all the countries of the world (precisely, the countries where the porting of licenses has been completed) appear. Then we can choose the most appropriate jurisdiction, based on the criteria we have mentioned above. It is also possible, however, not to indicate any particular jurisdiction, leaving “none of the above” highlighted. This is suitable for example in cases where it is not possible to make objective assessments about which jurisdiction will be prevalent for the life of our work, and therefore we will use an “unported” license; it will be up to those who will analyze the specific case (judges, lawyers, consultants) to identify the correct jurisdiction and applicable law. Finally, there is also a part aimed to gather some additional information about the work through some open fields that the licensor can fill in or leave blank. The data that he decides to enter will later be incorporated within the metadata constituting the digital code; of course, if you want to make your work readily available and recognizable you should provide as much information as possible. The fields to be filled in relate to: • the format of the work (audio, video, image, text, interactive or otherwise); • the title of the work; • the name of the author or copyright holder that the users of the work should state in compliance with the provision Attribution (present in all the six licenses); • the URL (the specific web address) that will link those who use or redistribute the work; • the source from which the work is extrapolated (in the case of a work that already comes from another previously published one); • the exact address of the web page where the licensor can possibly claim to allow other uses, in addition to those already granted by the license choice. Once you have filled in everything that you are interested in, you can click on the “select a license” button and you will be forwarded to the page where the license which corresponds to your preferences is, with the following screen-shot:  The requested license is present in the first part of the screen-shot and here there is one more choice to make: it is a purely aesthetic choice, i.e. which of the three types of buttons you prefer to show on your web page. Once you have checked the option, click on "Watch how the license will be" then you can see the Commons Deed as it will be seen by the users when they view your web page.  Looking at the Commons Deed obtained, all the elements which we discussed in these pages can be found: the name of the license written in full, the complete version and jurisdiction (also highlighted by the flag information that appears at the top right), the division license in two main parts: the first part related to the freedom for the licensee; and the second part related to the conditions set by the licensor with some additional clarifications, inserted at the end of the text. Finally, we find the link to the Legal Code version of the license. Obviously, if you were about to publish a work on a physical medium (such as a book, a CD or a DVD) instead of online and you wanted to use the Commons Deed as your disclaimer, it is highly advisable to add a statement at the end of the text showing the full web address to which the user can find the Legal Code. This way, if a user is not aware of Creative Commons and he had a book, a CD or a DVD with this Commons Deed inserted, he would be able to read and to ascertain the conditions that you have put on the work, by reading the full text of the license. 6. Technical suggestions Technical issues related to the dissemination of works under Creative Commons licenses are complementary to each other and can vary depending on the point of view from which we consider them: if you are a writer or producer, it is in your interest to ensure proper enforcement of CC licenses so that those looking for works released with a certain type of license can find your work more easily. However, if we are on the other side (i.e., on the side of the user who looks for works under CC licenses), we can do our research and selection better if the licensor has applied the license to the work, observing all the necessary technical precautions. As you can imagine, the following considerations are attributable solely to works published in digital format and disseminated through the Internet. So they do not relate solely to works published on material supports. There are several ways to publish and distribute files of your work online, some that require a certain familiarity and awareness of telematics, others which are simpler and more intuitive. Recently, with the advent of the so-called "web 2.0", there are different services that offer an integrated set of choices (webspace to host the file, more advanced tagging and licensing processes, etc). We cannot, of course, provide a complete overview of all the available services with their current mode of operation. We therefore limit our discussion to some basic principles to clarify and analyze the most common services, referring to other sources for further discussion of the distinctive features. The license choosing process we have discussed above is intended to provide a set of metadata, identifying the license we choose. By inserting these code lines in the HTML structure of our website, we will see the usual copyright notice and the button with a link to the the license's Commons Deed at the bottom of the page. Therefore, if we assume we would release a movie licensed with CC, and we already have our website, we have to do the following: create a special webpage, insert the video file, display the page in "code mode", copy (by the classic "ctrl-c" command) the lines of metadata provided at the end of the choosing process, paste (by the classic "ctrl-v" command) metadata at the end of your HTML page, before "</ body> </ html>". This process is based on a system known in technical terms as Resource Description Framework (RDF)[18] and it uniformly works for all kinds of files because it does not directly operate on the code of the file, but on the web page that hosts the file. ______________________ 18- «The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a family of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) specifications originally designed as a metadata data model. It has come to be used as a general method for conceptual description or modeling of information that is implemented in web resources, using a variety of syntax formats.» This definition is taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework. a. Marking Creative Commons works: general aspects[19]
It is also recommended
thatyou display the license within the work itself, especially if your
content will be shared online or displayed in a physical medium.
Different types of content will have different limitations, but your
marker should contain:
1. The full URL (link) to the license.
Example: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/ 2. Optionally, the Creative Commons license icons, including the CC logo. CC icons may be downloaded from the Press Kit page at http://creativecommons.org/about/downloads. Markers and video bumpers are available on the CC wiki, but you can also make your own. You may also want to include a copyright notice stating the author(s) and date of creation. The phrase “Some Rights Reserved” may be used to differentiate from the default “All Rights Reserved” copyright notice. Since each CC license represents a different set of permissions and restrictions, it is important to note the specific license used. Displaying only the c icon, “Creative Commons”, or “Some Rights Reserved” is insufficient, always include the full URL. In order for others to credit you for your work, it is preferable to provide an attribution name and URL. If your work is a derivative or remix, you must also properly attribute the original creator(s). Unless the creator(s) has specified otherwise, displaying his name(s) and an URL (if applicable) is adequate attribution. ______________________ 19- This paragraph is partially taken from the document published at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/6/61/Creativecommons-licensing-and-marking-your-content_eng.pdf. b. Marking specific kinds of files[20]
Text-based documents should
contain a CC marker — a graphic or line of text stating the license —
wherever a copyright notice would go, such as in a footer or on a cover
page. For documents containing images, markers should ideally include
the CC icons and the full URL to the license. For plain text documents,
the CC icons may be replaced with the name of the license (e.g.
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial) or the abbreviation (e.g.
CC BY-NC). In both cases the full URL to the license should be
included. A copyright notice stating the author(s), date, and copyright
should also be included.[21]For images, a CC marker — a graphic or line of text stating the license — should be displayed on or near the image. Markers should ideally include the CC icons and the full URL to the license. For plain text captions, the CC icons may be replaced with the name of the license (e.g. Creative Commons Attribution) or the abbreviation (e.g. CC BY). In both cases the full URL to the license should be included. A copyright notice stating the author(s), date, and copyright should also be included.[22] There are a variety of ways to mark audio. One option is an audio bumper – a brief sound clip at the beginning or end of your audio work that states the author(s) and CC license. If you record your own audio bumper, be sure to include the full URL to the license and/or the full name of the license (including version number). A copyright notice stating the author(s), date, and copyright should also be included.[23]
Example Script:
Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under [license]. © 2007, [author]. Some Rights Reserved. Another way to mark audio is with a CC marker – a graphic or line of text stating the license – next to the file (on a webpage) or in the liner notes (for physical media). For more information about CC markers, see Marking Image above. Video should contain a video bumper — a notice at the beginning or end of your video that states the author(s) and CC license. If you make your own video bumper, be sure to include the CC license icons (including the CC logo) and the full URL to the license. The CC icons may be replaced with the name of the license or the abbreviation. A copyright notice stating the author(s), date, and copyright should also be included.[24] Another way to mark video is with a CC marker – a graphic or line of text stating the license – next to the file (on a webpage) or in the liner notes (for physical media). For more information about CC markers, see Marking Image above. ______________________ 20- This paragraph is partially taken from the document published at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/6/61/Creativecommons-licensing-and-marking-your-content_eng.pdf. 21- Sample markers may be downloaded at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC_markers. 22- Sample markers may be downloaded at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC_markers. 23- Sample bumpers may be downloaded at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/User_submitted_bumpers. 24- Sample bumpers may be downloaded at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/User_submitted_bumpers. c. Publishing your work through a social networking site or a file sharing system[25]
Social networking sites like
YouTube, Flickr and MySpace are a popular option for publishing and
distributing content. Some sites like Flickr (photo sharing), ccMixter
(community music and remix), and Scribd (document sharing) allow you to
select a license for your work from within the website itself. For
sites lacking this functionality, we recommend cutting and pasting the
HTML code generated by our license chooser
(http://creativecommons.org/license/) into the description field so
that users know that your work is CC licensed.Finally, there is always the possibility to use file-sharing programs such as Emule, Morpheus, BearShare, with which we share other types of files. Thus, we can spread our works also putting these files in the sharing folder of our software; this way those who are connected to the same peer-to-peer network will see our files. Some of them also have a search option to search files containing RDF metadata[26]. If we want to make it even more visible to users that the work is licensed under Creative Commons, we can also write it in the name of the file, possibly using the most common abbreviations (eg "CC by-nc-sa" to report a work licensed under Creative Commons Attribution – Not Commercial – Share alike). ______________________ 25- This paragraph is partially taken from the document published at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/6/61/Creativecommons-licensing-and-marking-your-content_eng.pdf. 26- Metadata is machine-readable information embedded within a digital file. Properly formatted metadata can communicate CC license information to your computer, MP3 player, ebook reader,etc. Some formats (such as MP3 and SVG) support license metadata better than others. Creative Commons supports the use of XMP for embedding and retrieving standardized, mediaspecific metadata. More technical details at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/XMP. d. Finding works under Creative Commons licenses
If we click "find" on the
homepage of www.creativecommons.org, we are immediately redirected to
the web-page http://search.creativecommons.org. Here is the official
page created by Creative Commons to search for works released under CC.
It is only a search engine that is set to be sensitive to the famous
metadata identification for licenses. In the search field you can enter
one or more keywords and even specify what you want to do with the
work, only by checking the two options on the right: 1) “I want
something that I can use for commercial purposes”; 2) “I want something
that I can modify, adapt, or build upon”.From the same page you can also use the Google and Yahoo search engines by setting a specific search on contents with Creative Commons licenses.  Finally, we can look for a more immediate way through the most recent versions of Mozilla Firefox, which incorporate a small search field in the top right, next to the web address. Clicking on the drop down (which as the default option usually gives the "G" in Google) there is the symbol with the double C of Creative Commons. APPENDIX I
THE COMMONS DEEDS OF THE LICENSES (release 3.0, unported version) Attribution: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 Attribution - Share Alike: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0 Attribution - No derivative works: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0 Attribution - Non commercial: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0 Attribution - Non commercial - Share Alike: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0 Attribution - Non commercial - No derivative works: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0 APPENDIX II
THE PAGE ABOUT CREATIVE COMMONS ON WIKIPEDIA You can read it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons. SOME BOOKS, ARTICLES AND WEBSITES ABOUT CREATIVE COMMONS
Books and articles Broussard, Sharee L. (2007), The copyleft movement: creative commons licensing, Communication Research Trends. Available at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_7081/is_3_26/ai_n28457434?tag=content;col1. Elkin-Koren, Niva (2006), Exploring Creative Commons: A Skeptical View of a Worthy Pursuit, The Future of the Public Domain (P. Bernt Hugenholtz and Lucie Guibault, eds.). Available athttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=885466. Fitzgerald, Brian, and Ian Oi (2004), Free Culture: Cultivating the Creative Commons. Available at http://eprints.qut.edu.au/archive/00000122/. Hietanen, Herkko (2008), The Pursuit of Efficient Copyright Licensing - How Some Rights Reserved Attempts to Solve the Problems of All Rights Reserved, PhD dissertation. Available athttps://oa.doria.fi/handle/10024/42778. Lessig, Lawrence (2003), The Creative Commons, Florida Law Review 55: 763–777. Lessig, Lawrence (2004), The Creative Commons, 65 Mont. L. Rev. 1. Lessig, Lawrence (2001), The future of ideas, Available at http://www.the-future-of-ideas.com/. Lessig Lawrence (2004), Free culture, Available at http://www.free-culture.cc/freecontent/. Lessig Lawrence (2008), Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. Available at www.archive.org/details/LawrenceLessigRemix. Mako Hill, Benjamin (2005), Towards a Standard of Freedom: Creative Commons and the Free Software Movement. Available at http://mako.cc/writing/toward_a_standard_of_freedom.html. Moss, Giles (2005), On the Creative Commons: A Critique of the Commons Without Commonality, Free Software Magazine. Available at www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/commons_without_commonality. Orlowski, Andrew (2009), The Tragedy of the Creative Commons. Available at http://andreworlowski.com/tag/creative-commons/.
Websites http://www.creativecommons.org (Creative Commons official website). http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ (the “Frequently asked questions” official webpage). http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Videos (videos about Creative Commons) http://creativecommons.org/about/history/ (History of Creative Commons). http://www.lessig.org/ (Lawrence Lessig personal website http://www.wikipedia.org/ (the famous free encyclopedia, published with a Creative Commons license). http://www.jamendo.com/ (a large archive where artists allow anyone to download and share their music using CC licenses). http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons (a large archive with many images that are licensed under Creative Commons) http://www.copyleft-italia.it/cc (Italian project involved in dissemination about copyleft and Creative Commons) |
|
