There are a lot of flavors of Creative Commons licenses. Let’s cover the four most common ones chosen by creatives, and why. We’ll go from the most open (least restrictive) to the least open (most restrictive), including All Rights Reserved:
- Attribution (CC BY): This license gives your users the most freedom. People can re-use your content in whatever way they wish, including adapting it or changing it. The only right you reserve is that they credit you for creating the original content. But don’t worry—you are not responsible for the changes people make to your content.
- Attribution Share Alike (CC BY-SA): This license has the same rules as above, but includes one additional restriction. The “share alike” clause means that users can’t change your license. They are allowed to redistribute your content, changing it however they want, but the new work must be republished under the same license. Why? The content remains open—that is, someone can’t adapt your content and change it to All Rights Reserved.
- Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (CC BY-NC-SA): While this license again includes the same rules as above, here you also reserve the right to be the only party that profits financially from the use or re-use of the work. The “non-commercial” restriction means that if users intend to re-use your work, they need your permission—just like in an All Rights Reserved license. If it’s valuable enough to re-use, then it’s valuable enough to pay the author for that re-use. You can also forego the “share alike” restriction by using CC BY-NC.
- Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND): This is the most restrictive CC license. Unlike the licenses above, here redistribution is allowed but users may not change or adapt your work—at all. This license is good to use anytime you want your work to appear unchanged whenever it is shared. Again, you can forego the “non-commercial” restriction by using CC BY-ND.
- All Rights Reserved (ARR): This is just what it sounds like—the artist reserves all rights to the content. If anyone wants to re-use, adapt, or change the work outside of fair use guidelines, they need the artist’s permission.
With any of these licenses, you have the right to make exceptions. For instance, if you’ve licensed a photo with CC BY-SA but someone approaches you for permission to include that work in an ARR publication (so, not “sharing alike”), you can choose whether or not to grant permission for that re-use. Let them re-use it for free? You can if you want to, but they will need your written permission to make an exception to the rights you’ve reserved by applying that CC BY-SA license. Negotiate the terms—maybe you can even get paid for your work.
Keep in mind that people infringe on copyright all the time. Sometimes they do it willfully, but often it’s simply because they don’t understand copyright. They think that, if the content is on the Internet, anyone can make use of it. Regardless of whether you use CC or ARR, you are still going to find that people will infringe on the rights you set. It’s just impossible to police all of them.
So, what’s best for you? I can’t answer that for you. My advice is to use different licenses for different content. I do this all the time. For instance, with some of my music I want to retain all the rights so I use ARR; with other pieces of music, I want to give people the ability to re-use my work so I use CC BY-SA. For podcasts, I want to make sure that my ideas aren’t taken out of context, so I use CC BY-NC-ND. With captured sounds like this one, I use CC BY.
If your content is good enough that people want to make use of it, that’s great. But set the terms up front so that those people don’t need to ask how they can use it. Get your ideas flowing by offering easy re-use. But the stuff you want to monetize—keep control of that.
***
Creative Commons Cheat Sheet
- CC BY: I want credit for my contribution, nothing more.
- CC BY-SA: I want credit for my contribution, and I want to make sure that the work stays open.
- CC BY-NC-SA: I want credit, I want it to stay open, and I don’t want anyone profiting from my work.
- CC BY-NC-ND: I want all of the above, and I don’t want anyone changing my work.
- All Rights Reserved: You can’t do anything with my content unless you get my permission.
—
DISCLAIMER: This article is intended for informational purposes only, to help you make choices about licensing your work. It should not be construed as a substitute for legal advice from an attorney.
—
This article was originally published as a part of the Good Content Series on EdTech Times. For a collection of my articles on EdTech Times, please see: http://bit.ly/ETT-boezi.
Photo credit: “CC on Orange” by Yamashita Yohei is licensed under CC BY 2.0. No modifications from original.