Open licenses give you more control over your content and how it is used. You now have a lot more freedom, but that leaves you with some important choices to make. Let’s look at your options so that you can make the best choice about how you deliver your content.
Though there have been many changes to U.S. Copyright through the years, it has remained largely black and white. Copyright holders retain complete ownership of all the rights to their work, whether they want it or not. But, about 10 years ago, a non-profit organization called Creative Commons sought to add shades of gray to the standard copyright rules. They did this by constructing a set of licenses that anyone could layer over traditional copyright. By applying these licenses to your content, you offer some additional control to your users.
Here’s a simple way to think about this: Copyright is the law. Licensing is what you let people do with your copyrighted content without breaking that law.
Content creators and copyright owners now have a lot more freedom to dictate the terms of use up front, without the need to negotiate individual rights for each re-use. What does this mean for you?
- Creative Commons (CC): The primary advantage is propagation. You trade control for propagation. Letting users share your work reduces friction, allowing your content to travel faster and farther. The more people who see your content, the more chances you get to build your audience. It’s harder to monetize this type of content—but you can think of it as getting paid in credibility and authority.
- All Rights Reserved (ARR): The primary advantage is control. You trade propagation for more control. Someone who wants to re-use your content has to ask your permission and, potentially, negotiate a usage fee. Your content won’t propagate as easily, not as many people will see it, and you risk obscurity.
Which path is right for you? It depends on your objective. An All Rights Reserved license is going to reduce your reach. If you need to retain full control over your content in the hopes of getting paid, that’s OK. But don’t pin this to false hope. You’re not going to get paid unless you’ve built up sufficient authority. The more you restrict your content, the more you reduce your chances of building authority.
As Steven Johnson says, in Future Perfect: The Case For Progress In A Networked Age:
“You may well make more money if you build walls of copyright law around your information—though there is some interesting debate about even that—but there is no question you are diminishing the influence of your ideas when you erect those barricades.”
But cede a little control of your content under a CC license, and that all starts to change. There are a lot of flavors of CC licenses, with varying degrees of control to suit each artist’s purposes. We’ll cover the most common licenses that creatives choose—and why—in the next segment.
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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.
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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 Light” by Yamashita Yohei is licensed under CC BY 2.0. No modifications from original.