Creative Commons Licenses, in the twenty-first century, as ideas are recycled, remixed and reworked, you may find yourself in the tricky position of actually having created something original. You may be worried about the degree to which someone else might use your work or the complete opposite, where you would like everyone to know that your work is free to share and use. This is where the Creative Commons license comes in. CC licenses help the creators to permit others to use their work under certain conditions.
Creative Commons, widely known as CC, is a non-profit organization supporting the global movement for sharing and collaboration that works to increase the amount of creative content (such as cultural, educational, and scientific) available for others to build upon legally and to share, use, repurpose, and remix. It has released several copyright licenses, free of charge to the public, which allow creators to quickly change their copyright terms from the default of “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved”. CC licenses are not an alternative to copyright. It enables the creators to modify or change their copyright terms at any time.
In 2001, with the support of the Center for the Public Domain, an American charitable foundation, the Creative Commons organization was founded by academic Lawrence Lessig, professor Hal Abelson, and literacy advocate Eric Eldred. The following year, American journalist and activist Hal Plotkin published the first article about Creative Commons in a general interest publication. In December 2002, the first set of CC licenses was released.
An artist, musician, photographer, educator, student, scientist, or creator of any other field looking for content that can be used legally can consult CC licenses. CC licenses offer various options/scopes for the usage of original content.
As of 2017, according to CC stats, some of the significant platforms sharing CC works, such as YouTube 49 million, Wikipedia 46.7 million, DeviantArt 40 million, Wikimedia Commons 36.9 million, Europeana 28.7 million, Vimeo 6.6 million, Internet Archive 3.1 million, Directory of Open Access Journals 2.7 million, Thingiverse 2.3 million, and 500px 1.2 million. Alongside, there are lots of platforms like Medium, Jamendo Licensing, PLOS, FMA, Scribd, MusicBrainz, Freebase, Geonames, Google search, etc., that contain works on various platforms available under CC licenses are becoming more popular. As of 2019, there were more than 1.4 billion works, such as books, comics, data and databases, educational resources, video games, knowledge, research and science, photos, music, news, technology, blueprints and recipes, videos and films, websites, etc., licensed under the various Creative Commons licenses all over the world.
Licenses Conditions
The 4 types of CC licenses are generated based on the “baseline rights”, such as the right to distribute the copyrighted work worldwide, for non-commercial purposes and without modification.
Hence, the last two clauses are not free content, according to definitions such as the Debian Free Software Guidelines (DFSG) or Free Software Foundation‘s standards, which cannot be used in contexts requiring such freedoms. On the other hand, CC includes another three free licenses for software uses only created by other institutions: the BSD License, the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), and the GNU General Public License (GPL).
Licences Types
Creative Commons offers 6+1 copyright licenses, based on a combination of the four conditions outlined above:
What are the procedures to generate a CC licence?
It’s pretty easy to generate a CC license through the creativecommons.org website. Click the “Share your work” tool on the top, and license your work under the Creative Commons platform based on some steps of answering a few quick questions. The devices will provide a license code for specific uses. It’s a free process and only takes a few minutes.
Can a CC licence be changed?
Creators can change their minds anytime and assign a new CC license. Although previous terms will not be retroactive, new words will only be applicable from the time of its change. For better understanding, let’s say an artist publishes his work under a CC BY-SA (share alike), and the result is used several times when the license is active. Three years later, the artist decided they no longer wanted that work used for commercial purposes, and they switched the license to CC BY-NC (non-commercial). When this change is implemented, any new use of this work for commercial purposes would be considered a breach of the licensing terms. However, existing benefits of the work (those published during the initial CC BY-SA license period) would not be considered a breach as per original licensing.
What happens when a CC licence is breached?
When a work’s CC license terms are breached, the use of the work becomes unlicensed, and that means the copyright is infringed. Therefore, any breach of the license terms terminates the rights granted under the license.
What is copyright infringement?
When any work falls under a Creative Commons license release type 4.0 (or above), users are granted a 30-day grace period in which they (users) can resolve breaches of license terms before it is considered copyright infringement.
Can you take legal action based on a CC license?
If any user has not complied with the terms of a CC license, then legal action can be taken against the offending party.
Does the CC license work the same way in all jurisdictions?
Unfortunately, the CC license is the same under all jurisdictions. Due to the different ways the terms have been interpreted, CC license terms must be more well-defined in some jurisdictions than others. For example, in the United States, “Non-Commercial” (NC) use remains untried in the court system, and the term’s meaning usually boils down to semantics. On the other hand, German courts have tried NC cases and have defined that the time applies strictly to personal uses.
Recent years
Currently, as of November 2019, there are 39 active Creative Commons Chapters and 481 members all over the world who support the CC movement and serve as the central coordinators of the work of the individuals and institutions participating within their home country in support of the Creative Commons Global Network (CCGN). CC Bangladesh was formed on June 23, 2018, to raise awareness and encourage people to use Creative Commons licenses in Bangladesh. At the same time, the chapter encourages the reuse of contents, photographs, and other media files licensed under Creative Commons. Many of the ministries of Bangladesh, like the Education and Health Ministry, are releasing some of their data publicly. Here, CC Bangladesh would like to play a significant role in guiding and leading this free movement and helping to access information quickly and cost-effectively. Along with the community, the chapter plans to work with the government.
Originally published in “O Design” magazine, pp 62-67 | Issue I | September 2019
