Creative Commons: An overview

On October 12th, 1988 the DMCA was passed by the United States Congress. This act established a new set of rules for using copyrighted material digitally. It was very strict about what you could do with content on the internet without prior permission the owner. Fair Use could be used to use images and short snippets of text, but required attribution. However, derivatives and redistribution were acts that required consent of the copyright holder. In 2001 a non-profit organization called Creative Commons was established; its goal was to find a solution to bring back many freedoms that had been taken away by DMCA, and be a tool for many Copyright holders.

Creative Commons licences were therefore established. These licences provided many more freedoms, while following DMCA. All the licenses contained short abbreviations for each standard that was to be used. All licences names begin with CC standing for Creative Commons. Afterwards many other short snippets are given to specify the protections applied. This provided a way for copyright holders to grant permission to users in advance for how they can redistribute their content

This book will cover all of the licenses ([CC stands for Creative Commons, BY stands for attribution, NC stands for non commercial, ND stands for no derivatives]CC 0, CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC CC BY-NC-SA, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC-ND) and will explain in depth what each license grants, exceptions, how the content can be changed or altered, how the content is used, and it complies with Copyright Law:

Quick Summary

0 is used for public domain, which means anyone can use it in any way they see fit. BY means that attribution to the creator is required for anyone who uses that content. SA requires that all content created as a derivative of another piece must be shared under the same license as the content it was derived from. ND requires that no derivatives of a piece with that license are published. NC requires that the content is not used for commercial purposes, such as selling the licensed content or using the licensed content in advertisement. Multiple of these abbreviations in sequence mean that all of those conditions are applied.

Table of Contents

• Attribution
  • Attribution types
  • DMCA and attribution
• Sharealike
  • What is Sharealike?
  • Limits, and advantages of ShareAlike
• commercial
  • What does non-commercial mean?
  • What can and can't be done with my work
• No derivatives
  • What is a derivative?
  • What kinds of derivatives are there?