What Is Creative Commons, And When Should You Use It?

You may heard of YouTube deleting someone's channel or a video due to Copyright infringement, or while you are surfing DeviantArt, you noticed an artwork that you want to use for your website or your project, or maybe you was passing by SoundCloud looking for a background music to use in your video and the author requests that you should attribute his name in the description in order to use his/her work,  referred as Creative Commons (CC).

 What is Creative Commons ?

 

 Creative Commons (CC) is an international non-profit organization that offers an alternative to full copyright, founded in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig.It provides free copyright licenses to give the public permission to share and use others creative work under certain conditions picked by the creators.
CC licenses are legal tools that creators and other rights holders can use to offer certain usage rights to the public, while reserving other rights.

Every time you create a work , for example, produce a music, take a photograph,create a movie based on a book (Derivative work), design a web template,logo or whatever, your work is going to be automatically protected by copyright. This copyright culture prevents others from using your work : copying, editing, putting it in their online projects, works and commercial purposes.

Watch this beautiful video on YouTube that explains well CC :

What's the difference between "All Rights Reserved" and "Creative Commons"?

 

 

Copyright owner can be a person or a company that owns one of the exclusive rights of copyright in a work. When you sell your painting to someone, you still have the copyright in the painting. The buyer will have to keep it in his home or office and he is not allowed to sell or make a copy of your artwork. In order to exercise one or more of the Exclusive Rights of copyright, you need a "license" from the Copyright owner (sometimes he is also known as the "licensor"). A license is the permission granted by a licensor to the person or company requesting the right to exercise one or more of these exclusive rights (also known as the "licensee").

With All Rights Reserved, a Copyright owner owns all or any one of the "exclusive rights" of copyright in a work without exception, all the rights provided by copyright law. When copyright expires, the work enters the Public Domain, and the rights holder can no longer stop others from engaging in those activities under copyright, with the exception of moral rights reserved to creators in some jurisdictions. Creative Commons licenses offer creators a series of choices between reserving all rights and conceding all rights (Public Domain), an approach we call "Some Rights Reserved." 

You can also watch this helpful video on YouTube :

What is Public Domain (CC0) ?

When you set your work in the public domain, you are specifying no conditions for anyone who wishes to use your work. They will be able to use it without permission, without attributing it to yourself and for any purpose they wish.

Some people misunderstood CC :

• Some people think that all licenses are non-commercial, and they are never allowed to make commercial use of a CC work. This is not true. There are a number of CC licenses which allow commercial use work 

•  CC is an anti-copyright ?  No, in fact, CC believes in copyright and the right of creators to control the use of their work. CC just provides voluntary tools to let creators manage their own copyright.

• Can I apply a Creative Commons license to software? :

  Unlike software-specific licenses, CC licenses do not contain specific terms about the distribution of source code, which is often important to ensuring the free reuse and modifiability of software. Many software licenses also address patent rights, which are important to software but may not be applicable to other copyright-able works. Additionally, CC licenses are currently not compatible with the major software licenses, so it would be difficult to integrate CC-licensed work with other free software.Existing software licenses were designed specifically for use with software and offer a similar set of rights to the Creative Commons licenses.

   
•  You can do anything you want with CC materials ?
  CC materials are not free of copyright. The creator of the work does not lose their copyright in the work, but rather chooses to share the work with the public under certain conditions. If you violate the license by using the material in a way not permitted, standard copyright law applies.

see more info in this link : Frequently asked questions 

https://commons.wikimedia.orgindex.php?curid=933131 By Klaus Graf - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5,

 A sign in a pub in Granada notifies customers that the music they are listening to is freely distributable under a Creative Commons license.

Optional License Elements :

Along with the basic rights and obligations set out in each CC license, there are a set of ‘optional’ license elements which can be added by the creator of the work.

These elements allow the creator to select the different ways they want the public to use their work. The creator can mix and match the elements to produce the CC license they want. This process is a simple and quick way for creators to indicate how they wish their work to be used.

Each element has its own icon and abbreviation, making them easy to identify. There are four standard license elements:

Attribution (BY) :
You must credit the creator, the title and the license the work is under. This is compulsory for all Creative Commons licenses. You can pass to the last section where i have explained how to give attribution.

 Non-commercial (NC) :
 Any use of the work must be for non-commercial purposes only. For example, file sharing, educational use and film festivals are all allowed, but advertising and for-profit uses are not.

  No Derivative Works (ND) :
The work can only be used exactly how it is. The work cannot be adapted or modified in any way.  This means you will need to get extra permission if you want to remix the work, crop a photo, edit down text or use a song in a film.

  Share Alike (SA) :
Any new work produced using this material must be made available under the same licence as the original work. So, for example, if you remix a work under an Attribution-Share Alike license, you have to release the new work you create under an  Attribution-Share Alike license.

• The Licenses :

  A Creative Commons licensor answers a few simple questions on the path to choosing a license.First, do I want to allow commercial use or not, and then second, do I want to allow derivative works or not? If a licensor decides to allow derivative works, she may also choose to require that anyone who uses the work to make that new work available under the same license terms.This idea is called “ShareAlike”. It is inspired by the GNU General Public License, used by many free and open source software projects. 
  
  there are six standard Creative Commons licenses : 
  
  

 

 Attribution

CC BY

 
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. Recommended for use of licensed materials.

Attribution-ShareAlike
CC BY-SA 

 
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.

 

Attribution-NoDerivs
CC BY-ND 

 
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-NonCommercial
CC BY-NC

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-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
CC BY-NC-SA 

 

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.

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
CC BY-NC-ND 

 

This license is the most restrictive of CC six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

How to give attribution ?

Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license.

Here is a photo. Following it are some examples of how people might attribute it.

This is an ideal attribution :

“Sunset on Malta” by Maarten Elings is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Because:

• Title is “Sunset on Malta”.
• Author? “ Maarten Elings” – linked to his profile page.
• Source? “Sunset on Malta” – linked to original Flickr page.
• License? “CC BY 2.0” – linked to license deed.

 How you attribute authors of the CC works will depend on whether you modify the content, if you create a derivative, if there are multiple sources, etc.

How to Share your work as Creative Commons ?

To share  your work, follow the link  : Share Your Work.

After you get redirected to this page, just click on the get started button.

Select the license you want to apply.

And finally, just copy and past the given code to your web page or work.

 

 

Ressources and more useful links : 

• https://creativecommons.org/  

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons

• http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/open-education/creative-commons