Copyright for Creatives

1.4 Creative Commons

Copyright seems like it's pretty much an all-or-nothing deal, and legally speaking...it is. But in 2001, a nonprofit organization organized a licensing system called Creative Commons. Now a global phenomenon, Creative Commons (https://creativecommons.org/) is a series of licenses that allows creators and rightsholders to release their work with some shared rights, including a license that essentially releases a work directly into the Public Domain.

The Creative Commons Licenses

* Attibution (Others can use, but must credit you, the creator/rightsholder.)

* Share Alike (Others can use, but must share the resulting work under the same license.)

* Noncommercial (Others may share, but may not profit in any way from the resulting work.)

* No Derivatives (Others may share, but may not transform or modify the original work in any way.)

While all Creative Commons licenses must include Attribution, you may add on the others as needed. For example, if you want others to be able to remix and share under the same terms in nonprofit situations, you would use the by-sa-nc license. Creative Commons actually has a great tool to help you build the right license for your project:

Fortunately, some creative platforms have Creative Commons built in, making the process much simpler. Participating platforms include wattpad, YouTube, and deviantArt.

There is one more license not addressed here: CC0. This license allows you to clearly release your own work into the Public Domain. It is the only Creative Commons license that does not require attribution (I like to include it anyway if the information is present), and can be found in use on some stock photo sites like Pixabay. Creative Commons offers an explanation of CCO and Public Domain, and the difference between them at: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/

Why Creative Commons?

The goal of Creative Commons is to offer creators the ability to tailor a creation's copyright to best suit the rightholder's intentions, and they make a point of keeping up with remix culture trends to help navigate those rights. A creator wanting to take advantage of this more relaxed set of protections and become part of the remix culture has a much simpler time of stating what others are allowed to do with the original work. Those wanting to remix, adapt, or otherwise work with an artifact released under a Creative Commons license can do so if they abide by the conditions of the license without having to seek out a license or legal permission. It simplifies a lot of processes and potential questions down the road.

Sadly, although Creative Commons has been in existence for nearly twenty years, there are still a lot of misconceptions about how it works. Not surprising, given the confusion people generally have regarding copyright. So, if you aren't sure, either just abide by the full copyright laws, or contact the rightsholder and ask.

Conclusion

That does it for this section on copyright law, Fair Use, and Creative Commons. If you take one thing away from these chapters, let it be this: Always, always, always do your due diligence when researching the copyright status of a work you want to incorporate into your own work, and always, always, always err on the side of copyright. It will save you some serious headaches.

For the rest of this book, we'll be looking at various applications of copyright law as well as some uses that may never have occurred to you. (They certainly didn't to those who learned the hard way...mostly by accident.) Not only are they interesting, they're often eye-opening and helpful in considering what traps might be lying in your projects.

Enjoy!