Month: October 2019

Submitted for Assignment 3, Creative Commons Certificate: Anatomy of a CC License

So far in my journey through Creative Commons, we’ve talked about what Creative Commons is, what Copyright is, and now in this third section of the certificate, we put them together, in a way, to talk about Creative Commons Licenses.

Sometimes when I am writing up these assignment-related blog posts, I feel like I am just repeating what I’ve read and learned in the notes for this certificate.  Then I remember:  you haven’t had that experience, so it’s all good!  Plus, I am digging up some additional resources to enhance the information.

Remember that Creative Commons licenses exist on top of basic copyright rights, in other words, they are not a replacement for copyright (and they operate within the scope of copyright law), but do affect exceptions and limitations to copyright (but NOT to trademarks, patents, etc.).  So, while CC licenses don’t change anything with regards to people being able to read, listen to, or view your creations, what they DO do is allow creators who are also the holders of a creation’s copyright to grant additional permissions to others, for example to reuse and copy the creation for their own purposes, to revise or adapt the creation, and to redistribute the original creation or adaptations of it (hopefully also licensed as CC), to others.

There are three layers of CC licenses.  What I mean by that is that there is a base legal code (the lawyer-ese, legally enforceable part), then the commons deed (the normal person readable, non legally enforceable summaries), and finally the machine-readable part (the metadata that allows us to search for CC licenses online).  When you copy the CC license code you have chosen onto your creation, all three layers will automatically be applied.

(image from Creative Commons)

But how do you choose a Creative Commons license?  Well, there are four license elements, and using those four elements, we create six Creative Commons licenses.

The four license elements are:

Attribution, or “BY”, means that people can use, adapt, and redistribute your creation with no restrictions except that they must give you attribution.

NonCommercial or “NC” means people can use, adapt, and redistribute your creation, but NOT for profit, again as long as they give you attribution.

ShareAlike or “SA” means that if people create adaptations from your creation, they must share that new creation under a similar license.

NoDerivatives or “ND” means that while people could adapt your work, they can’t share those adaptations with others.

And here are the six CC licenses we can create from these four elements (all six licenses require attribution, so I have not noted that again below).

  “CC BY” allows people to use the work for any purpose.

  “BY-SA” allows people to use the work for any purpose, but adaptations must be made available under the same or a compatible license.

“BY-NC” allows people to use the work for any noncommercial purpose (so, they can’t make a profit from the work or adaptations of it).

  “BY-NC-SA” allows people to use the work for noncommercial purposes, but must be made available under the same or a compatible license.

  “BY-ND” allows people to use the work for any purpose (even commercially) but NOT to adapt it.

  “BY-NC-ND” allows people to use only the un-adapted work for noncommercial purposes.

For those of you who would like to see an more visual explanation of these elements and licenses, here is a video from censiCLICK (note that this video also explains the relationship between CC licenses and the public domain, which I will talk more about later in this post).

Creative Commons Licenses, Explained

CC licenses (like copyright) don’t affect public domain works, and should never be applied to works which are in the public domain.  But Creative Commons has created icons to indicate either that a work is already in the public domain, or that a creation has been dedicated by its creator to the public domain.  And while you could apply CC license to adaptations created from public domain works, Creative Commons encourages you not to do so, but to allow the adaptation to also become part of the public domain.

Here are the two Creative Commons icons indicating that a work is in the public domain:

The CC0 icon indicates that a creator has dedicated her creation to the public domain, except in those jurisdictions which don’t allow for this.

The Public Domain icon is simply a label indicating that the creation in question is free of all copyright restrictions.

To finish off my post, I wanted to share this video that talks about Creative Commons licenses and works in the public domain as they work in the world of Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons – a little practical application, if you will.

Wikipedia Images – Public Domain Creative Commons (How-To)

References

censiCLICK. (2018, June 1). Creative Commons Explained. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZMPRymQsBw&feature=youtu.be

FPC-Virtual. (2018, June 1). Wikipedia Images – Public Domain Creative Commons (How-To). [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50u-31sniU8

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Submitted for Assignment 2, Creative Commons Certificate:  Copyright Law

The word “copyright” can strike fear and trepidation into the hearts of men and women, but is it really something to be afraid of?

Copyright gives creators rights to their creations so that they control how others can use their works.  Sounds reasonable.  If you spend a lot of time creating something, like a book or a movie or a painting, you want to be able to keep people from taking it and either passing it off as their creation or altering it in a way that you might not agree with.   While in the past, creators had to jump through formal bureaucratic hoops to get copyright for their creations, today they don’t need to do anything  – copyright is automatic.

In addition to giving creators control over their creations, copyright is meant to encourage creators to continue to create, and to ensure they receive attribution for their works when they are cited or performed.  But what about encouraging creativity outside of the author, for example with musical performances, movies, or plays? In the video below, Dr Luke McDonagh  from the Law School at City University London explains:

Is Copyright Law preventing or encouraging creativity: City University London – shaping opinion

One thing to be aware of:  if you create your work as part of your work for an institution, or as part of a contract for someone else, you may have not exclusive rights over your creation.  For example, if you are a faculty member at a post-secondary institution and write a book in your work time, the institution may well (depending on the country) hold copyright over that work (although, as the author, you will retain moral rights).

Copyright covers original creations, but not copies of others’ creations –  typically creations that are written, recorded, saved electronically, etc.  It also does not cover facts or ideas, although since creations are ideas made “concrete”, this distinction can be tricky to define.  The type of creations that can be copyrighted can changes from country to country, but typically include literary/artistic works or collections of these, translations and adaptations, and sometimes computer software or industrial designs.

Trademarks and  patents are related to copyright as different types of intellectual property, but trademark law covers identifiers of companies and products, for example, logos and brand names, while patent law covers inventors, giving them exclusive rights over their inventions for a limited time.

The complexity of intellectual property as copyright, patents, and trademarks, is explained in this video by Stan Muller:

Introduction to Intellectual Property: Crash Course IP 1

Eventually copyright expires, or a creator gives up her copyright, and works pass into the public domain.  When this happens depends on the term of copyright in any given country.  Works may also be in the public domain when they never had copyright applied to them, as with documents created by the government.  When a work moves into the public domain, it can be used freely, within the constrains of the moral rights of the creator.  I should note, however, that when a work passes into the public domain in one country, it may still be copyrighted in another – so be careful!

For those works not in the public domain, and not covered by Creative Commons licensing, some countries have instituted fair use or fair dealing exemptions to copyright.   Fair use generally asks if the use of a creation is fair, whereas fair dealing refers to specific uses of a creation as fair.  In Canada, fair dealing exemptions defined in the Canadian Copyright Act are uses for research, private study, education, parody, satire, criticism, review, and news reporting.

This short video from the University of Ottawa outlines how fair dealing works in Canada:

Copyright and Fair Dealing

Of course, copyright and copyright law are a bit more complex than I’ve outlined here, but you can always read the Canadian Copyright Act to find out more :-).

References

City University London. (2016, June 9). Is Copyright Law preventing or encouraging creativity: City University London – shaping opinion. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf596d73V2M&feature=youtu.be

[CrashCourse]. (2015, April 23).  Introduction to Intellectual Property: Crash Course IP 1. [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQOJgEA5e1k&feature=youtu.be

[University of Ottawa]. (October 5, 2015). Copyright and Fair Dealing. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/IsesushmqaM

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.