Creative Commons
Creative Commons (a group of intellectual property experts – lawyers and librarians) created a set of free licenses for you so you can clearly define what rights you are keeping and what rights you are sharing. You keep the rights you need and let others use your work in ways you specify. All licenses include proper attribution to you. You choose the license that works best for you. The conditions in the licenses run from "no rights reserved" to "all rights reserved." Creative Commons has a sub-project, Science Commons, "designed to accelerate the research cycle — the continuous production and reuse of knowledge that is at the heart of the scientific method."
Fill out the online form and CC will automatically generate your license.
The basic four conditions are:
Attribution : You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.
Noncommercial : You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only.
No Derivative Works : You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.
Share Alike : You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.
These conditions can be combined to produce six licenses :
- Attribution
- Attribution – Share Alike
- Attribution – Non Commercial
- Attribution – No Derivatives
- Attribution – Share Alike – Non Commercial
- Attribution – Non Commercial – No Derivatives
Your license choice will be expressed in three ways:
- Commons Deed. A plain-language summary of the license, complete with the relevant icons.
- Legal Code. The fine print that you need to be sure the license will stand up in court.
- Digital Code. A machine-readable translation of the license that helps search engines and other applications identify your work by its terms of use.
*Adapted from the Creative Commons website. Adapted and used with permission from Columbia College, Chicago.
