7. Creative Commons Licensing

Creative Commons Licensing

The Creative Commons licenses were created as a way for creators to have more control and flexibility over how their works are shared. Since their debut in 2002, Creative Commons licenses have been used on over 2.5 billion works from around the world.^[1] Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law. From the reuser’s perspective, the presence of a Creative Commons license on a copyrighted work answers the question, “What can I do with this work?” .^[2]

Watch “Open Licensing For Student Authors” to walk you through the core pieces of the Creative Commons licenses. As you’re watching think about whether there’s a Creative Commons license that’s right for you.

The Creative Commons Licenses

Let’s review the 6 different license types:

Choosing a License

The six licenses and the public domain dedication tool give creators a range of options. The best way to decide which is appropriate for you is to think about why you want to share your work, and how you hope others will use that work.^[3] Your instructor should be creating an environment in which you feel comfortable either enthusiastically openly licensing your work or deciding not to. You should never feel coerced into openly licensing your work. Another thing to keep in mind is that Creative Commons licenses are irrevocable – this means that once you add a Creative Commons license to your work, that work will always retain that license. You can change your mind and add a new license to a new edition or a revised edition, but the original license will still stand.

If you decide you want to add a Creative Commons license to your work, the following exercise can help you decide which Creative Commons license is right for you. Use the questions to help guide you in making the right licensing decision for you.

Here’s how the exercise works: I’m a creator and I’m trying to decide how I want to license my work. First, I’ll start the exercise and read a little bit about Creative Commons so I have an idea about what I’m making decisions about. Then, I’ll start answering a series of questions starting with whether I’m okay with other people copying and distributing my work without having to ask permission. I am! Now I’ll answer the next question, which is whether I’m okay with people changing, adapting, and/or remixing my work. I’m okay with that too! On to the next question, which is whether I want to limit how others release their remixes of my work. I don’t think I want to limit that so now I’ll answer the last question which asks whether I’m okay with people making money out of reusing my work. I’m not okay with that, so I now know that the best license for me is the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial license.

You can also try out the Creative Commons License Chooser, which walks you through choosing a license and provides a link to the license so you can add it to your work.