UNDERSTANDING CREATIVE COMMONS
LICENSES IN THE EDUCATIONAL CONTEXT
Amanda Burch, eLCC Conference 2014
Creative Commons
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A nonprofit organization established in 2002, Creative
Commons provides copyright licenses that encourage sharing,
adaptation, and reuse of creative works.
The original licenses were inspired by the Free Software
Foundation's General Public License, which gained recognition
in the 1990s.
Creative Commons licenses forge a balance between openness
and the traditional “all rights reserved” setting that copyright
law creates.
The Licenses Allow You To
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Revise: adapt and improve the resource so it better
meets your needs.
Remix: combine or "mash up" a resource with another
to produce new materials.
Reuse: use the original or your new version of the
resource in a wide range of contexts.
Redistribute: make copies and share the original
resource or your new version with others.
The License Types
Attribution
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CC BY
You are free to distribute, remix, tweak, and build
upon a work, even commercially, as long as you
credit the original creator.
Attribution-NoDerivatives
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CC BY-ND
You are free to distribute, commercially and noncommercially, as long as the work is passed along
unchanged and in whole, with credit to the creator.
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
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CC BY-NC-SA
You are free to remix, tweak, and build upon a
work non-commercially, as long you credit the
original creator and license the new creations under
identical terms.
Attribution-ShareAlike
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CC BY-SA
You are free to remix, tweak, and build upon the
work even for commercial purposes, as long as you
credit the original creator and license the new
creations under identical terms.
Attribution-NonCommercial
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CC BY-NC
You are free to remix, tweak, and build upon the
work non-commercially, while giving credit to the
original creator.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
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CC BY-NC-ND
This is the most restrictive of the licenses, only
allowing non-commercial use and distribution of the
work, unchanged and in whole, as long as the
original creator is credited.
Interpreting the Licenses
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You may only remix works released under different
CC licenses if the terms of the licenses involved
permit such use.
NoDerivatives licenses do not permit remixing or
adapting at all.
All other CC licenses allow remixing, but may
impose conditions on use.
Interpreting the Licenses
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If you adopt and revise a work under a ShareAlike
license, you need to make sure the resulting remix is
licensed under the same terms.
If you intend to use a remixed work for commercial
purposes, you cannot incorporate a work released
under a NonCommercial license.
“Compatibility Chart" © 2013 Creative Commons, used under a Creative Commons Attribution license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
A Note about NonCommercial
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This license prohibits uses that are "primarily
intended for or directed toward commercial
advantage or private monetary compensation.”
Use by a nonprofit educational institution assumed
to be a “noncommerical” use, however this does not
exclude the use from being challenged.
A Note about NonCommercial
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If you are unsure if your use qualifies as
NonCommercial, Creative Commons recommends
contacting the creator or rightsholder for
clarification or search for works that are not
licensed under NC.
Creative Commons Defining “Noncommercial”: A
Study of How the Online Population Understands
“Noncommercial” Use in 2009
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http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Defining_Noncommercial
Guidelines for Attribution
Creative Commons provides guidelines to use when
attributing a source. This should include:
 Credit to the creator
 Title of the work
 URL where the work was hosted
 Indication of the license type and link to the license
type available through Creative Commons
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http://creativecommons.org.au/content/attributingccmaterials.pdf
Attribution Example
Vivian and the Giant Fish by Alan Bruce, available
under a Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0
at http://www.flickr.com/photos/qole/2284384975
Attribution for Derivative Work
This is a Finnish translation of "My Awesome Report" ©
2009 by Greg Grossmeier, used under a Creative
Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/.
This Finnish translation is licensed under the same
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/.
Reusing Content
Copyright
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Copyright is automatic upon creation of a work in a fixed and
tangible medium.
The content author is not required to register the copyright or
feature a notice on the work to be covered by the law.
Content published through an academic institution is not
automatically exempt from traditional “all rights reserved”
copyright.
For text, photos, and any multimedia, all rights are reserved.
Fair Use
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The principle of fair use allows for adoption and use
of portions of a copyrighted work for a
transformative purpose.
When citing fair use, consider the following guidelines
and choose whichever is less:
For text, 10% or 1000 words
 For photos, 5 images from a single individual, 15 from a
collection, or 10%
 For audio, 10% or 30 seconds
 For video, 10% or 3 minutes
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Creative Commons
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For text, photos, and any multimedia, some rights are
reserved.
Clearly defined reuse and remix specifications,
depending on the license type.
What is OER?
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Open Educational Resources (OER) are "teaching,
learning, and research resources that reside in the
public domain or have been released under an
intellectual property license that permits their free
use and re-purposing by others.”
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Types of Content
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Full Courses
Handouts
Lectures and
Presentation Notes
Individual Modules or
Units
eTextbooks
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Videos
Podcasts
Exams and Quizzes
Illustrations and Photos
Simulations
Assignments
Where to Search
Flickr Commons
http://flickr.com/commons
http://www.flickr.com/commons
Creative Commons Search
http://search.creativecommons.org/
Open Textbook Library
https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks
OER Commons
http://oercommons.org
CK-12 Foundation
http://www.ck12.org
Saylor Foundation
http://saylor.org
Open Stax
http://openstaxcollege.org
Open Course Library
http://opencourselibrary.org
MERLOT
http://merlot.org
Contributing Back to the Commons
Contributing Back
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Prosperity of the Commons is founded on the notion
of information sharing.
Important questions to consider before making your
work available under an open license:
 Is
the material copyrightable?
 Do you own the material you want to license?
 Are you aware that CC licenses are irrevocable?
Creative Commons
http://creativecommons.org/choose
OER Commons
http://oercommons.org
Flickr
http://flickr.com
Questions?
amanda.burch@cccs.edu
Sources
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Creative Commons. (2013). About the Licenses. Retrieved from
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/.
Creative Commons. (2013). Best Practices for Marking Content with CC Licenses. Retrieved from
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Marking/Users.
Creative Commons. (2013). Frequently Asked Questions. Retrieved from
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ.
Creative Commons. (2013). NonCommercial. Retrieved from
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Noncommercial.
P2PU. (2013). Copyright 4 Educators. Retrieved from
https://p2pu.org/en/courses/667/copyright-for-educators-us/.
Park, C. (2013). Creative Commons and Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from
http://www.slideshare.net/janeatcc/v2-creative-commons-overview-webinar-8613.
Stites, W. (2011). Copyright, Fair Use, and Creative Commons in Education. Retrieved from
http://www.slideshare.net/wstites/copyright-fair-use-creative-commons-in-education.
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. (nd). Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from
http://www.hewlett.org/programs/education-program/open-educational-resources.