0.3 Creative commons attribution license

Purpose

This material was originally developed as a portion of a workshop covering open textbook adoption. It has been converted into this self-study module.

Copyright with sharing

The creators of ideas, art, literature, music, etc. usually have an immediate “copyright” to their creative genius. The copyright laws are designed to protect the creator (or author) of the materials from having others make money from their creations as well as to protect their works from copycats (call a derivative work). The laws are centered in the protection of the creative work by allowing its originator to control their creation.

Some authors (or creators) are willing to share their creative works with certain limitations. This can be accomplished through the use of one of the Creative Commons Attribution Licenses (External Link) which have an international recognition.

Understanding license options will enable you to decide how you wish to share your materials and give you the ability to use the materials of others by following their license restrictions, thus avoiding any copyright infringement.

You should view this video from Creative Commons that discusses sharing:

(External Link)

Creative commons license conditions

Authors retain the copyrights to their creations. Those rights include the profits from commercial use and distribution of their creations and the right to deny other to make modifications to their creations. However, some creators are willing to share some of their rights with others. This is done when they license others to use their creative material within a set of conditions.

The conditions are:

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.

You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for non-commercial purposes only.

You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

Creative commons attribution licenses

By putting various conditions together; there are 6 basic licenses possible:

This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered, in terms of what others can do with your works licensed under Attribution.

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.