In This Section:
By the end of this module, you should be able to
No, my cat hasn't walked across the keyboard again. The acronyms above are representative of the six different Creative Commons (CC) licenses. In Module 4 you were introduced to open licenses and how they differ from all rights reserved copyright. In this module, you will learn about the different conditions and permissions of these licenses.
There are six different Creative Commons (CC) licenses that are useful combinations of conditions, all including the primary condition of Attribution. Understanding the meaning of each condition can be useful when deciding which CC license to use on your own work. As discussed in Module 3 (Evaluating and Assessing OER), understanding the meaning of the conditions can also be useful in evaluating an open resource.
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Attribution (BY) The Attribution (BY) condition is fundamental to all CC licenses. What many creators care about most is receiving credit for their creative work. When reusing CC-licensed work, proper attribution must be given to the original creator — and to other contributors on the work, if any. |
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Share-Alike (SA) The Share-Alike condition adds a requirement for anyone reusing your work to also license their own creation (based on your work) under the same license. Both the CC BY-SA and CC BY-NC-SA licenses include this condition, effectively making them "copyleft" or "viral" licenses. While this condition effectively "locks open" the content, remixing SA content with non-SA or other-SA licensed work may not be straightforward or allowed at all. |
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Non-Commercial (NC) The Non-Commercial condition allows for reuse and sharing, but reserves commercial rights for the creator. The meaning of the NC condition itself and its ability to prevent commercial reuse is not always clear, but the license condition does clearly indicate that commercial reuse rights are not being granted. |
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No-Derivatives (ND) The No-Derivatives condition allows sharing and reuse but only if the content is left unchanged. This presents an issue when searching for OER, as no customization or adaptation is allowed by the license. For this reason, ND content is not considered OER and should be considered for reuse only in situations where no adaptations are needed. |
The four license conditions can be combined to create six Creative Commons licenses. The BY (attribution) condition is included in all the licenses, but not all conditions work together. For example, the SA and ND conditions do not appear in the same license because there is no reason to include the share-alike condition when no derivatives are allowed. The six CC licenses look like this:
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As you find different types of OER to use in your courses, you may find the need to remix and modify the content. Understanding how the different licenses can or cannot be combined is a critical step in reusing openly licensed material. The license compatibility chart below--which includes the Public Domain badges you saw in Module 4--is a great resource when determining which licenses work together.
"License compatibility chart" by Kennisland under a CC0 license.
As you can see from the chart, works using a No-Derivatives (ND) license cannot be combined with other works, because an ND license stipulates that the work must be used with no modification or remixing.
When creating work to share, choosing which open license to apply can be daunting. You as the original creator of your work have choices. The CC License chooser is a simple tool designed to help creators decide which license is best for their work. Remember, when remixing content to create something new, if any of your adapted content includes the SA (share alike) condition - you must apply the SA condition to your newly remixed finished work.
Visit the CC license chooser. It is an online tool that prompts you to select conditions for sharing your work and generates an appropriate license statement, applicable icons, and text or embed code to easily copy and paste into your work. Here is an example:
This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0
As mentioned above, all six of the Creative Commons licenses include the BY or attribution condition. This is a requirement of reuse. The original creator has explicitly informed the user of this requirement through the use of the BY condition. As you learned in the slide show presentation earlier in this module, citations and attributions are similar but different. Providing attribution is the legal requirement of the open license. While some tools, like CC Search, include the attribution in the resource; there are other resources available to help users easily create attribution statements for work they reuse, remix, or modify.
When creating attributions, remember the acronym TASL:
This CC license matching activity is a fun way to test your ability to match CC licenses with an author's permission preferences.
Of all the combinations of permissions and restrictions that you learned about above, what particular Creative Commons license would you prefer to put on OER that you create, and why? Explain in terms of how you want to protect your rights and how you want to encourage use and reuse.
The deadline for completing this module and responding to the discussion question in Teams is Friday, November 10.
Information for this module was adapted from "Carrie Gits SPARC Capstone - ACC Learn OER" by Carrie Gits licensed under CC BY 4.0.
CC condition icons and license icons courtesy of Creative Commons.
