Understanding Creative Commons and Commercial License for Content Creators
Introduction
Are you one of those who has committed digital crimes knowingly or unknowingly? Most of us commit these crimes. You might be thinking what are digital crimes? You may know that most of the content on the internet is copyrighted. It means that you cannot use the content unless you have a creative commons license. No one can use any image, text, or video for his own purposes. In the world of content creating, reusing someone else’s data is illegal. So, how can you use the text or image that belongs to someone else in your content? This question will be the centre of our discussion today.
Using others’ published data is risky as they can send you a legal notice over it. Of course, there are some ways that you can use to incorporate the data in your content. The name of that way is having creative commons and a commercial license. This license allows you to use the content of others, including text, images and video. Many of you do not know about the creative commons licence and its types. This article by The Academic Papers UK will serve as a guide for you.
What are Creative Commons Licences?
As a driving license allows an individual to drive a car or bike, the same is the case with creative commons license. The creative commons license allows the content creators to reuse the copyrighted content without cost. The user having this license would not face a legal inquiry over copyright law violation.
Layers of License
This copyright license follows a three-layer design for its users. Every layer is developed for a particular set of people. A brief description of these layers is as follows;
1. Lawyer Layer
The first layer of creative commons is the lawyer’s layer. The copyright issue is a legal issue. Therefore, a company that introduced these licenses has made a lawyer layer. In this layer, everything lawyers need to understand about this license is present. The language is purely legal, making it easy for lawyers to understand. Moreover, the text format of this layer is also legal. All in all, this layer is only for lawyers who can interpret it easily.
2. Human Readable
Not every human is a lawyer. Some creators, educators and scientists do not understand the legal language. Keeping this in view, the creative commons also have a human-readable layer. Everyone can read and understand the information available in this layer.
3. Machine Readable
These licenses are not only limited to humans. The search engines also incorporate these licenses. For example, you post content on the internet. The search engine analyses your content and sends you the copyright strike accordingly based on the license. Therefore, the third layer, i.e., machine-readable, is the most powerful. You cannot escape from a copyright strike if you have copied the data without permission.
Types of Creative Commons Licenses
There are six types of creative commons licenses. The six licenses have different permissions for using the data. This section will discuss all the six types with the associated permissions. Thus, a brief description is as follows;
1. Attribution CC BY
This licence is the most permissible one. Attribution comes in almost every licence. Attribution means that even if you have the license, you have to credit the content’s owner. The credit should be in the way the author of the content asks. Moreover, this creative commons license lets you distribute, remix, adapt, and build someone else’s work. You can use the final content for commercial purposes.
2. Attribution ShareAlike (CC BY-SA)
The following license is an attribution ShareAlike license. This license also allows you to use the content for commercial purposes. But there are also some restrictions. The license terms are the same as CC BY. The only difference is that the CC BY-SA license is free and open-source software. Anyone can take the data, but the derivate work must also acknowledge the original author. For example, Wikipedia uses this license and is recommended for those who take content from Wikipedia.
3. Attribution-NoDrevis (CC BY-ND)
It is also a commercial license, and its holder can use the data for any purpose. The restriction in this license is that you cannot share or distribute the work of others. You must credit only to the content owners. All the content under this license cannot be adapted. The credit is only for the owner.
4. Attribution – Non-Commercial
After commercial licenses come to the non-commercial ones. The content users must acknowledge the original creator and use the content non-commercially. Not just the work taken, all the new works of the creator must give credit to you. Reusers do not have to license their derivative works on the same terms. Non-commerciality of the content is obligatory.
5. Attribution-Non-commercial-Share Alike (CC BY-NC-SA)
This license lets others remix, recreate and build upon their work. Again, the non-commerciality of the work is obligatory too. The license holder must give credit to the content’s owner. This license holder’s new creations must also credit the original author. It is a bit restrictive creative commons license compared to those mentioned above.
6. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND)
This license is the most restrictive of all the licenses described in this article. You cannot even download or share content without giving credit to the content owner. Also, you cannot use this work for commercial purposes too. Moreover, having this license means that you cannot modify the content according to your needs. All the conditions of the author must be fulfilled before accessing the content.
7. CC0 License
It is a relatively new license in the list of creative commons. They also call this license the most permissible one. The licensors waive off all their rights on the content and place the content in the public domain. Anyone can download, edit, and share the content without giving credit.
Conclusion
The creative commons licenses provide foolproof copyright security to content owners. The content of the license holders cannot be used anywhere without credit. Therefore, understanding different types and attributes of licenses by the content creators is essential
