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Creative Commons Licenses

Creative Commons, a non-profit organization associating scientists representing various institutions, including Harvard, MIT, and Stanford were established in 2001. Standardized CC Licenses were created in opposition to the principle of all rights reserved by traditional copyright legislation.

Six CC licenses have been created, and their licensing rules for works depend on a specific combination of the four basic license conditions:

  • Attribution - You may copy, distribute, perform, and perform any copyrighted work and derivative works based on it, provided that the original author's name is referenced.
  • Non-commercial use - You may copy, distribute, present and perform a copyrighted work and derivative works based on it only for non-commercial purposes.
  • Under the same conditions - You may distribute derivative works only under a license identical to that under which the original work was made available.
  • Without derivative works - you are allowed to copy, distribute, present and perform the work only in its original form - creating derivative works is not allowed.

The six available CC licenses combine the four basic terms in different ways, with the “Attribution” disclaimer repeated in each of them:

  1. Attribution CC BY – he license allows you to copy, change, distribute, show and perform a work only if you identify the authorship. It is a license which guarantees the broadest freedoms of the licensee.
  2. Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA –You are licensed to copy, alter, distribute, perform and perform a work as long as the derivative works are licensed under the same license. This is a license used by Wikipedia and its sister projects
  3. Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC – This license allows you to copy, modify, remix, distribute, perform and perform a work for non-commercial purposes only. However, this condition does not apply to derivative works (they may be licensed under a different license).
  4. Attribution-NoDerivs CC BY-ND – The license allows you to distribute, perform and perform the work for both commercial and non-commercial purposes, provided that you keep it in its original form (you are not allowed to create derivative works).
  5. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA – The license allows you to distribute, perform and perform the work for non-commercial purposes only and as long as the derivative works are also licensed under the same license.
  6. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND – the license allows the distribution, presentation and performance of the work only for non-commercial purposes and on condition that it is preserved in its original form (you are not allowed to create derivative works). This is the most restrictive license.

The term ‘free licenses’ often appears on websites, in publications devoted to open access or legal provisions. It should be emphasized that free licenses include CC licenses “Attribution” and “Attribution-Under the Same Conditions”, which allow the highest degree of openness, and therefore the widest use of the work.

Yet another variant of the CC license is the CC0 public domain publishing mechanism, whereby an author can waive his copyright to the maximum extent permitted in a given country. Since in Poland the moral right never expires, this declaration means that the creator grants a very broad license that allows the work to be freely used without the requirement to provide authorship. Thus, it is the creator’s declaration not to exercise moral rights to his work. This mechanism can be helpful in sharing research data.

The tool at  creativecommons.org can help you customize and select the appropriate licenses for your work. It can help website owners to tag shared content.

More useful information on the website:

https://creativecommons.pl/wybierz-licencje/

It is also worth taking a look at the publication by Ewa Majdecka and Katarzyna Strycharz entitled. Otwarta nauka: prawo autorskie i wolne licencje