This book is published under a CC BY license, which means that you can copy, redistribute, remix, transform, and build upon the content for any purpose, even commercially, as long as you give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, indicate if changes were made, and do not impose additional terms or conditions on others that prohibit them from exercising the rights granted by that license, including any effective technological measures.
Extensive effort has gone into ensuring the accuracy and reliability of the information in this book; however, neither the publisher nor the author make any warranty, express or implied, with respect to its content. Additionally, this book contains third party content, such as illustrations, photographs and graphs, that may not be owned by Creative Commons but that is licensed by the third party under a Creative Commons license. Neither the publisher nor Creative Commons warrant that re-use of that content will not infringe the rights of third parties. Reasonable efforts have been made to identify that content when possible.
No Legal Advice. While this book provides information about the Creative Commons licenses and public domain tools, as well as best practices for using them, it does not apply this information to any specific situation. This book and the information contained therein does not constitute legal advice, nor does using this information create an attorney–client relationship. Please consult an attorney if you would like legal advice about your rights, obligations, or individual situation.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Creative Commons (Organization), author.
Title: Creative commons for educators and librarians / Creative Commons.
Description: Chicago : ALA Editions, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “The authoritative source for learning about using creative commons licenses and advocating for their use in your academic community”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019027187 | ISBN 9780838919460 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Copyright licenses—United States. | Creative Commons (Organization), | Library copyright policies—United States.
Classification: LCC KF3002 .C74 2019 | DDC 346.7304/82—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019027187
Cover design by Alex Diaz. Cover image, “Circles” by Asitha De Silva, is a work in the public domain. Available from Flickr: flickr.com/photos/131715569@N03/20164473614.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
In 2001, at a time when texts were expensive and video on the web was a far-off dream, Creative Commons (CC) began as a rejection of the expansion of copyright. In 1998, Congress passed an Act that extended the term of existing copyrights by twenty years in the United States. This 1998 extension was challenged by CC’s founder, Lawrence Lessig, all the way to the Supreme Court, but the Court upheld the Act. In reaction to this decision, a small group of lawyers, academics, and culture activists got together to try to make it easy, simple, and free to share your works on the burgeoning communications platforms of the Internet.
They couldn’t change copyright law, so they hacked it. Our founders created a release valve, built on top of the international laws and treaties that govern copyright.
I think it’s fair to say that no one knew just how successful the CC licenses would be, or how much we would need them as we entered a world where every single person could be not only a creator, but also a creator of high-quality, reusable content. The seeds of Creative Commons were planted long before social media, before ubiquitous smartphones and broadband access, and before user-generated content platforms. But these seeds set down an essential root in the open Internet, and offered a powerful tool used by individuals, governments, NGOs, and corporations to create, share, and remix content.
Today, there are more than 1.6 billion CC-licensed works hosted on over 9 million websites—including some of the most popular sites on the web. The CC licenses operate in every country and have been translated into more than 30 languages by communities in more than 85 countries. They have been used to share every type of content, from photos and videos to 3D models and datasets. The CC license tools are now the global standard for sharing of works for use and reuse. From Wikipedia, to open access to research and journals, to open education, to open data, these license tools are an essential element of a more equitable and accessible knowledge commons.
Our goal at Creative Commons is to build a vibrant, usable commons of creativity and knowledge, powered by collaboration and gratitude. By default, copyright applies to all original content, so sharing under a copyright license is always a choice. This means we need to help people understand their options, and how they can use the CC licensing tools to maximum benefit. To do this, we need people all around the world to be experts in using, contributing to, and sharing the commons and the open licensing tools that unlock its full potential.
We know that the best way to help others is to give them the knowledge they need to help themselves. And we know that CC’s greatest power is sharing—of knowledge, of culture, and of understanding across cultures and communities—so for the first time, we literally wrote the book on Creative Commons, and we are sharing it with everyone. Creative Commons for Educators and Librarians is a publication of the CC Certificate course content. The CC Certificate is about investing in people like you: educators, practitioners, creators, open advocates, and activists all over the world. You’re the ones who everyday help people make the choice to share and unleash their content so that everyone can benefit from it. That’s why we created the CC Certificate course, it’s why we’re working with our communities to translate the course content and train new leaders to teach it in local languages, and it’s why we’ve made all the content openly accessible under CC BY—to unlock new uses we haven’t imagined yet.
We hope this book will help us get a little closer to that goal, and perhaps help us to grow the global community of experts, and ultimately our collective power, through shared knowledge and culture.
Ryan Merkley CEO, Creative Commons (2014–2019)
Acknowledgments
The Creative Commons Certificate contents and this publication were made possible by the generous support of the following foundations, and the efforts of many partner organizations and individuals:
We gratefully acknowledge the contribution of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. This project was also made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services RE-00-15-0116-15.
Creative Commons is honored to have been able to work with a stellar group of organizations and individuals that contributed to the creation, revision, and refinement of the CC Certificate content and course design, including the American Library Association; the Association of College and Research Libraries; Canvas LMS by Instructure; Hypothes.is; LOUIS Libraries; the Open Textbook Network; and Pressbooks; as well as the international CC legal community, the CC Board of Directors, CC staff, CC Certificate facilitators, and CC Certificate graduates and participants. Visit https://certificates.creativecommons.org/about/acknowledgements/ for a list of associated names.
List of Creative Commons Licenses
The figures used throughout this book are CC-licensed works or are available in the public domain. The list below includes the URLs for each CC license or public domain tool referenced in the figures, so you can easily navigate to the appropriate license.
This work is released under the Creative CommonsAttribution 4.0 International license, which allows free use, distribution, and creation of derivatives, so long as the license is unchanged and clearly noted, and the original author is attributed.
