Creative Commons

From Wikiversity

From CreativeCommons.org:

Creative Commons provides free tools that let authors, scientists, artists, and educators easily mark their creative work with the freedoms they want it to carry. You can use CC to change your copyright terms from "All Rights Reserved" to "Some Rights Reserved."

Contents 1 Share, reuse, and remix — legally 2 Wikiversity and Creative Commons 3 Wikimedia and Creative Commons 3.1 Which Creative Commons license(s) 3.2 Reasons for switching from the GFDL to a CC license 3.3 Reasons for continuing to use the GFDL 4 See also 5 Commentary articles

[edit] Share, reuse, and remix — legally

This unit is here to explore Creative Commons licensing and its implications for academic and educational use. Copyright (or copyleft) aspects apply to many activities such as original research, composition, photography, cartography, musical works and many other endeavors that need to be "protected" in some way. We shall use this resource to explore and discuss the various types and kinds of CC licenses and research and compare them with other copyright and copyleft devices. We may also explore the technical and social ramifications of the introduction of the Commons mindset to the Internet world.

[edit] Wikiversity and Creative Commons

Wikiversity content is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, by default. Some works, especially in the Image: namespace carry a dual license adding a Creative Commons license. Wikiversity license tags are generally selected at the time files are uploaded to wikiversity.org or other Wikimedia project. The two most commonly used CC license tags are:

• {{cc-by-2.5}} (Creative Commons - Attribution 2.5)
• {{cc-by-sa-2.5}} (Creative Commons - Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5).

To see which documents, images and other content items carry these licenses see:

• Category:Cc-by-sa-2.5 documents
• Category:Cc-by-2.5 documents

Please see Wikiversity:License tags for more information and guidelines.

[edit] Wikimedia and Creative Commons

When the GFDL was adopted at Wikipedia, the Creative Commons licenses did not exist. Once the Creative Commons licenses became available, discussions began about the idea of either switching from the GFDL to a Creative Commons license or dual-licensing under both the GFDL and a Creative Commons license.

[edit] Which Creative Commons license(s)

The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license is very similar to the GFDL. Both licenses allow re-use of a work as long as attribution is given to the the original author(s) and as long as derivative works are also licensed copyleft.

[edit] Reasons for switching from the GFDL to a CC license

The Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license is better suited for wikis; the GFDL was designed for software manuals.

Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees Resolution about changing from GFDL to the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

[edit] Reasons for continuing to use the GFDL

The GFDL has been used by Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects since 2001. It works fine. Switching now would be disruptive. Switching to a similar license such as the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license would not be worth the trouble.

[edit] See also

• GNU Free Documentation License
• History of Western Copyright Law
• Open Web Publishing
• Intellectual Property
• Software Freedom
• ...

[edit] Commentary articles

• "The Commons: The Commons as an Idea - Ideas as a Commons" -(article by David M. Berry about the commons and ideas)
• "BBC to Open Content Floodgates The BBC's Creative Archive project" -(article in Wired magazine on the BBC's use of Creative Commons licenses)
• "Creative Commons: Let’s be creative together" -(from "Framasoft")
• "Take My Music ... Please" -(a Newsweek article about Creative Commons by Brian Braiker)
• "Creative Commons Humbug" -(critical article in PC Magazine by John C. Dvorak)
• "Creative Humbug" -(critical article by Péter Benjamin Tóth)
  • "Creative Humbug? Bah the humbug, let’s get creative!" -(response to Tóth's criticism by Mia Garlick)
• Berry, D. M. & Moss, G. (2005). On the “Creative Commons”: a critique of the commons without commonalty. Free Software Magazine. No. 5.
• Berry, D. M & Moss, G. (2005). Libre Commons = Libre Culture + Radical Democracy. Noema. No. 44.
• Fitzgerald, Michael (2005), Copyleft hits a Snag. Technology Review
• Hill, Benjamin Mako. (2005). Towards a Standard of Freedom: Creative Commons and the Free Software Movement.
• Nimmer, Raymond (2005). Open source license proliferation, a broader view
• Orlowski, Andrew (2005). On Creativity, Computers and Copyright. The Register
• Tóth, Péter Benjamin. (2005). Creative Humbug: Personal feelings about the Creative Commons licenses
• Richard Stallman explains his disagreement with Creative Commons
• A Debian Developer gives his summary of problems discussed on the debian-legal mailing list (note that this comments on the outdated 2.0 versions of the licenses)
• "Why the BBS Documentary is Creative Commons" by Jason Scott
• Greentown article Overview of copyright history from 1556 leading to Creative
• Möller, Erik (2006). The Case for Free Use: Reasons Not to Use a Creative Commons NC License. Open Source Jahrbuch 2006.