Authors Dr. Till Kreutzer
License CC-BY-4.0
Dr. Till Kreutzer
Open Content –
A practical guide to
using Creative Commons
licences
WIKIMEDIA
DEUTSCHLAND
WIKIMEDIA
DEUTSCHLAND
Imprint Neither the German Commission for UNESCO, North
„Open Content - A Practical Guide to Using Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Centre nor Wikimedia
Creative Commons Licences“ Deutschland is responsible for the use which might be
Dr. Till Kreutzer made of the following information. The opinions ex-
pressed and arguments employed herein are the sole res-
Publishers: ponsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
views of the German Commission for UNESCO, North
German Commission for UNESCO Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Centre or Wikimedia
Colmantstraße 15 Deutschland.
53115 Bonn, Germany
sekretariat@unesco.de Photo Credits
www.unesco.de
Hot-air balloon
North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Centre (hbz) Benh LIEU SONG (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
Jülicher Straße 6 File: Cappadocia_Balloon_Inflating_Wikimedia_
50674 Köln, Germany Commons.jpg), „Cappadocia Balloon Inflating Wikimedia
info-hbz@hbz-nrw.de Commons“, cropped by Markus Büsges, http://creative-
www.hbz-nrw.de commons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode/
Wikimedia Deutschland - Saint Petersburg Mosque
Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V. Canes (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:
Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24 Мечеть_Санкт-Петербурга._Майолика_портала.jpg),
10963 Berlin, Germany „Мечеть Санкт-Петербурга. Майолика портала“, cropped
info@wikimedia.de by Markus Büsges, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
www.wikimedia.de by-sa/3.0/legalcode/
Editing (responsible): Galileo Galilei planetarium
Jan Engelmann (Wikimedia Deutschland e. V.), Emmanuel Iarussi (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
Sonja Mühlenfeld (German Commission for UNESCO), File:Planetario_de_la_Ciudad_de_Buenos_Aires.jpg),
Jan Neumann (North Rhine-Westphalian Library „Planetario de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires“, cropped by
Service Centre) Markus Büsges, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by-sa/3.0/legalcode/
Editing and co-ordination:
Sarah Kraus (German Commission for UNESCO), Ice flower
Katja Ullrich (Wikimedia Deutschland e. V.) Annick MONNIER (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Fleur_de_givre_L.jpg), „Fleur de givre L“, cropped by
Proofreading: Markus Büsges, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
Sylvia F. Jakob, Germany by-sa/3.0/legalcode/
Layout and typesetting: Friendship plant
Markus Büsges, leomaria designbüro, Germany Poco a poco (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ File:Pilea_involucrata,_Jardín_Botánico,_Múnich,_
legalcode Alemania_2012-04-21,_DD_02.jpg), „Pilea involuc-
rata, Jardín Botánico, Múnich, Alemania 2012-04-21,
Printing: DD 02“, cropped by Markus Büsges, http://creative-
Laserline, Germany commons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode/
Print run: 4,000 Scarab beetle
ISBN: 978-3-940785-57-2 Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (http://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MFNB_Col_Scarabaeidae_
The text of this work is licenced under the Creative Com- Dynastinae_D185.jpg), „MFNB Col Scarabaeidae
mons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. To view a copy Dynastinae D185“, cropped, coloured, saturated and
of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ vignetted by Markus Büsges, http://creativecommons.
by/4.0/. org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode/
This picture of a hot-air balloon was one of the finalists
of the “Picture of the Year” competition on the free
media archive Wikimedia Commons in 2011. With its
more than 20 million pictures, videos, graphics and
audio files, Wikimedia Commons is the biggest online
media archive for Open Content.
2
Editors’ preface
“All rights reserved” is the phrase usually associated with traditional copyright. It implies
that the copyright holder reserves all rights by default. Neither copying and distributing nor
creating derivative works is permitted without the explicit permission of the rights holder.
“Some rights reserved,” the guiding principle of open content licences, is the answer to
this problem: Open content enables creators and rights holders to spread their work more
easily – by enabling others to use, share and mix their work without the need to ask in
advance. Artists may use available music or pictures to create own remixes. NGOs may
choose to make texts and graphics on their website more easily available to others. People
looking for pictures, for example to illustrate websites or publications, may find open con-
tent works in the respective databases. Numerous projects are becoming feasible every day
through the “unlocking” and opening of content to the world. People are constantly creat-
ing public goods by sharing and building upon each other’s knowledge and creativity.
Open content thus serves as an invaluable tool for two important purposes: It makes copy-
right compatible with the digital age – where each user of content can easily become a
creator. At the same time, it makes access to information and knowledge much easier. In
our globalised world, this is becoming more and more important. Access to information
and knowledge is one of the cornerstones of modern knowledge societies.
With this publication, we intend to provide interested individuals and organisations with
practical guidelines for the use and application of open content licences: How do open
content licences work? How do I choose the most suitable licence for my individual needs?
Where can I find open content online? These are only some of the questions which these
guidelines try to answer. By this, we hope to contribute to the informed use of open con-
tent licences. We thank Dr. Till Kreutzer for writing these valuable guidelines and would
like to wish all our readers an informative and instructive reading.
Dr. Roland Bernecker,
Secretary-General,
German Commission for UNESCO
Jan Engelmann,
Executive Director,
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Dr. Silke Schomburg,
Head of hbz, North Rhine-Westphalian
Library Service Centre (hbz)
3
4
Table of contents
1. Introduction: From theory to practice 7
2. The basics of Open Content licencing 11
2.1 Background 12
2.2 Different Open Content licence models 13
2.3 The benefits of Open Content licencing 13
2.4 Legal aspects and practical implications of
Open Content licencing 16
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 27
3.1 Overview of the six Creative Commons licence types 28
3.2 Creative Commons public domain tools 31
3.3 Generic and ported licence versions 32
3.4 Licence conditions, user obligations and restrictions
relevant for all Creative Commons licences 34
3.5 Additional licence-specific restrictions and obligations 43
4. Practical Guidelines: Using Creative Commons licences 63
4.1 Choosing the “right” licence 64
4.2 Generating the licence 64
4.3 Attaching Creative Commons licences to different works 68
4.4 Finding Open Content online 70
5. Final remarks 75
Subject index 77
Table of Contents 5
6 Introduction
1. Introduction:
From theory to
practice
In 2011, this picture of the interior of the
Saint Petersburg Mosque was deemed one
of the best pictures uploaded to the online
media archive Wikimedia Commons.
Introduction 7
The principle of Open Content licencing
was invented to facilitate the use and distri-
bution of copyright-protected works. Copy-
right is a rather restrictive regime which
grants a series of exclusive rights to the
copyright holder, including the right to
distribute or modify a work. These acts
cannot be undertaken without specific per-
mission from the right holder.
Notwithstanding, there are certain
types of uses which can be undertaken
without permission. These are known as
“limitations” or “ex-
Open Content promotes ceptions” to the exclu-
sive rights, which
the development of a digital include, for example,
commons. the right to quote from
a work or to make a
private copy. But these limitations are not
very broad and at times difficult to assess.
The inventors of the Open Content idea
considered the copyright regime as too
restrictive for both users and creators alike.
Therefore, they decided to establish a sys-
tem of easy-to-use standard licences (i.e.
rules that allow the use of copyright-pro-
tected works under certain conditions) in
order to promote a free culture and the
The Digital Com- development of a digital commons. Nowa-
mons are a kind of
commons involving the
days, millions of copyright-protected works
production and shared are published online under Open Content
ownership of digital
licences, including movies, music, images,
goods.
texts and graphics which can be used, dis-
tributed, made available, modified or re-
mixed by anybody without explicit consent
from the copyright holder or the payment
of a licence fee. It is thus fair to say: The
digital commons became a reality within
the last decade.
The Open Content Model relies on three
basic principles:
1. The simplification of legal transactions:
The Open Content licences are pub-
lished online and can be used by any
interested creator or other rights owner.
8 Introduction
They provide rights owners with a tool Content concept from the public domain:
that allows them to conclude legally Open Content is neither free (of copyrights)
binding agreements with anybody who nor can it be used without permission or
is interested in using their work. Unlike rules. It is protected by copyright law and
in the usual legal (contractual) transac- can be used only subject to the conditions
tion, there is no need for the parties – of the legally binding licence the rights
i.e. licenser (right holder) and licensee owner chooses for their work. Therefore,
(user) – to contact each other via other public licencing is neither a political nor a
means. legal statement about Intellectual Property Intellectual Prop-
erty Rights (IPR) are
Rights (IPR) nor does the concept challenge
all exclusive rights
2. The granting of a broad, royalty-free the IPR system. Public licencing is rather a granted to the creators
permission to use: The user is allowed concept that facilitates the handling of of intangible goods, e.g.
songs, texts or inven-
to use the work freely for most pur- copyright protected works for the benefit of tions. IPRs include
poses. In fact, the user’s rights to use rights owners and users alike. copyright, trademarks or
patents.
the content are much wider than the This guide was written to facilitate the
exceptions envisaged under conven- legitimate and correct use of Open Content
tional copyright law. All rights are and Open Content licences. It was written
granted without costs. The right holder, for anyone wishing to learn more about
on the other hand, can choose among a Open Content, particularly for creators,
variety of licences ranging from very companies, organisa-
restrictive to very permissive ones, tions and private us- The principle of “some
allowing them to decide which rights ers, and not so much
rights reserved” benefits
are granted freely and which are for legal experts. Its
reserved for individual agreements. aim is to keep infor- rights owners and users alike.
mation and language
3. The reduction of legal uncertainties: simple. This requires a balancing act
Both users and right holders benefit between simplicity and professional preci-
from the simplicity of the licences, as sion which, hopefully, has been achieved in
the legal regime they implement is the present publication. Feedback and fur-
considerably less complex than copy- ther suggestions to the author are always
right law itself. The benefit for the welcome.
licenser consists in being able to tell Please note that this guide was pub-
their users in a plain and standardised lished to provide general information and
language what they can and what they to answer common questions about Open
cannot do with the work. Rules that are Content licencing, in some cases reflecting
understood are more likely to be the author’s personal opinion only. It is not
obeyed. The user, on the other hand, intended to constitute or be a substitute for
knows what they are allowed to do and legal advice. Those seeking legal advice on
can easily understand the obligations. a particular case are advised to consult a
lawyer.
The guiding principle of the Open Content
idea is “some rights reserved.” It was con-
ceived in contrast to the traditional copy-
right caveat “all rights reserved” which
may be found on many CDs, books or maga-
zines. At the same time, the “some rights
reserved” principle marks off the Open
Introduction 9
10 2. The basics of Open Content licencing
2. The basics of Open
Content licencing
In 2012, this picture of the Galileo Galilei
planetarium in Buenoes Aires was one of the
finalists of the biggest photo competition
“Wiki Loves Monuments” which takes place
every year and is dedicated to cultural
heritage monuments. Every September,
thousands of volunteers take pictures of
cultural heritage sites around the world and
upload them to the online media archive
Wikimedia Commons.
2. The basics of Open Content licencing 11
2.1 Background Creative Commons licences are not based
on or lead to the public domain.1 On the
The Open Content principle is based on the contrary, they depend on effective copy-
ideas of the Free and Open Source Soft- right protection. Without copyright, the
ware (FOSS) movement. The Open Source licence could not be effective, especially
approach was established in the software not when it comes to the enforcement of the
market in the 1990s, mainly resulting from licence obligations.2
the great success of GNU-Linux and its Licencing means to grant a third party
licence, the GNU General Public License (anyone else except the right holder) the
(GPL). Written in 1989, the GPL was the right to use a copyright-protected work.
first free software licence, which allowed The licence is, however, granted only under
users to use, study, share and modify the certain conditions and obligations on the
software. Today, entire markets are based user's side. Open Content licences may,
on the development, maintenance, customi- for example, oblige the licensee to credit
sation and marketing of Open Source Soft- the author with every use. This relation
ware. The inventors of the Open Content between right and obligation could be
principle adopted the basic ideas of FOSS expressed as: “You are allowed to republish
and applied them to other forms of creative this work under the condition that you
contributions, such as music, films or images. name the author.”
The main protagonist of the Open Con- Open Content licences are generally
tent movement was Lawrence Lessig, a suitable for every kind of creative work.
legal scholar of Harvard Law School in The CC licences are generic licences which
Cambridge, USA. In 2001, he joined forces can be used for music, films, texts, images
with Hal Abelson and Eric Eldred and and any other aesthetic creation. However,
Creative Commons founded the Creative Commons (CC) ini- they are not designated to licence software.
is the non-profit organi-
tiative to promote the digital commons. As technical products, computer pro-
sation dedicated to
making creative works CC’s aim was to encour- grammes require
available to the public. age and enable creators Open Content licences not different licence
To that end, it has
to open their works for conditions. In fact,
released a number of
copyright licences to be
only serve the interest of the
general use without there are specific
having to rely on costly author but also of the public.
used by the public.
licences available
and complex legal for software, such
advice or having to donate their rights to as the abovementioned Open Source licenc-
the public domain. For this purpose, CC es. Also, there are special licences for other
designed and published a variety of differ- technical creations such as databases.3
ent licences which are easy to handle by the Open Content is sometimes referred to
licensers and easy to observe by the users. as an anti-copyright approach. This is,
In addition, the initiative offers useful however, not true. It is a model for right
information and a number of tools on its holders to manage their copyright in a
website, which can be used by anybody specific way. Open Content does not oppose
free of charge. copyright per se, but allows a licenser to
The underlying philosophy aside, Open take a different approach to the traditional
Content is a licencing model that is based “all rights reserved” approach. Open
on copyright law. Copyright-protected Content licences are tools which can be
works are made available to the public for employed in order to serve both: the indi-
the by and large free and unhindered use. vidual interest of the author and the public
Being a licencing scheme, however, the interest. It is, however, for each copyright
12 2. The basics of Open Content licencing
owner to decide whether Open Content uted under proprietary licence schemes.
licences suit their personal needs. This, in turn, could oppose the intentions of
the original creator.7
2.2 Different Open
Content licence 2.3 The benefits of
Models Open Content
licencing
Unlike Free and Open Source Software,4
the term “Open Content” is not precisely Using an Open Content licence has several
defined, i.e. there is no commonly agreed benefits. Besides the possibility of a much
definition.5 This allows for a great variety broader distribution of a work, it also in-
of diverging licences. In this publication, creases legal certainty for users and signifi-
Open Content licences (also known as cantly decreases legal transaction costs.
“public licences”) are assumed to be stand-
ard licences that allow the licensee at least a) Broad distribution
to distribute, make publicly available and
reproduce a work for non-commercial The main objective of Open Content licenc-
purposes in any way and on any media free ing is to allow for a broad distribution.
of charge.6 Needless to say, more permis- Distribution is encouraged by granting
sive Open Content licences that allow, for more or less unlimited distribution rights
example, to make and publish derivative and rights which entitle the licensee to
works or to encourage commercial uses are share the content. This is an essential pre-
also covered by this definition. condition for legiti-
Major differences between the various mate sharing, as Open Content licences
licences ensue when it comes to the question copyright law, at
automatically establish a
of using the work creatively, i.e. making least in Europe, does
modifications and distributing the modified not provide for a licence grant between author
versions or using the work for commercial right to publicly
and users.
purposes. Whereas some licences allow for share protected
the modification, translation, updating, content without the right holder’s explicit
remixing or customising of a work, others consent. This applies equally to both online
do not. Among those that allow modifica- and offline sharing. Open Content licences
tions, some follow the “copyleft principle,” allow the users to upload the work on The Copyleft princi-
ple aims to make
also known as ShareAlike (SA). Such claus- websites, blogs or any other web publica-
creative works available
es oblige the author of a modified version of tion. They also allow the production of to the public by requiring
an Open Content work to make it available hardcopies of the work in any form, such as that all modified and
adapted versions of the
under the same licence as the original photocopies, CDs or books, and the distri- original be free as well.
author. If somebody modifies the work and bution of these copies to anybody without
publishes the new version, they have to any restriction.
grant their users the very same freedoms The positive effect on the work’s poten-
that applied to the original work. The idea tial publicity should not be underestimated.
behind this principle is simple: An Open Without an Open Content licence, the
Content work shall remain open in all its sharing of a work, for instance, via another
manifestations and versions. Without the online source would require an individual
ShareAlike obligation, modified versions of contractual agreement between the sharer
the work could be published and distrib- and the right holder. The same would apply
2. The basics of Open Content licencing 13
when somebody would like to modify, This, in turn, may have a positive impact on
remix or mash up a work with other works the author’s popularity and the demand for
and to publish the modified version: Under their works. However, it also brings about
copyright law all these uses are subject to potential economic benefits: Attention is a
the individual consent of the right holder. scarce resource in the attention economy8
The licence grant of an Open Content licence, which is so dominant in the digital age. In
by contrast, is established automatically. fact, attention is an essential economic
By facilitating the required legal trans- factor: Attention leads to clicks; clicks lead
actions, Open Content licences not only to advertising revenues and/or increased
serve the interests of the recognition; increased
authors, but also those of Free and Open Content is recognition leads to
the general public. In higher demand and
not synonymous with cost-
fact, authors and users higher payment rates or
benefit from the increas- free but with free-to-use. salaries. Especially on
ing number of interesting the Internet, more
creative contents that can be accessed and freedoms for the users and less control will
used for many different purposes without often lead to higher revenues than “all
having to pay remuneration. In other rights reserved” paradigms.
words, they benefit from the ever-growing In order to understand the whole effect
“cultural commons” that is available for of this concept, it is essential not to confuse
reception and/or creative use without com- the term “open” with “cost-free” or “non-
plex individual contractual proceedings. commercial”. Free as in Free Software as
Open content The public interest factor might or might well as open in Open Source or Open
describes works that are
not create incentives for authors to open Content, is not equivalent to “cost-free”
available under a free
licence and which can be their works. It may, however, be said that but to “free-to-use”. Public licencing strives
used and re-destributed Open Content is especially relevant for to provide users with the necessary rights
under certain conditions
as detailed in the licence public authorities which own copyrights in to use copyright-protected content in the
text. creative contents, as they produce and way they want to. Subject to the conditions
publish works for the public interest and not contained in the public licences, they are
for commercial purposes. As the costs for free to use the content, i.e. to copy, distrib-
the creation and publication of said works ute and make it publicly available. In addi-
are mostly borne by the taxpayers, Open tion, there is no requirement to pay licenc-
Content publication strategies are particu- ing fees. This additional paradigm: freedom
larly recommended for public authorities. of royalties (i.e. licencing fees) is supposed
Also, from the perspective of private to support the freedom to use. Without it,
right holders, the Open Content approach is many people would be excluded from the
not necessarily first and foremost an altru- use, because they could not afford to pay
istic one. Otherwise it would not be so the royalties.
successful. Open Content enables sharing, However, this paradigm does not neces-
thereby decentralizing and disseminating sarily mean that Open Content must be
the sources. This is often more beneficial available free of charge or can only be
for the author than a restrictive distribution exploited non-commercially; nor does it
concept, such as “all rights reserved”. If the mean that a creator or a publisher cannot
content is interesting enough to encourage make money by making it available to the
other people to share it, it will be listed public. If this was the case, the Open
more prominently in the search engines, Source industry could not exist.9
thus, gaining even more publicity.
14 2. The basics of Open Content licencing
b) Increased legal certainty control, is not necessarily a bad thing, but
and simplification of legal a feature of public licencing. In fact, the
transactions notion of being in total control of the use
of content is deceptive in most cases, espe-
Open Content licences enhance legal trans- cially concerning internet publications,
parency and certainty for both users and irrespective of whether one applies an
right holders alike. Copyright is a complex “all rights reserved” or a “some rights
matter: A legal layperson can barely figure reserved” approach. Once an article, image
out under what circumstances a work can or poem is made available online, the con-
be legally copied for private use, made trol over the use usually vanishes. In other
available for educational purposes or quot- words, the more popular the content
ed. By contrast, Open Content licences, e.g. becomes, the more difficult it becomes to
CC licences, offer an explanation in plain control it effectively. It will be shared on
language to inform the licensee what they the Internet, whether it is legal or not,
can do, which obligations they have to unless drastic measures are taken - such
comply with and what they should refrain as rigid Technical Protection Measures Technical Protec-
tion Measures
from doing. These explanations are also (TPM)/Digital Rights Management (DRM)
are a means to prevent
beneficial for the licenser, who is generally or an extensive strategy for rights enforce- copyright infringing
not a legal expert (especially not if it is the ment which requires the engagement of reproductions or usages
of creative works.
author themselves) and who in this way lawyers, piracy agencies or other invasive
gets all necessary information regarding methods.
the rules for using the material. The crucial decision about having or not
A further important benefit of Open having control is therefore inherently a
Content licences is the simplification of the question of going or not going online. Once
legal transaction between the owner and a small scale creator decides to upload their
the user. Open Content licences are stand- work on a publicly
ardised tools which keep such transactions accessible website Content will always be
simple for both sides. Drafting and negoti- (for large enterprises shared over the Internet.
ating individual licence contracts is a com- this might be differ-
plex matter which usually requires the ent), it is a logical Open Content licences
involvement of lawyers. Donating copy- next step to publish
provide a legal framework.
right-protected works to the commons in it under a public
an international environment (the Internet) licence. It cannot be denied that there will
is even more complex. Open Content probably be people who break the rules and
licences free the creator and other right will neither comply with copyright law nor
holders from these complexities. Notably, the Open Content licence. However, for the
the licence texts published by large initia- many considerate users who are over-
tives such as CC are thoroughly drafted by whelmed by the complexity of copyright
legal experts and then made available free law, the licence not only provides freedom
of charge for the use of interested parties. but also guidance.
Most people are willing to comply with
c) Deliberately giving up the law, but without understandable infor-
control mation about the rules, they are doomed to
fail. Is it allowed to download online con-
Open Content licencing requires the will to tent, to share it, to print it, to embed it?
deliberately give up control over the use of With regards to copyright law, most users
one's work. Having no, or only very limited will not be able to answer these questions.
2. The basics of Open Content licencing 15
The Open Content licence, on the other This means, for example that a novel pub-
hand, instructs the user about such prob- lished under a public licence can be copied
lems by keeping the answers short and at will, in digital or non-digital form. It can
simple. It might, for instance, state: “You be scanned or otherwise digitalised, up-
can use the content in any way you want, loaded on servers, saved on hard-drives or
provided that you comply with the licence downloaded. In terms of copyright, all
obligations.” In other words, the licence these uses are referred to as “reproduc-
obligations are made clear in a way the user tions.” The work might also be printed and
can understand and comply with. The (re-)distributed, e.g. as a book, eBook or
resulting legal certainty not only benefits made publicly available on the Internet.
the right holders but also the users. Music may be performed publicly; poems
may be recited and plays enacted.
2.4 Legal aspects and Open Content licences are intended to
facilitate the use of protected works, no
practical implica- matter where their use takes place geo-
tions of Open graphically. This has been taken into con-
Content licencing sideration in the drafting of the licences:
Due to their non-discriminatory nature,
The following section describes in detail they are intended to be applicable on a
how an Open Content licence functions in worldwide10 basis.
general and what some of its practical Also, the rights are granted without
implications are. These aspects are usually remuneration or any other form of consid-
relevant for all types of Open Content eration. That does, however, not necessarily
licences. For more information on specific mean that the acquisition of a copy or the
licence types, please refer to chapters 3 access to the work is free of charge (see
and 4. chapter 2.4, section c below), although this
is usually the case.
a) Comprehensive scope of the Reserved rights come into play when a
licence grant work is licenced under a public licence
which does not cover, for instance, the right
As already mentioned, Open Content is to modify a work and to distribute these
based on the “some rights reserved” para- modifications. Anyone wishing to engage in
digm. Whereas most of the rights to use a these “reserved rights,” needs to enter into
work are licenced and thus permitted, some an individual licencing contract with the
are reserved. right holder. Authors, for example, may
Open Content licences thus offer any decide to use a non-commercial licence to
interested user the opportunity to obtain be able to decide about commercial uses on
broad rights to use the a case-by-case basis and
content in any way, for Open Content licences to claim royalties when
any purpose, on any somebody wants to
medium, everywhere and are compatible with com- realize a profit using
without geographical or mercial business models. their works. Should a
temporal restrictions. licenser decide to
Nonetheless, there may be restrictions choose a restrictive licence (e.g. a non-com-
(depending on what kind of licence is appli- mercial licence), this does not necessarily
cable) on commercial uses or modifications mean that they are opposed to uses that are
and transformations. outside the scope of the public licence grant.
16 2. The basics of Open Content licencing
Such uses are not prohibited per se, but are gets hold of a high-resolution copy, they can
subject to an additional agreement with the share it under the terms of the CC licence
right holder. under which the low-resolution copy was
published.11
b) Applicability to all copies
of a work c) No royalties
A public licence always applies to one par- All Open Content licences follow the para-
ticular work and not to a certain copy of digm of “no royalties.” No royalties means
that work. A work is an intangible creation that the rights to use the work are granted
which expresses the author’s individuality. free of charge. It does not, however, affect
Photos, texts, music compositions or graphic any other possible sources of income. An
designs are works. A music or image file, a example: The content of a book, i.e. the
book or a journal are only tangible embodi- articles, images, illustrations etc., can be
ments of the work but not the work itself. Open Content although the book itself is
For the licencing decision, it is important sold. In this case, the buyer only pays the
to know that the licence applies to the work price for the physical hardcopy, in other
and not to a particular copy of that work. words, the price for the acquisition of the
If one was not aware of the difference physical good, i.e.
between a work and a copy, wrong assump- the paper, the cover Rights-owners need to hold
tions about the effect of licencing might be and so on. The Open
made. Content licence exclusive rights of their content
It is, for instance, a widespread practice applies to the content in order to use a public licence.
to freely share image files of low-resolution of the book, i.e. to the
or low-quality music files under an Open use of the copyright-protected works. It
Content licence with the intention and grants a user the rights to copy, distribute
belief that the rights in high-resolution and make the work available without hav-
versions of the same image or music pro- ing to pay any royalties or licencing fees.
duction are not covered by the licence and Take another example from the online
can still be exploited commercially. This world: The access to an Open Content
strategy is based on the wrong assumption online repository can be subject to fees,
that the licence only applies to the low- whereas the provided articles are published
resolution copy of the work. However, it is under a public licence. In this case, the
not the respective copy of the work which subscription fee is charged for the service,
is licenced, but the work itself. The licence not for the rights to use the content.
applies to all kinds of copies of the image, The subscription is therefore no royalty;
irrespective of their quality. Low-resolution demanding it does not conflict with the
and high-resolution versions of a photo do “no royalties”-paradigm.
not constitute different works but only Against this background, commercial
different formats of the same work. business models can easily be reconciled
In other words: If low-quality copies are with the Open Content idea. Anybody who
shared under an Open Content licence, the wants to combine an Open Content publica-
licence also applies to high-quality copies of tion strategy with a commercial business
the same work. Hence, it might be possible model is free to do so. Whether this is
to restrict the access to high-resolution actually feasible has to be assessed on a
copies by paywalls or other technical pro- case-by-case basis paying due regard to
tection measures. However, once a user the particularities of the respective case.
2. The basics of Open Content licencing 17
d) Conclusion of the licence If the licenser is not, or not sufficiently,
contract entitled to grant these rights, the licence
grant is – on the whole or in parts – null
A licence is a permission to use a copyright- and void. As a result, the licenser commits
protected work in a way that would other- a copyright infringement for the assump-
wise constitute an infringement. Whether a tion of rights she does not actually own.
licence is a contract or a simple, one-way Even worse, all users are also guilty of
promise varies from jurisdiction to jurisdic- copyright infringement, because the licence
tion. The effect, however, is the same: The grant was invalid.
licence is a valid legal agreement that gov- The legal reason for the latter is that
erns the use of a particular work. Uses only the owners of rights can (sub-)licence
which are not covered by the licence or do rights to others. A licence grant without
not comply with the licence obligations are entitlement on the licenser’s side is void.
illegitimate acts that can have legal conse- For example, a publisher owns the exclu-
quences. sive print and distribution rights of a novel,
To conclude a public licence is simple. In but does not have the rights to make the
a first step the licenser notifies the potential content available online. In this case, the
users that their work can be used under the publisher cannot be an Open Content
terms of a specific licence. licenser for the work, as
This is done by attaching a The entire content of the Open Content licence
licence notice to the work, would also cover rights to
including a link to the
Wikipedia is published make the content available
licence text.12 From a legal under a free licence. online. By applying the
perspective, this act is Open Content licence, the
regarded as an offer to the public (i.e. publisher would violate the (in the case of
to any interested party) to use the work doubt: author’s) right to make the work
according to the licence conditions. Once a available by wireless means. The same
user uses the work in a way which triggers applies to any Open Content licensee who
13
the licence, the licence agreement is would make the novel available online. As
concluded and the licensee has the neces- the licenser does not have the right thereto,
sary permission to legitimately use the the user cannot obtain it from them either.
work (but also the duty to observe the Whether the licenser and/or the user actu-
obligations contained in the licence). ally knew or could have known about the
lack of entitlement is irrelevant.
e) Preconditions for using How does the licenser obtain the entitle-
Open Content licences ment to act as a licenser? The initial owner
of copyright is always the creator.14 If the
In order to be able to licence a work as Open creator acts as the licenser themselves, no
Content, the licenser needs to own all the further steps are needed. However, if a
necessary rights to do so. A public licence third party shall act as a licenser, one or
grants non-exclusive rights to use a work to more contractual transfers of rights are
any interested party. For this, the licenser required. When the rights are transferred
needs to have exclusive ownership of all the repeatedly, it is important to establish a
rights that are covered by the public licence. consistent licence chain to properly entitle
The owner of mere non-exclusive rights is, the licenser. In other words, if a work is
depending on the jurisdiction, usually not licenced several times from one party to
able to grant rights to third parties. another before it is published under a public
18 2. The basics of Open Content licencing
licence, all licence deals concluded in This model can be adopted for other publi-
between have to cover all necessary rights cations as well, e.g. anthologies, Open
and need to be effective.15 Access repositories, image and video plat-
forms. The principle is simple: Unlike tradi-
f) Centralised vs. Decentralised tional publication and licencing models, the
licencing schemes publisher (if that
term is appropriate Every editor of Wikipedia
There are many different Open Content for platform provid-
publication strategies. Designing a sustain- ers altogether) is
keeps the exclusive rights to
able and effective strategy can, however, be neither the central their contributions.
tricky. Some of the options require trans- rights owner nor the
ferring rights prior to the actual publication licenser for the published content. The
under the public licence, others do not. authors keep their exclusive rights and
What model is feasible depends on the licence them by using the Open Content
individual situation. Two major approaches licence to anyone on a non-exclusive basis,
shall be exemplified here using the online including the publisher/platform provider
encyclopedia Wikipedia: themselves. In many cases, the Open Con- Wikipedia is the
biggest online encyclo-
Wikipedia is a massive multi-author tent licence grant will suffice to legitimise
pedia with more than 30
collaboration project. Anyone who wishes the provider’s own use.18 million articles in approx.
to contribute is invited to do so. The authors However, in certain situations, the 280 language versions.
English Wikipedia is the
can upload their articles and modifications public licence grant might not be broad biggest one with 4.5
of existing articles themselves. All contribu- enough to entitle the publisher sufficiently. million articles.
tions are published under the same CC Take, for example, a publisher who would
licence (CC BY-SA).16 There are two major like to print and sell an anthology with
approaches to licencing in such a project: articles written by a number of authors.
Either every author acts as licenser for their The articles are to be published under a
own contributions or all rights are consoli- public licence, allowing the authors to
dated in a central body, for instance, in the keep their exclusive rights. In this scenar-
Wikimedia Foundation which then acts as io, the publisher merely acts as a vendor
licenser for all published content. The first of the book rather than as a licenser of the
alternative could be called a decentralised, articles. To prevent commercial competi-
the latter a centralised licencing scheme. tion by other publishers, the publishing
house might decide to publish the articles
The decentralised licencing scheme under a CC NonCommercial (NC) licence.
The authors might, for example, licence
The founders of Wikipedia opted for a their contributions under a CC BY-NC
decentralised licencing scheme. The authors licence.
who contribute copyright-protected articles Under this arrangement, the CC licence
or edit existing articles in the encyclopedia does not cover the own use of the publisher
keep their exclusive rights and licence them because selling a book counts as a commer-
to the users. No rights are transferred to cial use. The publisher has to conclude an
the Wikimedia Foundation, which, in turn, additional agreement with the authors
does not and cannot act as the licenser for which entitles the publisher to commercial-
the articles. In this scenario, the foundation ly exploit the articles. This additional
acts, from a copyright perspective, as a agreement could be a written contract or a
platform provider and hosting service one-way “container licence.” The right to
rather than as a publisher.17 commercially exploit the work could be
2. The basics of Open Content licencing 19
granted on a general basis or in relation to the outbound licence, i.e. the Open Content
a particular book publication. licence. For example, if a NonCommercial
(NC) licence is used, the inbound licence
The centralised licencing scheme (contributor agreement) could be restricted
to non-commercial uses as well. Or if the
Alternatively, all rights could be trans- project decided for a licence with a No-
ferred to the publisher who would then act Derivatives (ND) attribution as outbound
as the licenser for the work under the Open licence, there would be no need for the
Content licence. This option would require authors to transfer modification rights to
the conclusion of individual licence con- the publisher. Whether such restrictions are
tracts between the authors and the pub- to be recommended, depends on the actual
lisher prior to the publication. case. It could be reasonable to leave the
To give an example: Assume Wikipedia individual decision about e.g. commercial
followed the centralised licencing approach. uses with the author. In other cases, practi-
All rights would have to be transferred to cal or financial aspects might suggest that
the Wikimedia Foundation (or to a different all licencing decisions should be taken by a
legal body) which would then act as the central body.
licenser of the CC licences which were Furthermore, the inbound licence should
granted to the foundation by the individual explicitly mention that it will allow the
authors for the Wikipedia-articles. To publication of the covered works under a
accomplish the transfer of rights from the public licence. This is all the more impor-
authors to the publisher, “contributor tant, as in some jurisdictions it is manda-
agreements” would have to be concluded tory to obtain the explicit permission from
with every author. These are also known as the author in order to be able to sub-licence
19
“inbound licences”. and/or to transfer rights to third parties.
The scope of the inbound licence must Although this might not be the case in
comply with the outbound licence in order every European jurisdiction, the author still
to establish a correct needs to be aware that the
20
licencing chain. In this Once an open licence work will be published as
context, it is inevitable Open Content. The use of
for the authors to grant
is granted it cannot be a work published as Open
exclusive rights or even revoked. Content can be far more
assign their rights com- extensive than in a con-
21
pletely to the publisher, since non-exclu- trolled licencing scenario. Especially when
sive licences usually – although depending the outbound licence permits modifications,
on the relevant national jurisdiction – do e.g. moral rights of the author could be
not allow for the re-licencing or the trans- affected.
ferring of rights to third parties. In addi- Which alternative, the centralised or the
tion, the licence grant has to be unrestrict- decentralised licencing scheme, is preferable
ed in terms of territory and duration. Since depends on the particular situation. At first
the Open Content licences grant the users glance, it might be argued that the decen-
worldwide and perpetual rights to use the tralised approach is less complex to organ-
work, the licenser's rights must be equal in ise. It does, for instance, not require com-
scope. plex licencing management between the
Also, whether and to what extent the publisher and the authors. In addition, it
scope of the licenced rights should be re- would prevent liability issues for the pub-
stricted in the inbound licence depends on lisher. If the publisher acted as licenser, they
20 2. The basics of Open Content licencing
could be made liable for the provided con- advantageous for commercial publishers to
tent. If the individual authors acted as li- hold all entitlements. Especially in massive
censers, questions of liability would usually multi-author collaboration projects, basic
only affect them. In Wikipedia, for instance, decisions about the licencing scheme would
the author is the only person who knows the be much easier to realise than in a decen-
content and the history of the contribution. tralised model, where every right holder
It would thus be fair to decide that they would have to be asked for permission in
alone should be responsible for it.22 order to be able to, e.g. change the project’s
Especially in massive multi-author col- licence. Generally
laboration projects such as Wikipedia, a speaking, if crucial Open Content licences
centralised licencing approach or rights decisions about
management would be very complex. But licencing, marketing
withstand before a court
this could equally be said for smaller ven- strategies or business of law.
tures. Take for example a research institute models depended on
which would like to publish an anthology the approval of a number of individuals,
under a CC licence containing articles from problems would most certainly arise, as
20 different authors. Not long into the such decision-making structures are highly
negotiations, it turns out that the authors unpredictable and almost impossible to
cannot agree upon a uniform licencing control.
model. Whereas some do not agree with The bottom line is that decisions about
public licencing at all, others wish to submit publication models and licencing schemes
articles that have been published in a jour- need to be well-considered. Every concept
nal before. The latter cannot be licenced as has advantages and disadvantages which
Open Content, because the authors have need to be balanced against each other.
already transferred their exclusive rights to This is all the more important as such deci-
the previous publisher and reserved only sions cannot be easily revoked and will
non-exclusive rights to republish them. most probably be crucial for the success of
Among those who agree with an Open the project.
Content publication, some are in favour of
a permissive licence, e.g CC BY, whereas g) Pitfalls of republications
others would like to reserve the right to
commercially use their work and therefore The licenser must ensure that their Open
favour a CC BY-NC approach. Content licence does not violate third par-
In a decentralised model, every author ties’ rights. In particular, republications of
could decide individually about the out- works that have already been published
bound licencing of their contribution.23 commercially may raise problems. Publica-
Those in favour of an Open Content licence tions in a journal or newspaper, for exam-
could publish their article under any public ple, often require the transferral of exclu-
licence. The others might reserve all rights. sive rights to the work to the publisher. In
The centralised model, by contrast, would such a situation, no second publication
require the institution to negotiate an indi- under an Open Content licence is possible,
vidual licencing agreement with every except with the consent of the publisher.
single author. Such an effort would take Otherwise, the creator would violate the
time and money. exclusive rights of the publisher, notwith-
On the other hand, there could be a standing their own authorship (the issue of
variety of reasons for having a single, so called self-plagiarism, if it applies, is
central licenser. It could, for example, be separate to that of copyright).
2. The basics of Open Content licencing 21
For that reason it should be made very All these factors indicate that the initial
clear in organised Open Content projects decision about the publication model or
that the authors need to have the right to licencing scheme is very important.
republish their contribution under a public Although the right holder is, in theory, free
licence and that no third parties' rights are to revise any licencing decision at any time,
infringed. These rights can be derived alterations of the licencing strategy can
either from the legal ownership (author’s only be made in connection with major
right, copyright, exclusive usage rights) of updates of the work. Hence, decisions for
the contributor themselves or again from Open Content publishing in general and the
an Open Content licence. Content can for selection of a specific licence in particular,
example be uploaded onto Wikipedia by must be taken diligently.
anyone who is not the author or rights
owner, if it has already been licenced under i) Enforcement of Open
an Open Content licence compatible or identi- Content licences
cal with the licence used in Wikipedia.24
Open Content is not free of rights and is not
h) Practical effects of using equivalent to the public domain. If some-
an Open Content licence body uses the work in a way which is not
permitted by the licence terms, the rights
As already mentioned, Open Content owner can take legal action according to
licencing combined with the decision to copyright and/or contract law.25
publish online will most probably lead to a In addition, the CC licences contain a
certain loss of control. Anybody who would legal construction which ensures effective
like to copy, distribute, republish or other- enforceability: This is the automatic termi-
wise use the work is nation clause.26 According
entitled to do so (except Open Content licences to that rule, any licence
maybe commercial us- are valid worldwide. violation terminates the
ers). This enables the licence automatically.
“free flow” of the work. Also, since the Without a valid licence, any further use
usage rights are granted royalty-free, the constitutes a copyright infringement which
options to derive direct profits are limited can give rise to claims for damages, injunc-
after the content has been published. On tions and other legal remedies.
top of that, the licencing decision is – at Take, for example, a blogger, who posts
least for the particular version of the work a photo which has been licenced under a
– irrevocable. The licences to use are grant- CC licence without providing the copyright
ed permanently and cannot be terminated and licence notices: This usage violates the
by the author or right holder. Should the licence requirements and may thus be
right holder decide to change the licencing subject to contractual remedies as well as
model after the initial publication, any copyright claims (as the licence is termi-
licencing agreements concluded prior to nated automatically).27
that change will remain valid. In other
words, people who concluded the licence j) The problem of licence
beforehand can still use the work according incompatibility
to the initial licencing terms, i.e. use and
distribute it, as the licence for a work which One of the main benefits of Open Content
has been spread cannot be changed in is supposedly that it can be combined with,
retrospect. or integrated into, other publications in
22 2. The basics of Open Content licencing
order to be republished in a new context. terms.” Unless the terms of both licences
Licence incompatibilities, however, threat- are identical or at least equivalent in their
en this objective of public licencing. content – which is very unlikely – the licenc-
The term “licence incompatibility” es are incompatible
indicates that two or more works cannot and the content Free licences apply to all
be published as a combined work due to cannot be combined.
copies of the respective work –
contradictory licence obligations. Licence Obeying one licence
incompatibilities are an undesirable side would inevitably regardless of their quality.
effect of inter alia ShareAlike licences result in infringing
(“copyleft”). These licences feature a clause the other. The same effect might occur,
according to which – to put it simply – mod- depending on the particular situation and
ified versions of the work can only be the interpretation of the respective licences,
shared under the licence of the original.28 if somebody would like to combine articles
Apart from direct interventions into the or graphics licenced under different licences.
work (e.g. shortening or translating an Licence incompatibilities contradict the
article) the term “adaptation” or “modifica- objective of establishing and increasing a
tion” can also apply to combinations of “cultural commons” of protected works
works, especially remixes or mashups.29 which can be rearranged, remixed and (re-)
Imagine a photo artist who would like combined to create new cultural content.
to publish a photo collage combining one Since there is currently no tangible solution
image which has been licenced under a CC for the incompatibility problem,30 its poten-
The GNU Free Docu-
BY-SA with another one which has been tial effects should be considered carefully mentation License gives
licenced under a different ShareAlike when choosing a licence.31 readers of text-based
works the right to re-use
licence (e.g. the GNU FDL). In this case, and adapt the work and
both licences would have the same require- requires all derivatives to
be published under the
ment, stating: “You can only share a combi- original licence. Com-
nation or modification under my licence mercial usage is allowed.
2. The basics of Open Content licencing 23
Notes
1 However, the CC initiative also provides instruments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy.
which mark content that has fallen into or should be con-
sidered as part of the public domain. These tools have to 9 For details in relation to the freedom of royalties see
be distinguished from the licences. Waiving copyrights or chapter 2.4 section c.
marking particular content as “not protected,” i.e. public
domain, means giving up the exclusive rights, whereas 10 See e.g. the licence grant in the section 2a of the
licencing means to grant a right to use the work under legal code: “Subject to the terms and conditions of this
certain conditions. Public License, the Licensor hereby grants You a world-
wide, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive,
2 The legal explanation for this aspect is complex and irrevocable license to exercise the Licensed Rights in the
differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. To put it simple, Licensed Material to …”
exclusive IPRs, such as copyright, are effective against
anybody (rights in rem), whereas a licence or a contract 11 See the CC FAQ to this aspect und der the questions:
only binds the concluding parties. The practical differ- “Can I apply a CC license to low-resolution copies of a
ences are significant: Imagine, for instance, somebody licensed work and reserve more rights in high-resolution
copied a work for commercial purposes, which was copies?” (https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_
licenced for non-commercial uses only. The violation of Asked_Questions#Can_I_apply_a_CC_license_to_low-
the licence could be enforced on the basis of copyright resolution_copies_of_a_licensed_work_and_reserve_
or contract law. Contract law would require the infringer more_rights_in_high-resolution_copies.3F) and “How
to have to conclude a licence, i.e. they would have to do I know if a low-resolution photo and a high-resolution
be a party to the legal agreement. By contrast, under photo are the same work?” (https://wiki.creativecommons.
copyright law anyone infringing the exclusive rights of the org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#How_do_I_know_if_a_
right holder could be held accountable irrespective of low-resolution_photo_and_a_high-resolution_photo_are_
whether there was a contractual relation with the rights the_same_work.3F).
owner or not. This shows that legal remedies derived
from copyright law are usually much more effective than 12 In a book or other non-digital publication a hyperlink
contractual claims. could be printed. Alternatively, the licence text itself
could be included as a whole. For more information in
3 E.g. the “Open Database Attribution” and “ShareAlike relation to the practical questions of including licence
for Data/Databases-licence,” published by Open Know- notices and similar aspects, see chapter 4.
ledge, see: http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/
odbl/. 13 Certain uses are allowed by statutory provisions,
i.e. limitations and exceptions. For them the user needs
4 For Free and Open Source Software there are two no licence and is insofar not bound by the terms of the
definitions. See the definition of the Free Software Foun- licence. For example, in many countries private copying is
dation (FSF): https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw. permitted by law. Hence no licence is required for private
html and the Open Source Definition of the Open Source copying. Accordingly, the public licence does not apply to
Initiative (OSI): http://www.opensource.org/docs/ such use. The effect is that the user does not have to meet
definition.php. Both definitions are by and large identical. the licence obligations, e.g. they do not have to credit the
author, etc. For further details see chapter 3.4, section b.
5 There are a variety of diverging definitions for Open
Content (see e.g. http://opendefinition.org/od/), Free 14 Under common law based copyright systems, there
Content or Free Cultural Works (see: http://freedomde- are exceptions from this basic principle. English copy-
fined.org/Definition). Unlike the Free and Open Source right law, e.g. provides for a rule according to which the
Software definitions which may be regarded as de facto employer becomes the initial owner of the copyright in all
standard, none of the Open Content definitions seem works that are created by their employees in the course
universally accepted though. of their employment. The US copyright act has a similar
rule, called work-for-hire.
6 It is worth mentioning that this definition is broader
than other understandings of “open.” According to the 15 Unlike property rights in physical goods, IPRs can
Open Knowledge Definition (see: http://opendefinition. generally not be acquired bona fide, i.e. IPR can be trans-
org/od/), for instance, content and data are only “open,” ferred only if the transferor owns all the rights allowing
if they are subject to licence terms that require the them to do so thus being appropriately entitled. Whe-
licensee at least to name the rights owner and/or to share ther the transferee is in good faith when acquiring the
alike. The discussion about the notion of “open” is com- rights, since they confide in the transferor’s assurance, is
plex and multifaceted. Since this document is meant to irrelevant.
explain the practical applicability of CC licences, it shall
neither be outlined nor commented upon here. 16 In relation to this licence see chapter 3.1, section b.
7 See more about the ShareAlike principle and its effects 17 Apart from the licencing aspect, the Wikimedia Foun-
in chapter 3.5, section c. dation is of course much more to Wikipedia than a mere
platform provider. It is e.g. responsible for the gover-
8 For further information on the term and concept, see: nance structures and many other essential elements.
24 2. The basics of Open Content licencing
18 This might not be relevant for mere platform provi- Open Source Software. 3rd edition. Recitals 371-379
ders who will usually not be regarded as users in terms (in German).
of copyright law and therefore do not need a licence.
A platform provider in the proper sense does not use 26 See section 6a of the legal code:
protected content in terms of copyright law but merely http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode.
supplies the technical infrastructure to enable the
platform’s users to make content available. However, for 27 The effect of this rule is that the moment the vio-
a publishing house that publishes books, it is inevitable to lation takes place, the licence becomes invalid. From
obtain a copyright licence to do so, since printing articles that moment on, every use of the work is a copyright
in a book and selling it is a distribution that falls into the infringement. Indeed, according to the CCPL4 licence
scope of copyright law. it is possible for the infringer to reinstate the licence
(or to conclude a new one), when they remedy their
19 An inbound licence refers to the contractual agree- non-compliance. However, uses that are conducted in
ment between the authors and the publisher. An out- the meantime, i.e. between the infringing act and the
bound licence is the licence between the publisher and reinstatement are not remedied. See: “Licence term and
the users, here the CC licence. termination” in chapter 3.4, section i.
20 That is because of the need for a proper licence chain. 28 The SA feature is described in detail in chapter 3.5,
The licenser cannot grant rights which they do not own or section c.
are not allowed to dispose of themselves.
29 The CCPL4 licence defines adaptations as follows:
21 From a legal perspective, there are several approa- “Adapted Material means material subject to Copyright
ches to design contributor agreements. Some juris- and Similar Rights that is derived from or based upon the
dictions, especially the common law based copyright Licensed Material and in which the Licensed Material is
systems, allow for an assignment of the copyright. Whe- translated, altered, arranged, transformed, or otherwise
reas a licence is a permission to use the copyrighted work modified in a manner requiring permission under the
owned by another party, an assignment is a transfer of the Copyright and Similar Rights held by the Licensor.“ See
copyright itself, one could say: a transfer of ownership. section 1a of the legal code: http://creativecommons.
Some contributor agreements are based on the licence, org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/legalcode.
other on the assignment approach. However the Conti-
nental European author’s rights-regimes (e.g. Germany, 30 See to the efforts made to solve the problem and to
Austria) do generally not allow for an assignment of the the ShareAlike rule in general in chapter 3.5, section c.
author’s right. See for an overview: Maracke. 2013.
Copyright Management for Open Collaborative Projects: 31 For the details of the implications see chapter 4.1.
Inbound Licencing Models for Open Innovation.
SCRIPTed, vol. 10, issue 2, p. 140; http://script-ed.org/
wp-content/uploads/2013/08/editorial.pdf.
22 This aspect would become relevant when an article
infringed the rights of a third party, e.g. copyrights. If the
contributor themselves was the licenser, they would be
responsible and liable. The platform provider might be
obliged to remove the infringing article from the platform,
but they would not be liable for damages. If the platform
provider acted as a content provider, i.e. as licenser, they
could also be held liable for damages.
23 Unlike in a massive multi-author collaboration pro-
ject, such as Wikipedia, diverging outbound licences
should not be too problematic in such small publications.
Hence, a uniform licence scheme would at least not be
compelling.
24 See the explanations at: https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Wikipedia:FAQ/Copyright#Can_I_add_
something_to_Wikipedia_that_I_got_from_somewhere_
else.3F.
25 Concerning the differences between contract and
copyright law remedies, see footnote 2. Regarding the
international enforceability of public licences under
different jurisdictions, see: Jaeger/Metzger. 2011.
2. The basics of Open Content licencing 25
26 3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme
3. The Creative Commons
licencing scheme
“Featured pictures” on the free media archive
Wikimedia Commons are the best pictures on
the platform, chosen by thousands of volunteers.
This ice flower is one of them.
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 27
CC is by far the most widespread Open four basic elements (the “licence features”)
Content licencing model. Its popularity and which are illustrated by abbreviations and
widespread use means CC can nowadays be pictograms.1
considered de facto as the standard for “BY” stands for attribution (the obliga-
Open Content licencing. tion to credit the author and other parties
designated for attribution); “NC” stands for
3.1 Overview of the six NonCommercial (commercial use is exclud-
ed from the licence grant); “ND” means
Creative Commons NoDerivatives (only verbatim copies of the
licence types work can be shared) and “SA” represents
ShareAlike (i.e. the work can be modified
In order to meet the varying needs of dif- and modified versions can be published but
ferent publishing strategies, CC provides only under the original or a compatible
a set of six licences and two public domain licence).
tools. Each licence contains one or more of
Figure 1: Pictograms of the cc licence feature
BY NC
ND SA
28 3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme
These four features form the basis of a fixed a brief overview over the different CC
set of six CC licences: licence types. The different licence fea-
The most permissive licence is CC BY. tures, restrictions and obligations are fur-
It grants unrestricted, irrevocable, royalty- ther explained in more detail in section 3.5.
free, worldwide, indefinite rights to use the
work in any way, by any user and for any a) CC BY (Attribution)
purpose. The only requirement is that the
user credits the author and other parties As already mentioned, CC BY grants an
designated to receive attribution and unrestricted licence to use the respective
retains copyright and licence notices. All content. How the content is used, e.g. in
other licence versions contain further re- original or modified form, by whom or for
strictions. The most restrictive licence is the what purpose, is irrelevant. According to
CC BY-NC-ND. It allows neither modifica- section 3a of the legal code 2 the following
tions nor commercial use. This section gives obligations must be met:
Figure 2: The six variations of the CC licences
CC BY CC BY-SA
CC BY-NC-SA CC BY-ND
CC BY-NC-ND CC BY-NC
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 29
1. The author and other parties designated can redistribute a modified version under
to receive attribution must be named in the terms of their choice. CC BY-SA, how-
the manner requested by the licenser as ever, binds the adapter to the terms of the
long as the requested form of attribution original licence. In other words, adapted
is reasonable.3 versions must be shared under CC BY-SA
or a compatible licence.4 Apart from the
2. If supplied by the licenser, copyright above-mentioned duties to indicate the
notices, a reference to the CC licence modifications, the adapter’s licence 5 must
(preferably as a link to the CC website), comply with the following conditions:
a notice that refers to the disclaimer of
warranty and liability and a link to the 1. The adapter’s licence must either be the
original source must be retained. original licence or any later version of
that licence. Earlier versions cannot be
3. If the work is shared in an adapted used. It can also be another CC licence
version, it must be indicated that it is a that contains the same licence features,
modified version. Former indications to for example a ported version of the CC
modifications must be retained (section BY-SA licence.6
3.a.1.B of the legal code).
2. A hyperlink or other reasonable refer-
4. If the licenser requests to remove any of ence to the adapter’s licence must be
the information referred to in paragraph included.
2 above, the user has to do so as long as
it is reasonable. 3. The use of the modified version must not
be restricted by additional terms and
5. The licensee must not create the impres- conditions or TPMs.
sion that their use is in any way endorsed
by the licenser or any party designated C) CC BY-ND (Attribution-No-
to receive attribution (section 2.a.6 of Derivatives)
the legal code).
The CC BY-ND licence does not permit
B) CC BY-SA (Attribution-Share- adaptations of the work. To protect its
Alike) integrity, only verbatim copies may be
distributed and shared. The NoDerivatives
As the general licence of Wikipedia, CC restriction can lead to significant problems
BY-SA is one of the most important and with the combination of different content,
widespread CC licenc- e.g. in remixing, sampling or joined publica-
The most widespread Open es. Licensers, who tions. Apart from this, the licence terms are
Content licence CC BY-SA would like their con- the same as in the CC BY licence described
tent to be uploaded above.
is used on Wikipedia. onto Wikipedia, or
would like to combine D) CC BY-NC (Attribution-Non-
it with Wikipedia content, are advised to Commercial)
use CC BY-SA.
The only difference between CC BY-SA Contrary to the afore-mentioned licences,
and CC BY is the ShareAlike clause in the CC BY-NC reserves the right to use the
section 3b of the legal code. Under the CC content commercially, i.e. a user is not
BY licence, anyone who adapts the work allowed to reproduce the work or create
30 3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme
derivatives if their purpose is to realise a public domain, CC offers two tools: The
commercial gain. The respective restriction CC0 (No Rights Reserved) declaration to
can be found in section 2.a.1 of the legal dedicate own works to the public domain
code. Apart from that, the licence is identi- and the Public Domain Mark to label works
cal to CC BY and therefore subject to the which are already free of protection, e.g.
same obligations. because the term of protection has expired
or because they were not protected in the
E) CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution- first place.
NonCommercial-ShareAlike)
a) CC0 (No Rights Reserved)8
The CC BY-NC-SA combines the NonCom-
mercial and the ShareAlike features. There- The CC0 is a tool to deliberately dedicate
fore, the work can be adapted, and adapted copyright-protected works to the public
versions can be shared under the conditions domain. Thus, it is basically a waiver of
referred to in paragraph 2 above. However, rights. Once it is in effect, a work belongs to
no commercial use of the licenced material the public domain and can be used by
is permitted, neither of the original nor of anyone without any restrictions or obliga-
any modified form. This licence is used, e.g. tions. CC0 is nothing but a standardised
by the Massachusetts Institute of Technol- declaration of such a waiver which can be
ogy (MIT) Open Courseware Project used by anyone who wishes to dedicate
(OCW).7 their work to the public domain.
As jurisdictions, especially copyright
F) CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution- systems and systems of authors' rights
NonCommercial-ShareAlike- differ across countries, CC0 was designed
NoDerivatives) as a three-tier instrument to ensure its
worldwide validity. In authors’ rights sys-
The CC BY-NC-ND is the most restrictive tems such as in Ger-
CC licence. Neither modifications nor com- many, France or In some jurisdictions it is not
mercial uses are permitted. The general Austria, it is gener- possible to waive one‘s own
obligations mentioned in paragraph 1 above ally not possible to
also apply to this licence. waive an author’s author‘s right. Public domain
right completely or,
tools can help here.
3.2 Creative Commons in other words, to
give up one’s ownership of a work. Authors’
public domain rights are considered as some kind of hu-
tools man right which can neither be waived nor
transferred. Hence, in these authors' rights
As described in the beginning, a right regimes, a simple waiver would probably be
holder retains their copyrights when using invalid.9 To avoid this dilemma, the CC0
an Open Content licence. They merely waiver is supplemented by two fallback
grant others permission to use the work options:
under certain conditions. As opposed to The first fall back option is a permissive
this, works in the public domain are not (or licence similar to CC BY but without the
no longer) subject to copyright protection at attribution requirement.10 Hence, it is a
all and may be used without restrictions. licence without any restriction or obliga-
Hence, no permission – no licence – is tion. The second fallback option, CC0, is a
needed anymore. To mark works in the legal construct usually referred to as a
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 31
“non-assertion pledge”. It is a legally bind- 3.3 Generic and ported
ing promise of the right holder not to licence versions
enforce their rights in any way, even if
there was a legal option to do so because Over the years, the CC initiative has con-
the waiver and/or licence are not valid. stantly developed, modified and modern-
The idea behind the three-tier approach ised its licences. The current version, CC
is the following: If the first solution is not 4.0 (hereinafter referred to as CCPL4 = CC
effective, the second option comes into Public Licence version 4), was published on
effect and if this was ineffective as well, November 26th, 2013. The CC Public
the third option would come into force. In Licence Version 3 (CCPL3) and CCPL4
some jurisdictions, certain rights can never differ in a number of ways, i.e. they contain
be waived or made subject to a blanket sometimes subtle, although often impor-
licence. In these cases, for example, the tant, differences.13
second fallback solution comes into play.11 The CC licences were initially designed
in the light of US copyright law. Neverthe-
b) Public Domain Mark (No less, it was per se not intended to be a mere
Known Copyright) US project but rather an international
initiative to foster the cultural commons
In contrast to CC0, the Public Domain Mark worldwide. Soon, therefore, increasing
is not a declaration but rather a label for global interest in the CC licences prompted
works which are already in the public do- a discussion about the need for more ver-
main. This can be the case, for example, once sions based on other jurisdictions.14 In
the term of protection of a work expires. 2003, CC launched an international licence
Copyrights and authors' rights are granted for porting project called: “Creative Commons
a certain amount of time only. In Europe, for International.” “Porting” in this sense does
instance, the rights terminate 70 years after not only mean translating but also adapting
the author’s death. After this term, the work the rules linguistically and legally to a
is considered to be in the public domain and particular jurisdiction. The aim was to
can be used without restriction. adapt the CC licences to numerous jurisdic-
The purpose of the Public Domain Mark tions worldwide and make them enforce-
is to enable anyone to clearly mark works able in these jurisdictions.15 Aside from
which are no longer under copyright pro- these ported versions, CC now also offers
tection. CC provides a tool on its website international, also known as unported/
which generates an HTML code which can generic, versions of their licences.16
be used for public domain content available Legal language as well as regulations
online. This code is particularly useful differ from country to country. Licences
because search engines are then able to based on US law can thus be partly invalid
detect such content on the Internet. in other parts of the world. For example,
Before the Public Domain Mark can be the liability and warranty disclaimer in the
applied to a work, a thorough inquiry about original US CC licences are invalid under
the legal status of the particular work is German, and most likely Pan-European
required. Calculating the exact term of consumer contract law.17 If a licence clause
protection can be difficult, especially with is invalid, complex questions arise. Such
regard to the differing rules in different complexities may lead to legal uncertainties
jurisdictions. Tools such as the Europeana which might prevent organisations and indi-
Public Domain Calculator may help in this viduals from using the licences in the first
task.12 place.18
32 3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme
For this and other reasons, the international owners have to agree. This could prove
CC project established a network of affili- considerably difficult as, unlike some FOSS
ate organisations to port the licences to licences, CC licences do not contain an
their respective jurisdictions. CCPL3 was “any later version” clause.20
ported into more than 60 jurisdictions. While it is understandable that licensers
Interestingly, CC has meanwhile might prefer a licence that is adapted to their
changed its attitude towards porting. For language and jurisdiction, the question of
CCPL4, as of today, no licence ports are on whether ported versions are advantageous
the horizon. In the launch notification for depends on a number of complex considera-
CCPL4 the CC officials contend that tions. In the end, the answer depends on the
CCPL4 does not need to be ported at all. In particular case. Here, it is only possible to
the current version of the FAQ, CC states: give some brief remarks on aspects which
“As of version 4.0, CC is discouraging should generally be considered.
ported versions, and has placed a hold on At first glance, it might seem beneficial
new porting projects following its publica- for an, for instance, French right holder to
tion until sometime in 2014. At that point, use the French ported CC licence for their
CC will re-evaluate the necessity of porting works. To begin with, a licence in one’s
in the future. […] We recommend that you mother tongue is linguistically easier to
use a version 4.0 understand.21 Also, it is
international license. “Ported“ Open Content easier to estimate the
This is the most legal implications when
up-to-date version of licences are linguistically the licence is based on
our licenses, drafted and legislatively adapted to a one’s national law. Fur-
after broad consulta- thermore, the French
tion with our global certain national jurisdiction. licence will contain a
network of affiliates, choice of law clause
and it has been written to be internation- according to which the licence contract
ally valid. There are currently no ports of and all other potential issues are governed
4.0, and it is planned that few, if any, will by French law.22 This rule simplifies the
be created.”19 legal relationships between multi-national
It may be doubted that any licence can licensees and the licenser because it desig-
be valid to the full extent in all jurisdictions nates one definite jurisdiction as the appli-
worldwide. However, for the time being it cable law. Without a choice of law clause,
seems unlikely that the licence-porting the identification of the applicable law
project will continue, even though many could be very complex, since it may vary
right holders would probably prefer to use a depending on the nationality of the particu-
licence which is not only translated into lar licensee or their place of residence.23
their mother tongue but also adapted to However, it needs to be kept in mind
their jurisdiction. It is thus predictable that that the legal certainty for the licenser
the CCPL3 licences will still be used to a might result in linguistic and legal uncer-
significant extent, at least for some time. tainties for most of the potential users as
Especially for larger projects with many far as they live in different countries. Legal
authors and a decentralised licence scheme, uncertainties, in turn, can constrain the use
this is to be expected. If the licence for of the work, which the licenser actually
numerous works and contributions is sup- wanted to encourage.24
posed to be changed, e.g. to a newer ver- Therefore, the international/unported
sion or another licence type, all rights CC licences with their “multi-jurisdictional
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 33
approach” may be regarded as beneficial, work under CC BY-SA 4.0. Alternatively,
especially for online content. The same is if the initial licence was CC BY-SA 3.0
true for licences used for multi-national, Unported, they could choose a CC BY-SA
multi-author collaboration projects. It 3.0 France licence for the adaptation.
would make no sense to use a national Importantly, any adaptation of a work
licence, e.g. for Wikipedia. The result still contains the original work. From a
could, and would, in many cases be that the legal perspective, the adapter can only
designated jurisdic- licence their modifica-
tion was alien to both, When a work is modified, tions; unmodified parts
the licenser and the of the work remain
25
licensee. In such
an adapter can only licence under the initial
projects the private their modifications. The licence. Without a legal
international law solu- solution offered by the
tion is more suitable,
original work remains under licence, the adapter
despite its potential the initial licence. cannot really “re-
complexity, as it licence” the work as
would most likely result in the applicability a whole. This might lead to the confusing
of either the licenser’s or the licensee’s situation in which the user of a repeatedly
national law. modified work has to obey multiple licences
at the same time.
Translations The CCPL4 contains a new rule, which
offers a simple solution for this problem:
The international/unported licences have The user of the modified version is only
been translated into many different lang- bound to the (last) “adapter’s licence”
uages. This is true in particular for CCPL3. which was attached to the particular ver-
Official translations for CCPL4 have sion of the work.26 Former licences which
already been announced and can be expect- were applicable to earlier versions of the
ed to be published by the end of 2014. work become irrelevant.27
Ported and unported or different linguistic 3.4 Licence conditions,
versions in adaptations
user obligations
A work which has been modified several and restrictions
times could, in a later version, be subject to relevant for all
a number of different licence versions, even
though it has initially been published under
Creative Commons
a ShareAlike licence. The ShareAlike clause licences
permits the contributor (adaptor) to use not
only the original but also a compatible All CC licences share a standard set of
licence for their version. Compatible licenc- almost identical general rules. These
es are, e.g. ported versions of the same “general licence features”, which apply to
licence. In addition, the contributor could all licence types, will be discussed here.
choose to publish a modified version under The distinctive licence features “NonCom-
a later version of the same licence. For mercial”, “NoDerivatives” and “ShareA-
instance, the adapter of a work which has like”, which only apply to some of the
initially been published under a CC BY-SA licence types, will be elaborated in detail
3.0 could publish their newer version of the in section 3.5.
34 3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme
a) Licence grant right the user does not have to abide by the
licence obligations. Below, some examples
The licence grant clause in section 2a of the are discussed when this might be the case.
legal code differs slightly across the differ-
ent licence versions. Common ground is Where the licence is not needed and not
that a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty- applicable: internal use
free and worldwide licence is granted to
share and copy the material, irrespective of Section 2.a.2 of the legal code states:
the type of use. In other words, the work “Exceptions and Limitations. For the
can be reproduced in any form (digital or avoidance of doubt, where Exceptions and
non-digital) and on any media (e.g. hard Limitations apply to Your use, this Public
disks, paper, servers, etc.). It can also be License does not apply, and You do not need
conveyed by any possible means, e.g. over to comply with its terms and conditions.”
the Internet, as hard copies (CD, paper Additionally, section 8a of the legal code
among others) or via email. states:
Obviously, the licence grant differs from “For the avoidance of doubt, this Public
licence to licence regarding commercial and License does not, and shall not be inter-
non-commercial uses – the NC licence preted to, reduce, limit, restrict, or impose
being the only one which allows the reser- conditions on any use of the Licensed Mate-
vation of commercial usage rights. Also, the rial that could lawfully be made without
right to share modified/adapted versions of permission under this Public License.”
the work varies between the ND versions In other words, uses which do not
and the other licences. Even though the ND require a licence do not trigger the licence
licences permit the creation of modifica- obligations. Statutory freedoms of use (e.g.
tions, the “adapted material” cannot be copyright exceptions),
distributed without further permission of such as the quotation Only a rights-owner can
the licenser, however. right, are not restrict-
According to section 2.a.1 of the legal ed by the licence, grant the right to use their
code, all CC licences are “non-sublicensa- which means that material and sub-licence it.
ble.” This wording represents an important within their scope,
basic principle of public licencing: Rights to the licence obligations are not effective.
use the material are granted by the right For example, private copying is often –
owner to the user. Users cannot grant rights though not always – permitted by national
in the material to other users, i.e. they law. Hence, no licence is required for pri-
cannot grant sub-licences.28 This construc- vate copying and, accordingly, the CC
tion prevents complex licence chains, which licence does not apply to such use. The
would otherwise occur, if the works could effect is that the user does not have to meet
be re-distributed by a number of users. the licence obligations. For example, the
user would not have to credit the author
b) Licence conclusion and when making a private copy. Should they,
effectiveness of licence however, decide to upload their private
obligations copy to a website, the licence comes into
effect and the licence obligations become
The licence terms only come into effect binding.
when a use falls within the scope of copy- Copyright is limited in many other ways
right's exclusive rights. When using a work – not only concerning uses in the private
in a way which is outside the scope of copy- sphere. Any use which falls outside of the
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 35
scope of copyright protection can be con- it, she has adapted the photo optically and
ducted without obeying the CC licences. technically. Her Facebook posts are only
To put it simply, the CC licence obligations, available to her direct contacts. If this use
and the respective grant of rights, only was considered to be public (because her
become relevant in the context of publica- contacts would be considered as members
tion and distribu- of the public), the user
tion.29 Especially in Open Content licences only would violate the
the private sphere, licence terms which
CC material can be become relevant when demand that altered
used almost without making a work publically material must not be
any obligations. made available to the
According to available and distributing it. public. If the group of
section 2.a.1 of the her contacts was, how-
legal code, the attribution obligation must ever, not considered as a public group, she
be observed only, when the work is would act in a perfectly compliant way.
“shared.” Sharing is defined in section 1i Another example may be a company
of the legal code as: “to provide material which produces a brochure which includes
to the public by any means or process that some modified ND photos. The brochure
requires permission under the Licensed will only be distributed within the company
Rights, such as reproduction, public dis- group but not to third parties. Is the deploy-
play, public performance, distribution, ment within the group an internal use or a
dissemination, communication, or impor- public distribution? If the latter was true,
tation, and to make material available to the use would violate the licence terms.
the public including in ways that members The question is even more relevant
of the public may access the material from when it comes to SA licences. As already
a place and at a time individually chosen mentioned, the SA feature obliges adapters
by them.” to licence their modified version of the
Read together the two clauses mean: If material under the same licence. This
the material is not conveyed to members of requirement is often confused with an
the public,30 the user is not asked to comply “obligation to publish.” In fact, the SA
with the attribution obligation. provision does not oblige the adapter to
publish their modified version. They can
The term public keep it for themselves as long as they want.
They could also share it with a limited
Simply put, “sharing” means conveying amount of user groups without infringing
the material to members of the public. But the SA rule.31 Hence, SA is not an obliga-
what does public mean in this context? The tion to share. It is merely a rule on “how
question is of enormous practical relevance, to share.” If the adapter’s version is shared
especially for corporate users and public publicly, however, it must be licenced under
authorities, but also for private users, since the same or under a compatible licence.
uses in the public sphere are subject to Whether it is shared at all, or with whom,
licence obligations and restrictions; uses in is the free decision of the adapter.
the non-public (e.g. private) sphere are not. Hence, the meaning of public or more
The importance of the differentiation precisely “providing material to the pub-
shall be emphasised by two examples: lic,” as the CC licences put it, is essential
Imagine a Facebook user posted someone for the SA clause and crucial in practice.
else’s ND-photo on her wall. Before posting One last example regarding this specific
36 3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme
case: Take the above-mentioned situation specific individuals belonging to a pri-
where the company wanted to share the vate group.”32
brochure within the company group. Imag-
ine the brochure was a modified version of • The term public implies that a communi-
another brochure which was initially pub- cation or making available of a work
lished under a CC BY-SA licence. The targets a fairly large number of per-
company now adds information containing sons.33 This excludes groups of persons
business secrets, which is why the company which are too small to be significant. A
would like to keep the second version to significant group can also be reached in
itself. If transferring the brochure from one succession. The ECJ held: “In that con-
company to another within the group was nection, not only is it relevant to know
regarded as “providing material to the how many persons have access to the
public,” the “secret version” would have to same work at the same time, but it is
be licenced under a CC BY-SA licence. In also necessary to know how many of
that case, anybody (e.g. employees or any them have access to it in succession.” 34
other third party) could share and republish
it. If the use was considered non-public, • It is relevant whether the user profits in
however, the SA obligation would not be monetary terms from the use.35
triggered and the company could prevent
anybody from sharing it. • It is essential whether the communica-
So, what is the exact meaning of public? tion or making available was deliber-
Unlike the CCPL3, the CCPL4 licences do ately addressed to a public group.36
not contain an explanation of the term.
They only define the term sharing, which • Regarding works which are available
on the other hand implies a use within the online, a “making available to the pub-
public sphere. This leaves us having to lic” requires the targeting of a “new
interpret the central term public on the public,” i.e. an audience “that was not
basis of the applicable copyright law. How- taken into account by the copyright
ever, different jurisdictions have different holders when they authorised the initial
interpretations of this and other terms, communication to the public.”37 This
which makes it impossible to give a univer- means, for example, that hyperlinks to
sally valid answer. works which are already made available
In the European Copyright Directives online to the general public (i.e. without The European Copy-
right directive
and the thus formed European copyright technical restriction) cannot be consid-
implemented the WIPO
acquis communautaire the term public is ered as a communication or “making Copyright Treaty in order
used in several contexts. However, the available” to the public.38 to harmonise certain
aspects of copyright law
European copyright directives do not pro- across Europe.
vide a general, or all encompassing, defini- Although these general rules answer a
tion of the term public either. The term has, great variety of particular questions con-
however, been mentioned in some judg- cerning the term public in copyright law,
ments of the European Court of Justice they do not allow precise answers for situa-
(ECJ), which has established the following tions which have not already been decided
basic interpretation rules: by the ECJ. In other words, the EU copy-
right acquis lacks a unitary concept of
• Public means “making a work percepti- communicating or making available of a
ble in any appropriate manner to per- work to the public. It is, for instance, hard
sons in general, i.e. not restricted to to determine whether the upload of pro-
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 37
tected material to a company’s intranet individual companies will usually qualify
for the access of all employees is a commu- as a (public) distribution; whereas the
nication to the public, or in the terms of distribution of material in-house, within
CCPL4, an act of sharing. It is further one company, will probably not be consid-
unclear whether the transfer of copies from ered as sharing.40
one affiliate company to another or from Nonetheless, it is still disputed whether
one public authority to another branch of the notion of public should be considered
that authority, constitute a communication differently in the case of distribution (i.e.
to the public. the conveying of physical copies) and the
In the end, these questions need to be making available of non-physical copies
decided on a case by case basis. This is (via a network or email), as it has not yet
especially true for the interpretation of been clarified by the European courts
sharing in the CCPL4 licences, because this under which circumstances the sharing of
term comprises a number of uses which are intangible copies of protected works, e.g.
treated differently under copyright law in a corporate or professional environ-
including, e.g. public display, public perfor- ment, can be considered public or non-
mance, distribution, dissemination, commu- public.
nication, or importation, and making It must therefore be assessed on a case
material available to the public. by case basis whether the licence obliga-
Under European copyright law, “distri- tions of the CC licences are triggered in the
bution” (to the public) means the dissemi- particular scenario.
nation of physical copies (e.g. CDs or
books). “Making publicly available,” in c) Attribution
turn, refers to online uses. Most likely, the
notion of public under European copyright The obligation to name the author and/or
law would vary depending on the different other parties designated to receive attribu-
use cases. tion is essential for most licensers. It ensures
It is safe to stipulate, however, that uses that the right holders are credited for their
within the private sphere, i.e. within groups work, which is crucial to gain recognition
having mutual personal relationships, are and/or publicity. Crediting is thus the main
always non-public. To watch a movie with reward for the Open Content publisher
friends, to send a copy of a text via email whether it is the author, company or public
to close colleagues or to share photos by institution.
making a Dropbox folder available to a The great importance of attribution is
small group of selected people, will not highlighted by the fact that all CC licences
be considered as public sharing. contain the BY feature. The respective
On the other hand, any online use which obligation can be found in section 3a of the
targets a general public qualifies as sharing legal code.
under the CC licences, as the potential
audience is not restricted by technical Crediting properly
measures. This applies irrespective of
whether the user pursues a commercial The CC licences are quite flexible regarding
or non-commercial purpose.39 the crediting requirement. The user is
Obviously, there are countless situations merely requested to give attribution in a
which still may be considered either non- “reasonable manner.” 41 Even if the licenser
public or public. Sharing between separate suggests/prescribes a certain method of
and independent legal persons, i.e. two attribution, this only binds the licensee, if
38 3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme
they can reasonably comply with it. This The obligation to implement a copyright
creates leeway for a number of attribution notice (section 3.a.1.A.ii of the legal code)
methods which will be applicable depend-
ing on the particular media formats and If the licenser provides a copyright notice,
use-cases. There are several explanations it must be retained.
42
on correct attribution available on the
CC website and a number of best practice The obligation to refer to the licence and to
guidelines. 43
the warranty disclaimer (section 3.a.1.A.iii,
Proper crediting is easier when the iv of the legal code)
general concept of attribution and its goals
are understood. Thus, the following para- The obligation to supply a copy of or a link
graphs seek to explain the background to to the licence is necessary to ensure that all
the above-mentioned rules: users can benefit from the licence in the
First and foremost, it is important to first place. A user cannot observe a licence
understand that crediting is only effective they are not aware of. Thus, if the licence
when the user can relate the credit to a information is not attached to the particular
particular work. For copy the user has
instance, if a website Because credits are the main accessed, they will
provider decided to
reward for using Open Con- not be properly enti-
centralise all crediting tled. The obligation to
information for all tent licences all Creative link to the disclaimer
implemented images on of warranties is based
one central page, they
Commons licences contain on the same idea. A
would have to make the BY feature. contractually deter-
sure that each credit mined limitation of
could be allocated to the correct picture liability can only be legally valid if it is
(e.g. by hyperlinking the information to the brought to the licensee’s attention. Since
particular image file). The closer the credit the warranty and liability disclaimer form
is attached to the work, the more likely the part of the licence (section 5 of the legal
attribution requirement will be complied code), this obligation can only be complied
with and the intent and purpose of credit- with by providing the licence text.
ing retained.
The obligation to link to the online source
The obligation to name the author and (section 3.a.1.A.v of the legal code)
“any others designated to receive attribu-
tion” (section 3.a.1.A.i of the legal code) To a reasonable extent, the licensee is also
obliged to retain Uniform Resource Identi-
The obligation to name the author and the fiers (URI) or hyperlinks to the licenced
copyright owner is a common rule under material. This also applies (like all other
copyright law that shall ensure, as men- attribution obligations) to the use in offline
tioned above, that the author gains public- publications. Imagine someone used a
ity and possibly monetary rewards. It is photo from Flickr in a print magazine:
also necessary to prevent plagiarism, i.e. The obligation to link to the source would
to ensure that the original author is ac- be complied with by printing the full Flickr
knowledged as the author, and not the URI, thus allowing the reader to find the
user. source.
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 39
The obligation to indicate modifications In section 1b of the legal code they are
(documentation obligation, section 3.a.1.B defined as “copyright and/or similar rights
of the legal code) closely related to copyright, including,
without limitation, performance, broadcast,
Database rights The obligation to indicate modifications has sound recording, and sui generis database
refer to ancillary rights
several reasons. First and foremost, it aims rights, without regard to how the rights are
granted to the creator of
a database. to protect the original author’s reputation. labelled or categorized.” 45
If everybody was allowed to modify a work Section 4 of the licences’ legal code
in any way, this could result in modified explicitly addresses database rights. The sui
versions which the original author might generis right on databases is a European
not want to be associated with, e.g. because peculiarity which does not exist in many
they dislike the style or the quality. The other parts of the world (e.g. the US). It was
documentation obligation ensures that introduced on EU level in 1996 by means of
modifications by third parties are clearly the Database Directive46 which is manda-
attributed to them and not to the original tory for all member states.
author. Moreover, this rule ensures that the Section 4 of the legal code clarifies that
evolutionary history of the work can be the general licence grant in section 2.a also
retraced at all times. This is particularly covers these specific database rights. If the
important for massive multi-author collabo- licenced material includes a protected
ration projects such as Wikipedia which database, it is permitted to extract, copy,
rely to a considerable extent on version reuse and share it in whole or in part.
histories to make the origination process Unlike some ported versions of CCPL3,
of the articles transparent. the CCPL4 licence requires the user to
comply with the licence obligations when
No obligation to name the title of the work they use a protected database.47
in CCPL4 Whether these rights are granted de-
pends on the decision of the licenser. It
One change in CCPL4 compared to former would, for instance, be possible to licence
versions is that the attribution requirement elements of the database but not the data-
does no longer request the licensee to name base itself. The database and its contents
the work’s title. According to the FAQ are separate subjects of protection; hence,
under CCPL4 it is still recommended to they can be licenced (or not licenced) inde-
name the title (if the licenser supplied one), pendently. If the licenser wanted to restrict
but it is no longer mandatory.44 the licence to one of these two elements
(the content of the database or the database
d) Application of the licence to itself) they would have to clearly identify
database and other related which elements are covered by the licence
rights and which are excluded.48
Since the grant of database rights is
Material published under CC licences will closely connected to the copyright grant,
often be protected by an accumulation of the licence obligations and restrictions are
IPRs. Take, for instance, a music file: Au- equally applicable to the database rights.49
Neighbouring thors’ rights protect the composition and If, for example, a database was licenced
Rights are related to
authors’ rights but are the lyrics, neighbouring rights the sound under a NC licence, the reuse, sharing,
not connected to a recording and the performance of musi- copying, etc., would only be permitted for
work’s actual author, e.g.
performers’ or broad-
cians and singers. The CCPL4 licences non-commercial purposes. If it was licenced
casters’ rights. apply to all copyrights and related rights. under an ND licence, it would not be pos-
40 3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme
sible to take substantial portions of the continental Europe have very strong moral
database and incorporate them into another rights which are only negotiable to a cer-
database. tain extent. Nations which pursue a “copy-
Again, if the database was licenced right approach” such as the UK or the US,
under an SA licence, any own database do not grant such “sacrosanct” moral
which included a substantial part of the rights. In these states, moral rights are
original database would have to be licenced subject to the freedom of contract, i.e. they
under the same or a compatible licence.50 can easily be contracted-out, limited or
waived.
e) Patent and trademark rights The different approach between the
above-mentioned jurisdictions challenges
According to section 2.b.2 of the legal code the concept of unitary public copyright
patents and trademark rights cannot be licences which are supposed to be valid
licenced under the CC licences. This is and enforceable all over the world. Hence,
especially important for corporate and moral rights used to be a major aspect in
institutional licensers who own trademark the porting of the CC licences to other
rights in their company name, logo, etc. jurisdictions. Licence ports from countries
The exclusion of trademark licences with a strong protection of moral rights,
means that a trademark associated with the e.g. the German CCPL3, contain special
work can only be used to share said work in clauses which stipulated that moral rights
terms of the CC (copyright-) licence grant. remained unaffected by the licence grant.52
For instance, a CC-licenced book which was The CCPL3 unported version did not
published under a registered trademark of address the aspect in any way. This lack
the publisher could be copied and shared of regulation raised doubts on whether the
with the general public. However, no licen- licence grant could be regarded as fully
cee would be allowed to use the trademark valid under authors’ rights regimes.
in any other way but for sharing this book. As CC abandoned the idea of licence
They could neither promote their own ports in CCPL4, a new concept was needed
works under that trademark nor could they to deal with moral rights. The CCPL4
allege that the trademark owner endorsed introduction website explains how moral
the publication of their own modified ver- rights and neighbouring aspects, such as
sions. This is further ensured by the obliga- privacy or other personal rights, are now
tion to mark modifications.51 dealt with: “The 4.0 licence suite uniformly
and explicitly waives moral rights held by
f) Moral Rights, privacy and the licensor where possible to the limited
personal rights extent necessary to enable reuse of the
content in the manner intended by the
One of the main reasons for the nationalised license. Publicity, privacy, and personality
CC licence ports was the different concept of rights held by the licensor are expressly
moral rights in different jurisdictions. Moral waived to the same limited extent.”53
rights are supposed to protect the personal The intended effect is that moral, per-
relationship between an author and their sonal and other rights which might be
work. Among others, moral rights include affected by the licence, but are outside the
the right to first publication, the attribution scope of copyright,54 are waived to the
right and a protection right against distor- maximum extent possible under the appli-
tions of the work (“right of integrity”). cable copyright law.55 However, the waiv-
Especially the authors’ rights regimes in er’s scope is limited, covering only what is
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 41
necessary to be able to use the licenced themselves. If other people’s rights are
work. affected by a publication the licenser has
This approach leaves the decision, how to ensure that all necessary permissions are
far personal and moral rights can be waived obtained. If they fail to do so, the infringed
and to what extent they remain in force, to person can hold both, the licenser and the
the applicable law. Whether it is legitimate, licencee, liable.58 This means, if, for exam-
for example, to use a CC licenced song in a ple, a person uses a CC-licenced picture
pornographic movie or CC licenced photos which violates personal rights, they can
in a political campaign will differ from also be held liable. Whether the user knew
56
jurisdiction to jurisdiction. or could have known about the infringe-
However, the resulting legal uncertainty ment of personal rights is irrelevant.
should not be overestimated. Despite their
theoretical importance within the authors’ g) Disclaimer of warranties
rights regimes, moral rights are de facto and limitation of liability
much less disputed than commercial rights
of use and are very rarely the subject of All CCPL4 licences contain a comprehen-
lawsuits. The moral, personal and data sive disclaimer of warranties and liability.
protection rights This means that the
waiver, or as the case Creative Commons licences work is shared “as-is”
may be, the non- and that the licenser
assertion pledge, shall
do not touch upon third par- is not liable for any
only ensure the us- ties‘ personal rights. damages, losses or for
ability of the work. If whatever other harm-
someone made selfies available online and ful event could result from the use of the
licenced them under a permissive, modifica- work.
tions-allowing CC licence, they should be Under European tort law and other
aware that people might use them in a way regulations, it is not possible to fully
that they would not appreciate.57 Moral exclude all liability for damages and negli-
and other personal rights, such as the right gence.59 Section 4.c of the legal code is thus
of integrity, should, however, only be re- intended to ensure that in the case of man-
garded as a last resort to oppose uses in datory statutory law imposing minimum
extreme, and therefore rare, cases. liability standards, the liability is reduced
A more significant issue which is not to the lowest possible level under the appli-
– and cannot be – solved by the licences cable law.
alone is personal rights. Especially photos, Whether such a severability (or: salva-
videos and articles are often published tory) clause can sustain an (most probably)
under a public licence in violation of third ineffective liability clause, might be argu-
parties’ personal rights. For instance, pho- able. However, even if the liability rules
tos or videos showing individuals are pub- in CCPL4 were invalid, the liability for
lished online without their permission. damages arising from the provision of CC
Articles including personal data that should material (and Open Content in general)
not be conveyed without consent are posted would most likely be minimal. Although
in blogs or on websites. Redistributors of the actual standard of liability will vary
such infringing material can become subject from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, all liability
to legal action, irrespective of the public regimes will consider the fact that Open
licence. As a matter of fact, the licenser Content is shared without compensation.
may only decide about rights affecting The contractual liability for contracts with-
42 3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme
out consideration is generally very limited. copyright infringements for which the user
Under German law, e.g. the prevailing can be held liable. For example, if a user
opinion among legal experts is that the failed to attribute the author or did not
statutory liability for public licencing is provide a notice referring to the licence
equivalent to the liability for gifts. Hence, text, they would forfeit their right to use
the level of liability is the lowest possible the material. As previously explained,
under German contract law. without a licence they would be liable for
copyright infringement, just as any other
h) Prohibition of the deploy- person who uses a protected work without
ment of technological permission. Licences of third parties, how-
protection measures ever, are not affected by the termination.61
If the licence is terminated, CCPL4
Due to a mandatory provision in the Euro- offers two possible routes to reinstate it.62
pean Copyright Directive,60 the circumven- According to section 6.b.1 of the legal code,
tion of effective TPMs is prohibited in all the licence is rein-
EU member states and under any circum- stated automatically As soon as a licence condition
stances. This means, e.g. that nobody is if the infringing licen-
allowed to reproduce a copy-protected see remedies the is breached, the licence termi-
work by circumventing the TPM, not even violation within 30 nates automatically.
for private copying or quoting. days after they dis-
Section 2.a.4 of the legal code clearly covered it or after they were informed
states that TPM protection shall not be about it by the licenser or otherwise. Alter-
effective for CC-licenced works. The effect natively, the licenser can reinstate the
is that any licencee is allowed to conduct licence expressly (section 6.1.b of the legal
whatever technical modification of the copy code). However, according to the CCPL4
of the work is needed to be able to use it FAQ, the user is liable for any non-compli-
according to the licence terms, even if it ant uses which were conducted before the
required the circumvention of an effective licence was reinstated.63
TPM.
3.5 Additional licence-
i) Licence term and termination
specific restrictions
CC licences are concluded perpetually and obligations
(section 6.a of the legal code), i.e. they
apply until the copyright, or any other Besides the abovementioned obligations
related rights in relation to the material, and restrictions which are valid for all six
expire. After all rights expired, the mate- types of CC licences, the NC, ND and SA
rial becomes part of the public domain and licence elements – which are part of only
there is no longer a need for a licence. some of the CC licences – are also subject
Furthermore, the licence grant is irrevo- to some specific requirements which a licen-
cable (section 2.a.1 of the legal code). see should be aware of.
Hence, the licenser cannot actively termi-
nate the licence contract. However, the a) NC – NonCommercial
licence terminates automatically upon any
breach of the licence conditions (section 6.a Three of the six CC licences contain the
of the legal code). Uses which are conduct- NC element. NC means that the licenser
ed after the violation has occurred are reserves the right to exploit the material
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 43
commercially. Any user who wishes to Section 1i of the NC licences’ legal code
use the work for commercial purposes defines NonCommercial as follows: “Non-
needs additional consent (i.e. an additional Commercial means not primarily intended
licence) from the right holder. for or directed towards commercial advan-
NC licences are widespread and very tage or monetary compensation. For pur-
popular among the CC licence suite, at least poses of this Public License, the exchange
in some areas.64 The reasons for this popu- of the Licensed Material for other material
larity are manifold. Indeed, there can be subject to Copyright and Similar Rights by
good reasons to choose an NC licence in digital file-sharing or similar means is
particular cases. However, in most situa- NonCommercial provided there is no pay-
tions, the NC versions lead to significant ment of monetary compensation in connec-
and often unintended drawbacks. As the tion with the exchange.” 69
NC restriction affects free distribution and Obviously, this definition leaves a lot of
inhibits many uses (often unintentionally), room for interpretation. Particularly, the
they are generally not considered as “open/ phrase “is directed towards monetary
free culture” licences.65 Even in the context compensation” signals that the NC clause
of education and research, the use of NC- shall be understood in a very broad sense.
content is characterised by legal uncertain- How broad is, however, hard to estimate,
ty.66 For example, NC content cannot be especially since it is not clear whether the
integrated into Wiki- word “primarily”
pedia, as Wikipedia The NonCommercial licence applies to the second
uses a CC BY-SA alternative as well, in
licence. For these and
feature leaves a wide margin other words, whether
other reasons, NC for interpretation on what the sentence has to be
licences are highly read as: “NonCommer-
disputed in the Open commercial usage is. cial means not primar-
Content community. ily … directed towards
It is not the task of this guide to resume commercial advantage or monetary com-
or comment on these discussions and its pensation.” 70
various arguments.67 Instead, it is the aim The clause only mentions one specific
of this guide to explain the NC restriction use: Peer-to-peer file-sharing is deemed
and to hopefully clarify some misunder- non-commercial. In other contexts, uses
standings about it. Below, however, some must be individually examined whether
of the arguments are taken up to explain they are “(not) primarily intended for or
strategic aspects regarding the selection of directed towards commercial advantage or
the appropriate licence for different cases. monetary compensation.” This leaves a
wide margin for interpretation.
What is the meaning of NonCommercial? Thus, it is impossible to give an objective
and general answer to the question of when
In the recent versioning process for CCPL4, a use is commercial or non-commercial.
it was debated whether, and if so how, the Being a contract, the licence has to be inter-
definition of the term NonCommercial preted from an objective point of view
should be clarified in the licence text. In considering the views of both, licenser and
the end, CC decided against any change of licensee. Moreover, due regard must be paid
the definition.68 Hence, the provisions in to the applicable law in the particular case.
CCPL3 and CCPL4 do not vary in this In 2008, CC conducted a survey investi-
respect. gating the perception of creators and users
44 3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme
regarding the commercial/non-commercial should be classified as commercial or
dichotomy.71 The findings revealed that non-commercial.77
creators and users have by and large a
common understanding of the general • The term commercial has to be under-
meaning of the terms commercial and stood in a broad sense. If the use serves
non-commercial. Concerning borderline even a remote financial interest of the
cases and specific questions, however, the user, it must be deemed commercial.78
results of the study were not very conclu- It may be assumed that activities of
sive. Altogether, the survey can serve as an profit-oriented users (especially compa-
interesting pool of information, as it reflects nies) generally serve a business interest,
similarities and differences in the views of at least remotely.
different stakeholders.72 One interesting
overall result was, for example, that users • Uses that generate direct profits should
tend to interpret the NC clause more always be considered commercial.
restrictively than the right holders them-
selves. However, due to its limited scope • Whether the particular use (also) serves
and non-representative character, the study the public interest or only the self-inter-
cannot be used as a reliable source for legal est of the user has some relevance for its
interpretation.73 classification as commercial or non-com-
On the whole, there is no unitary inter- mercial.
pretation of the terms commercial and
non-commercial, and with regard to the • Among the uses of individuals, there is
different jurisdictions, cannot be expected a difference between job-related and
to exist. Nonetheless, an attempt will be private uses. If the use is job-related,
made below to give some concrete answers the classification depends on whether
for certain typical use-cases, although these the intention of the employer/client is
must be understood as the author’s personal “primarily directed towards commercial
opinion only.74 advantage.”79 In other words, a use
The distinction given here between could be commercial even if the user did
commercial and non-commercial is based not follow their own commercial inter-
on two general factors: user-related aspects ests but supported those of a third party.
and use-related aspects.75 Each category If the use only serves a private purpose
comprises a number of more detailed fac- and only takes place in the private
tors which indicate commercial or non-com- sphere, it is always non-commercial.
mercial uses respectively. In addition, the
two general factors, combined with further • Apart from these differences, it is irrel-
indicators, should give a good overview evant who the user is. Individuals can
about a number of typical use-cases.76 follow commercial interests much the
The following chart showing commer- same as legal entities or institutions.
cial/non-commercial use-cases shows the
most essential indicators. It is based on the • Uses that are covered by copyright
following assumptions: limitations and exceptions do not fall
into the scope of the licence. If such
• The general attitude of a user towards regulations permitted certain commer-
for-profit or not-for-profit activities is cial uses, the NC restriction would not
not the only determining factor, but a be effective.80
strong indicator whether their uses
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 45
Further explanations regarding the follow- are deemed to be uses of their employ-
ing chart: ers. In case a private person acts com-
mercially on their own account, e.g. by
• A freelancer is an individual who runs a selling hardcopies of CC licenced-materi-
business and uses the material for their al, they are considered a freelancer.
business interests. The term freelancer
shall be understood in a broad sense. It The following assessment has to be under-
shall include inter alia artists who make stood as a reflection of the author’s person-
a living from their creative work. al opinion only. Some projects which use
NC licences offer explanations of their
• A private person is an individual who own, which might not fully match the
uses the material for private purposes author’s assumptions.81 In these cases, it
only. Uses of individuals which are con- is recommended to follow the guidelines
ducted to fulfil their job-related duties of the respective project.82
Chart 1: Who can use NC content in what use case?
Abbreviations: User type Company Public Non- Free- Private
Yes = Use of NC content
is permitted institution profit lancer person
No = Use of NC content NGO
is not permitted
n.a. = Not applicable, i.e. Sell hardcopies No No No No No
such constellation is
Licence content against payment No No No No No
inconceivable in the
logic of the chart as Use for advertising No No No No No
explained above
Use to make money No No No No No
Use for the job n.a. n.a. n.a. No n.a.
Use on a website that displays ads No Yes Yes No Yes
to recover hosting costs
Use on a platform, where the No Yes Yes No Yes
platform provider (not the
content provider) displays ads
Use for inhouse education and No Yes Yes No n.a.
information
Use for private entertainment n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. Yes
and to entertain friends/family
of the user
Use to inform/entertain No Yes Yes No Yes
customers/clients/audience
Use in tuition-free courses for No Yes Yes No Yes
educational purposes
Use in tuition-based courses for No No No No No
educational purposes
Use for corporate-funded research No No No No n.a.
Use for tax-funded research No Yes Yes No n.a.
Use for inhouse corporate No n.a. n.a. No n.a.
research
46 3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme
Advantages and Disadvantages of NC selection of an NC licence is only appropri-
licences ate if there are realistic prospects that
commercial users will pay to use the mate-
As mentioned before, NC licences have rial. In many cases this is (above all in
several drawbacks. As such, the decision relation to online content) highly unlikely,
to take such a restrictive licence should be especially without an elaborate marketing
carefully thought through. The author’s strategy. Moreover, if the licenser is not
impression is that most creators who decide willing or not able to enforce potential
to use an NC licence do so because they do violations of the NC restriction by taking
not wish other people and organisations to legal action, it hardly makes sense to
make money with their creative work with- impose it in the first place.
out an obligation to share potential profits. When choosing a licence, it is of utmost
This motivation might be understandable importance to be aware of the reasons why
from a psychological point of view. How- a particular Open Content licence is cho-
ever, in many cases it leads (without any sen. In the majority of cases, careful consid-
good reason) to a lose-lose situation. The eration will reveal that non-pecuniary
licenser loses many potential users and uses motives prevail. There are altruistic rea-
that would in actual fact serve their interest sons, such as the wish to contribute to a
– broad distribution and widespread atten- cultural commons or to inform people
tion to the work. Many users cannot, or at about important subjects. However, the
least dare not (because of legal uncertainty) majority of considerations will be of a
make use of the work not even for purposes rather egoistic kind. Widespread distribu-
the licenser would not object to. The NC tion draws attention to the author’s work.
element might also affect uses for educa- Attention can result in engagements, popu-
tional and academic purposes, as the ques- larity or even fame. If, for example, the
tion whether NC content can be used in creator is not able or willing to establish
tuition-based courses (see the chart) is and maintain a professional commercial
highly disputed. distribution strategy themselves, why not
The same is true for scientific uses enable others to develop a channel and
within public-private-partnerships or even reach out for an audience which they could
publicly funded research. Even the use on not reach themselves? 83
entirely “private” websites where publish- For corporate licensers and creators who
ers try to recover some of their hosting are already well known and successful, NC
costs through advertising, is arguable. licences can be a good choice, provided
Would a right holder actually like to pre- they are employed as a tool to support an
vent these uses? Is it likely that such users elaborate marketing strategy. Musicians,
would seek individual permission when for example, can use NC licences to draw
their use might not be permitted by the attention to their work by publishing some
licence? Would they conduct an in-depth of their works on websites or platforms.
legal examination to ascertain whether Should they be able to attract significant
their use is legitimate or not? commercial interest, no publisher could
An objective evaluation of the advan- exploit their work without negotiating
tages and disadvantages of NC licences individual terms. However, it is very likely
leads to the conclusion that their disadvan- that publishers would contact creators and
tages outweigh the benefits for both crea- musicians before investing into the distribu-
tors and users in the great majority of tion and marketing of their works anyway,
cases. From an objective standpoint, the i.e. irrespective of whether their material
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 47
was published under a NC licence or not. (commercial) use. However, commercial
Akin to the publishing business (especially users such as publishers or music companies
fiction publication), a successful music would be reluctant to use SA content with-
distribution requires a close liaison be- out additional permission because they
tween creators and commercial exploiters. could only do so under the same licence
If the music distributor wanted to establish (CC BY-SA). To arrange a commercial (i.e.
a successful band, they would have to traditional) distribution they would need
arrange concerts, interviews, media cover- additional rights or exceptions, i.e. the need
age, merchandising and so on. Without to negotiate with the creators would arise
cooperation between artists and publisher, nonetheless. Furthermore, if a commercial
this would be impossible. In other words, distributor included SA material in their
the possibility of using the music without own works, e.g. by sampling or synching
individual consent will in most cases not CC music with a film, the SA obligation
prevent a commercial exploiter from having would also apply to their own material. In
to negotiate individual terms. other words, the film would have to be
That said, NC licences are generally distributed under the CC licence due to the
only advantageous for professional publish- copyleft-effect, sometimes also referred to
ers who can afford to create and deploy as the “viral effect.” 86 This makes it all the
complex marketing strategies and who are more unlikely that CC SA material would
willing and able to pursue licence violators. be integrated into commercial productions
NC licences enable price differentiation and without further consultation of the licenser.
so-called dual licencing business models.
Similar to the shareware and freeware b) ND – NoDerivatives
concepts in the software world, there are
possibilities to freely share (under CC NC) Two CC licences contain the restriction
abridged versions of books, movies or to NoDerivatives: CC BY-ND and CC BY-NC-
convey other “light ND. As any licence restriction, the ND
The legal uncertainties of the versions” for free in element does not mean that the material
order to draw attention cannot be adapted or modified at all. It
NC feature have a discoura-
to the work.84 The “full rather means that the right to modify the
ging effect on re-users. versions” can then still work is reserved, i.e. anyone who would
be marketed commer- like to publish an adapted version of the
cially. Whether such strategies are feasible material must obtain an additional licence.
should be evaluated thoroughly weighing Intent and purpose of the restriction is to
up the pros and cons. protect the integrity of the work.
On the whole, the number of situations
where the use of NC licences is the best The term adaptation
choice is very limited. There might, how-
ever, be a better option which could also Section 1a of the legal code defines adapted
serve the intended effect (prevent commer- material as follows:
cial users to use the work without individu- “Adapted Material means material sub-
al negotiation), while avoiding many of the ject to Copyright and Similar Rights that is
negative side effects of the NC licences: derived from or based upon the Licensed
Some commentators argue that CC SA is Material and in which the Licensed Material
“the better NC”.85 In short: The SA licence is translated, altered, arranged, trans-
grant is not restricted to non-commercial formed, or otherwise modified in a manner
uses and does therefore not impede the free requiring permission under the Copyright
48 3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme
and Similar Rights held by the Licensor. For of work, e.g. making a film out of a novel,
purposes of this Public License, where the are considered adaptations. Also, the act of
Licensed Material is a musical work, perfor- synching music with other works, e.g. to
mance, or sound recording, Adapted Mate- use music as a background for a video, is
rial is always produced where the Licensed indisputably deemed an adaptation.
Material is synched in timed relation with a Apart from these explicitly mentioned
moving image.” 87 acts of modifications, no further explanation
Section 2.a.1.B of the ND licences’ legal is given. The licence directs the user to the
code points out that adapted material can applicable law.90 This makes it impossible to
be produced but not shared. Hence, the ND give unitary answers. To which extent
restriction only applies when the adapted licensees can republish adapted material,
material is shared; its production and pri- will vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
vate use is still allowed.88 The clauses in This is even true for
CCPL4 are the same as the respective rules different jurisdiction CC SA makes sure that the
in CCPL3. As such, there is no difference within the European
between the licence versions. Union, as the European content can only be used
copyright acquis com- if the ShareAlike licence is
What exactly is an adaptation? munautaire has not yet
harmonised the modifi- kept intact.
There are some examples in the legal code cation right, i.e. there is
of uses, which are to be considered adapta- no unitary EU-wide concept of adaptations.
tions and uses, which are explicitly exclud- Whether users of ND content need an addi-
ed from this definition. According to tional licence for certain kinds of use de-
section 1a of the legal code, an adaptation pends on several aspects. The question is:
takes place when the material is “trans- Does the applicable law consider the par-
lated, altered, arranged, transformed, or ticular use as a use of an adapted/modified
otherwise modified in a manner requiring version of the work?
permission under the Copyright and Simi-
lar Rights.” 89 According to section 2.a.4 of Adaptations of the work itself
the legal code, mere technical modifications
are, however, not deemed adaptations. The Modifications of the work itself, e.g.
latter means that format shifting is not abridgements, extensions, or re-arrange-
considered an adaptation nor is the digitisa- ments of its content are generally consid-
tion of a non-digital work. In these cases, ered adaptation under copyright law. This
the work itself remains unchanged. The applies irrespective of whether the adaptor
digitisation of a printed novel, for instance, owns the copyright in the modified version,
does not change the novel (the work), but because the modification itself is subject to
only the media in which it is embodied. copyright protection.
Therefore, it is not considered an adapta-
tion or modification under copyright law Adaptation by changing the context and
but simply a reproduction of the work. combining the work with other content –
To determine which uses are adaptations remixes, mash ups, collections and work
is much more difficult. The licence gives combinations
examples of some acts which are usually
considered modifications/adaptations under More complex questions arise when verba-
copyright law: Translations and the trans- tim copies of the work are used in a new
formation of a work into another category context. Can, for example, an ND photo be
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 49
used in a book where it is framed by an “adapted material” and the ND licence will
article? Can someone publish a collection not permit its publication unless allowed
of 100 photos of different origin, including under the applicable copyright law.91
ND images, on a website? Can someone One determining differentiator between
include an ND text in an anthology com- collections and combinations is whether the
bining articles written by a number of individual works remain separate and
authors? Can someone exhibit an ND video distinguishable in the given context. If the
in an artistic video collection? Can some- work itself was modified, e.g. a text was
one combine several media, including ND curtailed or a song remixed, the ND restric-
sound recordings, in a multimedia installa- tion would apply in any case, since mashing
tion and sell them? up and remixing will usually involve such
All these questions can only be modifications. If a verbatim copy of the
answered on a case-by-case basis under work was, however, simply grouped with
consideration of the applicable law. The others, the result would in many cases be a
legal situation for Italian users can thus be collection rather than a combination, i.e.
different from the legal situation for Ger- there would be no adaptation.
man users. As the legal terms adaptation If verbatim copies of works were com-
or modification need to be interpreted, it bined to create a new comprehensive work
is very important to know the applicable with its own aesthetic expression, the new
(national) case law to assess the issue in work would also have to be considered
question. “adapted material.”
The distinction The definition of „adaptati- Here, the combined
between collections material would not be
and combinations of on“ varies from jurisdiction “grouped” but rather
works will most likely to jurisdiction. In general it “merged” resulting in
be an important factor the emergence of a
under every jurisdic- means the transformation of new and larger work
tion. In a collection, a work into another category which contains both,
e.g. an anthology or own and reused mate-
a catalogue, a number of work. rial. Examples for this
of works are simply would include the use
put together for publishing. The different of a copyright-protected image in a movie,
contents stand alone as separate and distin- the use of a copyright-protected cartoon
guishable works, so their identification and character in a video or the above-mentioned
the identification of each author are un- use of music tracks in moving images.
problematic. Hence, to include a work into In light of the above, it would seem
a collection will usually not be considered appropriate to adopt the following principle
an adaptation. as a general rule of thumb: Every time
On the other hand, combining works will existing material is merged into a larger
in many cases have the effect of “entwin- work which has a character of its own, the
ing” the individual works causing them to works are adapted in the terms of copyright
lose their individual expression. Depending and the CC ND restriction. The more the
on the technique, work combinations tend individual works are used “as-is” and
to display their own aesthetic expression “stand-alone,” i.e. they are only grouped,
which differs from the individual works the less likely their combination/collection
which were used. If this is the case, the will be considered as adapted material.
result will usually have to be considered as
50 3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme
Chart 2: What uses are allowed under ND licences?
Use Case Permitted under ND?
Mashup video No
Image or text in newspaper or journal Yes
Music remix No
Sampling No
Image or text on website, blog or social media posting Yes
Translation No
Music synching No
Screen adaptation (e.g. of a novel, music) No
Images in catalogue Yes
Article in text collection Yes
Image Collage Depends (generally No) 92
Parody Depends on the jurisdiction 93
“Kitchen-Video” with background music No
Documentary film integrating sound footage No
Following this distinction, it is possible to • If the reused work was merged with
make a relatively clear cut between adapta- other material into a new and larger
tions which are not permitted under ND, work, the answer would be “No.” This
and mere reproductions, which are. Some is the case when all the material is
typical constellations are explained in the mashed/mixed as to create a new and
chart above. larger work with an aesthetic expression
which replaces the independent expres-
Explanations: sion of the reused work(s).
• Most relevant for the answer is whether • If verbatim copies of ND material are
the reused work(s) remain separate and only grouped with other material (i.e. a
distinguishable in the given context, i.e. photo is framed by a text on a website)
whether they were modified or verbatim without being merged into a new work,
copies were used. the answer will generally be “Yes.”
• If the reused work itself was modified, • The creation of adaptations as such is
e.g. a text was shortened or a song re- not restricted by the ND clause, if the
mixed, the ND restriction would apply material is not published.
in any case. Therefore, the answer is
“No” (cannot be used under ND). By The classifications above only express the
contrast, in all cases marked “Yes” it is author’s personal understanding of the
presumed that the reused material itself distinction between adaptations and repro-
is used “as-is”. ductions. Some projects using ND licences
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 51
might offer their own explanations. If this is purposes, ND licences are more appropriate
the case, it is always recommended to follow than for others; the same applies for differ-
the guidelines of each particular project. ent types of publications.
Material with an informative purpose,
Advantages and Disadvantages of ND for example, can benefit greatly from the
licences possibility of modification. Modifications
can improve or update the information
Whether ND licences are the best licence contained therein or even iron-out mistakes.
choice depends very much on the particular A project such as Wikipedia, for instance,
situation. Reluctance to allow other people could not function under an ND-licence
to “tamper” with one’s creation is an regime. Educational resources need to be
understandable but rather subjective rea- modified and translated in order to make
son.94 Instead, it might be preferable to them useful in other parts of the world or
Open Educational base decisions on more objective aspects or for different target groups. Therefore, Open
Resources are teach-
at least to balance subjective and objective Educational Resources (OER) should not
ing and learning materi-
als released under free arguments. From an objective viewpoint, be published under ND licences. These
licences which allow for one might have to concede that if the considerations will also apply to many other
dissemination, modifica-
tion and re-use. licence does not permit modifications, the informative and/or educational works.
positive effect for the cultural commons Works, on the other hand, which serve
cannot be achieved. In fact, the ND licences only an aesthetic purpose (such as music or
share several drawbacks with the NC and movies) cannot be “improved” in the prop-
other restricted licences. First of all, as er sense. Whether they are good or not is in
already mentioned in the NC section, it is the eye of the beholder. However, if some-
pointless to opt for an ND licence if it is one would like to advocate or contribute to
impossible to enforce any potential viola- a cultural commons, an ND licence is not
tions of the restriction. Furthermore, one an appropriate option. CC itself refuses to
should consider the detrimental effect of grant the ND licences the status “Approved
the legal uncertainties which come with for Free Culture!” ND material can neither
licence restrictions. Users who might have be remixed nor mashed nor otherwise
wanted to use the content might be discour- changed. Anytime ND-licenced contents
aged by the vague ND are combined with others in whichever
If content cannot be modified restriction. Finally, way, the use will be characterised by legal
many of the generally uncertainty.
or adapted, the positive effect
beneficial effects of In some cases, although much less often
for the cultural commons is Open Content could not than most people would expect, it can be
be achieved with ND- reasonable or even necessary to protect the
limited. licenced content, as an integrity of the work with an ND licence.
individual agreement (a licence deal) would This is, for example, true for “certified
be needed in order to be able to merge the information” required for regulation which
material with other content. Otherwise it can or should not be modified by anybody
could not be improved, updated or trans- other than the certifying institution. This
lated; music could not be remixed or sam- includes, e.g. technical standards and other
pled, video sequences could not be mashed. norms, including legal norms.
Whether it is in their interest to prevent ND licences can also be used to support
creative uses or uses which might improve certain business models. It might, for exam-
their work, is for the licenser to decide. For ple, be possible for somebody to publish a
some types of works and some publishing generic version of textual information
52 3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme
which needs customising to be useful or In short, this means that the adaptor (who
applicable in particular cases. By using an publishes a modified version of the mate-
ND licence, the publisher reserves some rial) is bound to use the licence conditions
kind of exclusivity on customisation, chosen by the original licencer. The adaptor
whereas under a licence automatically is not allowed to further restrict the users’
permitting the publication of adaptations freedoms, may they result from more
others could be encouraged (and would restrictive licence conditions, from techni-
be allowed) to spread such customised cal restrictions or anything else. The sense
versions free of charge. of this “contagious freedom” is easily ex-
These examples show that objective plained: All manifestations and shapes of
factors suggesting the use of ND licences are a work should share the same freedoms.
rather rare. Of course, anyone is free to Within this reasoning, the rule does
decide that their work should not be modi- indeed make sense: Licences without SA
fied without individual permission. Such a enable others to “monopolise” the content.
decision should, however, be weighed against A record company could, e.g. take a music
the mentioned drawbacks of these licences. song which was published under CC BY,
remix it and market the result “unfree”
c) SA - ShareAlike (i.e. commercially or against royalties).
SA clauses prevent such “monopolisations”
Two CC licences contain the ShareAlike through their viral effect on modifications.
element. SA means that adapted material
can only be published under the original or When does the SA condition apply?
under a compatible licence. In CCPL4, the
SA clause (section 3b) states: SA applies to the publication of adapted
“In addition to the conditions in section material. Hence, the rule applies only
3(a), if You Share Adapted Material You when a) the material is adapted and b) it
produce, the following conditions also apply. is shared. SA does not oblige anybody to
share adapted material. On the contrary,
1. The Adapter’s License You apply must adapting the work and keeping it to oneself
be a Creative Commons license with the is perfectly legitimate.95
same License Elements, this version or
later, or a BY-SA Compatible License. What does SA mean? Which licence must I
use for the publication of adapted material?
2. You must include the text of, or the URI
or hyperlink to, the Adapter’s License There are three options to licence adapted
You apply. You may satisfy this condi- SA material, i.e. three options for the adap-
tion in any reasonable manner based on tor’s licence:96
the medium, means, and context in
which You Share Adapted Material. 1. The adapted material is shared under
the same CC SA licence as the original
3. You may not offer or impose any addi- (e.g. CC BY-SA 4.0 International) or any
tional or different terms or conditions later version of this licence (e.g. CC
on, or apply any Effective Technological BY-SA 5.0 International).
Measures to, Adapted Material that
restrict exercise of the rights granted 2. The adapted material is licenced under a
under the Adapter’s License You apply.” CC licence with the same elements as
the original licence. This applies espe-
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 53
cially to ported versions. A modified single licence (e.g. BY-SA). In this case,
picture which was initially licenced both the BY-SA licence and the BY-NC-SA
under CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported could licence stipulate: “You can share the
thus be shared under CC BY-SA 3.0 mashup (the adaptation) only under my
Germany. Again, later versions of such license terms.” Obviously, this is impossi-
ported version could be used as well. ble. The adaptor can only licence the
Under CCPL4, this second option might, mashup under either BY-SA or BY-NC-SA,
however, become obsolete, as no ported as both licences contain different and in the
versions of the licences are planned as end contradicting conditions. The BY-NC-
of today. SA licence prohibits commercial uses,
whereas the BY-SA licence permits them.
3. The adapted material is licenced under Hence, both licences are incompatible.
a CC BY-SA “compatible licence.” At The result is referred to as the “licence
present, this third option is obsolete. incompatibility problem.” A licence incom-
Compatible licences are referred to as patibility is a situation where the user can
licences which have been approved by comply with only one of two or more con-
CC (see section 1c of the legal code and flicting licence obligations. In other words:
97
the referring link in the clause). The The adaptor either violates one licence or
clause was already contained in the the other.
CCPL3 licences. However, as of today Licence incompatibilities are a big prob-
not a single licence has been approved. lem for free culture. Its central idea is to
create a pool of freely reusable content that
According to section 3.b.3 of the legal code, can be mixed, mashed up and otherwise
the adapter may not impose additional combined easily. Licence incompatibilities,
rules or further re- on the other hand, not
strictions on down- Licence incompatibilities only increase the legal
stream users. In other uncertainties of remix-
words, if an adaptor
are a problem for the usability ing, they also prohibit
used the initial licence of Open Content and free many potential uses.
(e.g. CC BY-SA 4.0) The dimension of
for their version, but culture. the licence compliance
restricted the rights problem is illustrated
in their general terms and conditions or by the fact that most of the CC licences
addenda to the CC licence, they would are incompatible with each other; resulting
violate the SA clause.98 in the undesirable effect that content with
differing licences cannot be combined.
Mixing SA material with Open Content The following chart99 shows that 32 out
under different licences – the licence of 64 possible ways to combine differently-
compatibility problem licenced CC works in a remix, mashup or
other larger work are not permitted.100
As explained above, SA requires adaptors The chart illustrates that the more re-
to re-licence their modified material under strictive the licence is, the less likely the
the same licence. Let us imagine an adaptor content can be mixed with others in a
mixes BY-SA, BY-NC and BY-NC-SA video larger work. The explanation is quite sim-
snippets to create a mashup: As the compo- ple: NC material can, for instance, not be
nents of the mashup are indistinguishable, mixed in a remix that will be published
the new work has to be licenced under one under a licence that allows for commercial
54 3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme
Chart 3: Possible combinations of CC content 101
use. Doing so would make the NC work obstacle to this core objective. Moreover,
commercially usable since it will form part they contradict the wish to make it legally
of the remix. SA material, on the other possible to use the outstanding technical
hand, can only be re-licenced under the possibilities to remix/mash up works.
same licence. SA works can therefore only As SA licences (like all restrictive
be combined with other content that is licences) amplify the problem of licence
published under a licence which allows for incompatibility, their use should be consid-
the re-licencing under any other licence. ered thoroughly. In general, the ShareAlike
The combination of CC BY-SA and CC BY principle is convincing: Open content
content could, for instance, be licenced should stay open in all its forms and itera-
under CC BY-SA because the BY licence tions.102 Overly permissive licences enable
allows that. the appropriation of Open Content by
pulling it out of the cultural commons.
Commentary on the licence compatibility On the other hand, permissive licences
problem in general and the SA licences in are much easier to handle. It might even be
particular argued that they provide more incentive
to use the content. In the end, the licenser
Despite the increasing efforts to solve the has to balance the different motivations: Is
compatibility problem one way or another, it more important to ensure the openness of
it is undeniable that little success has been the material (then CC BY-SA would be the
achieved so far. However, solving the com- appropriate licence) or to encourage as
patibility problem may be regarded as a key much interest in the use as possible (then
condition for the success of the whole sys- CC BY should be used)?
tem. A “creative commons” in the proper
meaning can only serve its own purpose
when the content contained can be (re-)used
creatively. Incompatible licences are an
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 55
Notes
1 The CC licencing model is explained here: article (footnote 14, p. 6): “The goal of this international
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/?lang=en. porting project is to create a multilingual model of the
licencing suite that is legally enforceable in jurisdictions
2 Unless otherwise stated all references to CC licences around the world.”
refer to Version 4 (CCPL4). Regarding the different
licence versions, see: chapter 3.1. 16 The unported CC licences are not focused on a
particular jurisdiction, neither in linguistic nor in regula-
3 Usually the user will be asked to credit the author’s tive terms, i.e. they should not be confused with the
real name. If the licenced material refers, however, to a (national) USCC licences. According to section 8f
pseudonym or was published anonymously the user is CCPL3, the terminology of the unported licences is
requested to credit accordingly. based on international copyright treaties, like the Berne
Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic
4 See as to the details of the SA clause, see chapter 3.5 Works, the Rome Convention or the WIPO Copyright
section c. Treaty. See: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/
Version_3#Further_Internationalization.
5 The “adapter’s licence” is defined in section 1b of the
legal code. The term refers to the licence that a contribu- 17 Another problem with the application of US licences
tor uses to share their adapted version of the work. in Europe can be caused by moral rights regulations. In
some nations, like the US, they can be waived by contrac-
6 See also chapter 3.1, section b. tual agreement (e.g. by a licence). In other territories, for
instance in some continental European authors’ rights
7 See: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm. jurisdictions such as France or Germany, they cannot be
waived nor assigned to a third party and there are
8 For the text, see: http://creativecommons.org/ restrictions on licencing.
publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode.
18 Even when ported licence versions are used for
9 See for example: Kreutzer. 2011. Validity of the transnational licencing, a number of problems may arise,
Creative Commons Zero 1.0 Universal Public Domain especially in the field of private international law which
Dedication and its usability for bibliographic metadata designates the applicable law in such cases. These issues
from the perspective of German Copyright Law; cannot be elaborated upon in this guide. For further
http://pro.europeana.eu/c/document_library/get_ information see: Maracke. 2010. Creative Commons
file?uuid=29552022-0c9f-4b19-b6f3- International. The International License Project. JIPITEC,
84aef2c3d1de&groupId=10602. vol. 1, issue 1, recitals 33-38; https://www.jipitec.eu/
issues/jipitec-1-1-2010/2417 and Jaeger/Metzger.
10 See CC0 section 3 according to which the “affirmer” 2011. Open Source Software. 3rd edition. Beck, Munich.
(the person who uses CC0 for her work) “grants to each Recitals. 381-382 (in German).
affected person a royalty-free, non- transferable, non-
sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable and uncondi- 19 See: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_
tional license….” In short: The fall back licence permits Asked_Questions#What_if_CC_licenses_have_not_
any use whatsoever without conditions. been_ported_to_my_jurisdiction_.28country.29.3F.
However, as it is also stated, official translations of the
11 Regarding these questions, see: Kreutzer. 2011. international version will be provided.
Validity of the Creative Commons Zero 1.0 Universal
Public Domain Dedication and its usability for biblio- 20 Such a clause has the effect of allowing the licensee to
graphic metadata from the perspective of German decide whether they want to use the material under the
Copyright Law. p. 11 et seq.; pro.europeana.eu/c/ previous or the new licence version - after a new licence
document_library/get_file?uuid=29552022- version was published. As such, newly introduced licence
0c9f-4b19-b6f3-84aef2c3d1de&groupId=10602. versions can spread faster. Section 14 of the GNU
General Public Licence version 3 is an example for such
12 For more information on the Europeana Public a clause.
Domain Calculator, see: http://outofcopyright.eu.
21 It should also be noted that the international versions
13 See an overview at: creativecommons.org/version4. are available in many languages.
A more detailed comparison including references to the
different drafts of CCPL4 and the drafting process can 22 The international/unported licences do not contain a
be found here: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/4.0. choice of law rule. The clause that addressed this topic in
CCPL3 (section 8f of the legal code) was not included
14 For more information about the history of this process into CCPL4.
and the CC International approach, see: Maracke. 2010.
Creative Commons International. The International 23 The determination of the applicable law depends on
License Project. JIPITEC, vol. 1 , issue 1, p. 4-18; the rules of “private international law.“ These rules can
https://www.jipitec.eu/issues/jipitec-1-1-2010/2417. vary from country to country. Hence, without a choice of
law rule in the licence, it can occur that Canadian law
15 Catharina Maracke, former project lead of the CC determines a different applicable law than Spanish law
International Project, writes in the aforementioned for a licence that was concluded between a Canadian
56 3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme
rights owner and a Spanish user. The possible result is sortile Fonografici (SCF) vs. Marco Del Corso, para-
that the applicable law differs from one licenser-licensee graph 85; http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/
relationship to the other. document.jsf?text=&docid=120443&pageIndex=
0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=
24 Obviously, only users who read French can under- 1&cid=298306.
stand a French licence text. Furthermore, the national
licences generally use specific terms of the respective 33 According to the judgment of the ECJ, the patients of
jurisdiction. Their interpretation can be challenging even a dentist are not a large group that qualifies for that
for foreign lawyers who are native speakers (e.g. Franco- criterion. See: ECJ Case C-135/10 - Società Consortile
Canadian lawyers who have to apply French law). Fonografici (SCF) vs. Marco Del Corso, paragraph 84;
http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/
25 E.g. in a case where a Russian user (licensee) uses the document.jsf?text=&docid=120443&pageIndex=
article of a Brazilian author in their blog. 0&doclang=EN &mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=
1&cid=298306.
26 The rule is not easy to detect. It can be found in
section 2.a.5.B of the legal code, which reads: “Addi- 34 However, in the dentist’s case the ECJ did not assume
tional offer from the Licensor – Adapted Material. Every that the succession of patients ultimately form a public
recipient of Adapted Material from You automatically group. See: http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/
receives an offer from the Licensor to exercise the document.jsf?text=&docid=120443&pageIndex=
Licensed Rights in the Adapted Material under the 0&doclang=EN &mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=
conditions of the Adapter’s License You apply.” 1&cid=298306.
See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
legalcode. 35 In an ECJ case, the court held that a dentist practice
would not increase its income by playing radio programs
27 This is true at least as long as the adapter complies in the office. See: ECJ Case C-135/10 - Società Con-
with the ShareAlike rule and chooses a legitimate adapt- sortile Fonografici (SCF) vs. Marco Del Corso, para-
er’s licence. However if that were not the case, because, graph 88; http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/
e.g. the adapter used a BY-SA-NC for a modification of a document.jsf?text=&docid=120443&pageIndex=
work that was initially licenced under BY-SA, they would 0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=
violate the licence obligations. The effect would be that 1&cid=298306.
the licence for their version of the work was null and void In another case it maintained, however, that for a hotel
because of the automatic termination clause until the owner the reception of TV programs by guests had an
infringement was cured. See: chapter 3.4, section i. economical impact on the business. See: ECJ case
C-306/05, Sociedad General de Autores y Editores de
28 Of course, adapters can and have to licence their España (SGAE) vs. Rafael Hoteles SA, paragraph 44;
versions of the work themselves. http://curia.europa.eu/juris/showPdf.jsf?text=&docid=
66355&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=
29 However, the NC restriction is also relevant for &occ=first&part=1&cid=300896.
in-house uses. According to section 2.a.1.A of the CC NC
licences’ legal code, “reproduction” is permitted by these 36 E.g., if somebody listens to a radio sitting in a park,
licences only for non-commercial uses, i.e. the NC licence they do not intend to entertain the passers-by – ergo
feature restricts not only uses that are directed to the there is no public use.
public but also internal uses.
37 See: ECJ, Case C-466/12, Nils Svensson et al vs.
30 See the following section for the interpretation of the Retriever Sverige AB, paragraph 24;
term “public.” http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/
document.jsf?docid=147847&doclang=EN.
31 E.g. sharing via password-protected servers that are
available only to certain users is perfectly compliant with 38 The ECJ also held in this decision that it was irrelevant
the SA provision. See the FAQ: if “the work appears in such a way as to give the impres-
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_ sion that it is appearing on the site on which that link is
Questions#Can_I_share_CC-licensed_material_on_ found, whereas in fact that work comes from another
password-protected_sites.3F. site.” This could mean that embedding content e.g. in
YouTube videos, is not making available under copyright
32 See: ECJ Case C-135/10 - Società Consortile law and requires therefore no authorisation of the rights
Fonografici (SCF) vs. Marco Del Corso, paragraph 85; owner.
(http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/
document.jsf?text=&docid=120443&pageIndex= 39 The distinction between commercial and non-com-
0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&c mercial uses only becomes relevant with regard to CC
id=298306) Here, the ECJ maintained interalia that the NC licences, see chapter 3.5 section a. It is a common
patients of a dentist practice were not “persons in misunderstanding that copyright distinguishes between
general” but formed a rather private, non-open group. commercial and non-commercial uses. The most essen-
Hence, “private groups” are not only friends and family tial borderline is rather drawn between public and
but can also consist of persons without a personal non-public uses.
relationship. See: ECJ Case C-135/10 - Società Con-
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 57
40 This is true at least from the copyright perspective. sui_generis_database_rights.2C_how_do_I_comply_
See: Jaeger/Metzger. 2011. Open Source Software. with_the_license.3F.
3rd edition. Beck, Munich. Paragraph 46 (in German);
Meeker. 2012. The Gift that Keeps on Giving – Distribu- 51 In general, section 2.a.6 of the legal code explicitly
tion and Copyleft in Open Source Software Licenses. prohibits the insinuation of a relationship to the licenser
International Free and Open Source Software Law (“no endorsement”). The clause reads: “Nothing in this
Review Vol. 4, Issue 1, p. 32. Public License constitutes or may be construed as
permission to assert or imply that You are, or that Your
41 Section 3.a.2 of the legal code states: “You may use of the Licensed Material is, connected with, or
satisfy the conditions in section 3(a)(1) in any reasonable sponsored, endorsed, or granted official status by, the
manner based on the medium, means, and context in Licensor or others designated to receive attribution as
which You Share the Licensed Material. For example, it provided in section 3(a)(1)(A)(i).”
may be reasonable to satisfy the conditions by providing a
URI or hyperlink to a resource that includes the required 52 See section 4d CCPL3 Germany: https://
information.” For details see the CC FAQ: creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/de/legalcode.
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_
Questions#Can_I_insist_on_the_exact_placement_of_ 53 The licence text, section 2.b.1 of the legal code,
the_attribution_credit.3F and states: “Moral rights, such as the right of integrity, are not
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_ licensed under this Public Licence, nor are publicity,
Questions#How_do_I_properly_attribute_material_ privacy, and/or other similar personality rights; however,
offered_under_a_Creative_Commons_license.3F. to the extent possible, the Licensor waives and/or agrees
not to assert any such rights held by the Licensor to the
42 See: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_ limited extent necessary to allow You to exercise the
Asked_Questions#How_do_I_properly_attribute_ Licensed Rights, but not otherwise.”
material_offered_under_a_Creative_Commons_license.3F.
54 This rule, however, does not apply to trademark or
43 See: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Marking/ patent rights. They are addressed in a different clause,
Users. Another informative source is a guide on how to which was explained in chapter 3.4 section e.
attribute CC licenced material, provided by CC Australia:
http://creativecommons.org.au/content/ 55 For regimes that do not allow waivers of moral rights
attributingccmaterials.pdf. the clause provides a fallback option in the form of a
non-assertion pledge, i.e. the licenser does not waive the
44 See: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_ rights but agrees not to assert them.
Asked_Questions#How_do_I_properly_attribute_
material_offered_under_a_Creative_Commons_license.3F. 56 Such questions are especially relevant for content
published under licences that allow modifications.
45 See: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/ However, they can also be fundamental for uses of
images/6/6f/Making_BY-NC_ (comparison).pdf. verbatim copies. The integrity right not only protects
against modifications that distort the work, it can also
46 See: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/ (depending on the applicable law) prohibit uses of the
LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:31996L0009:EN:HTML. original version in contexts that could harm the author’s
reputation, including political campaigns.
47 According to the German CCPL3 licences the
licenser waives all database rights (see section 3 of the 57 See “Deliberately giving up control” in chapter 2.3,
legal code, last sentence). The effect of such a waiver is section c.
that the licenser gives up the ownership in the database.
Thus, all involved database rights cease to exist and no 58 To what extent the user is liable and what claims they
licence can be granted anymore (no rights, no licencing). might face depends on the applicable law.
48 In the CC wiki, one can find further information about 59 For that reason, many CCPL3 ports for EU Member
marking works with CC licences in different use- cases. States contained adapted liability disclaimers to conform
See for details: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/ to the national regulation.
Marking_your_work_with_a_CC_license.
60 See: Directive 2001/29/EC, Art. 6.
49 That means, on the other hand, if somebody used a
CC licenced database in a jurisdiction where the applica- 61 The respective clause in CCPL3 that contained this
ble law did not provide for database rights, the user would provision was deleted in CCPL4. Section 7.a CCPL3
not be bound by the licence obligations since CC does states: “Individuals or entities who have received Adapta-
not create rights that are not granted by the applicable tions or Collections from You under this License, how-
law. If no IPRs were granted, the CC licence would not be ever, will not have their licenses terminated provided such
applicable. See: section 2.a.2 of the legal code. individuals or entities remain in full compliance with
those licenses.” From a legal perspective this is self-
50 Further details are explained at: evident, so the deletion of this clause should make no
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_ difference from a legal perspective. See: http://
Questions#If_my_use_of_a_database_is_restricted_by_ creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode.
58 3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme
62 See the explanation in the FAQ: interpretation of the dichotomy between commercial
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_ and non-commercial, their significance is very limited.
Questions#How_can_I_lose_my_rights_under_a_
Creative_Commons_license.3F_If_that_happens.2C_ 74 A German lawsuit recently revealed how unpredict-
how_do_I_get_them_back.3F. able the outcome of legal disputes about these questions
can be. A German district court decided that a (non-
63 For reference, see footnote 62. commercial) public broadcaster, who had used a photo
on its website that was published on Flickr under NC
64 A recent study about the dissemination of different acted commercially. That the broadcaster’s website was
CC licences in certain contexts showed e.g. that nearly provided free-of-charge and displayed no ads, that the
70% of all images published under a public licence on broadcaster was financed through an obligatory public
Flickr were published under an NC licence (see: licence fee (German: “Rundfunkbeitrag”) and other facts
http://cc.d-64.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/ that would oppose the notion of a commercial use, were
CC_in_zahlen_infografik2.pdf). An analysis of the deemed irrelevant. See for more details: http://
Directory of Open Access Journals (also contained in this www.irights.info/webschau/creative-commons-
study) revealed that 45% of the articles were licenced as landgericht-koeln-sieht-deutschlandradio-als-
non-commercial, although 52,5 % were licenced under kommerziellen-nutzer/22162 and the verdict:
CC BY. http://www.lhr-law.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/
geschwärztes-Urteil-LG-Köln-2.pdf (both in German).
65 That is highlighted by the fact that the NC licences, A short commentary in English can be found at: https://
as well as the ND variants, do not exhibit the “Approved www.techdirt.com/articles/20140326/11405526695/
for Free Culture Works” logo on their licence deeds. german-court-says-creative-commons-non-
commercial-licenses-must-be-purely-personal-use.shtml.
66 See “Advantages and Disadvantages of NC licences”
in chapter 3.5, section a. 75 The licence text suggests that the NC clause relates
first and foremost to the particular use case, whereas the
67 For advantages, and especially disadvantages of NC general classification of the user (as for-profit or not-for-
licences see: Klimpel. 2013. Free knowledge thanks to profit) is a minor or even irrelevant factor. However, to
Creative Commons Licenses – Why a non-commercial ignore the user-related factor would, in my opinion,
clause often won’t serve your needs, negate the view of licensers and licensees. For most
https://www.wikimedia.de/w/images.homepage/1/15/ people’s notion of commercial/non-commercial uses it
CC-NC_Leitfaden_2013_engl.pdf. will make a significant difference whether the user is e.g.
a company or a public institution. The results of the
68 See: http://de.creativecommons.org/2013/11/25/ aforementioned CC NC study support this assumption
version-4-0-ist-da/ (in German). (see: “Advantages and Disadvantages of NC licences”
in chapter 3.4, section i).
69 See section 1.d. of the legal code: https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode. 76 The combination of both factors shows that, accord-
ing to CC, the NC restriction shall at least not only be
70 Obviously, it makes a huge difference if any use that is interpreted from a user-related perspective. The CC FAQ
“directed towards commercial advantage” is considered state: “Please note that CC’s definition does not turn on
commercial or only those, which are “primarily directed the type of user: if you are a non-profit or charitable
towards…” If the former were true, even very remote organization, your use of an NC-licensed work could still
commercial advantages would suffice to suggest a run afoul of the NC restriction, and if you are a for-profit
commercial use. In the latter case, however, the commer- entity, your use of an NC-licensed work does not neces-
cial purpose had to be a main objective. sarily mean you have violated the term. Whether a use is
commercial will depend on the specifics of the situation
71 See the blogpost on the CC website (including links and the intentions of the user.” See:
to all material): http://wiki.creativecommons.org/ https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_
Defining_Noncommercial. Questions#Does_my_use_violate_the_NonCommercial_
clause_of_the_licenses.3F.
72 From a legal perspective, the findings of the study can
be, very cautiously, used for a basic risk assessment. If it 77 Counter examples would be, e.g. a public museum
turned out in a broad survey that many creators did not printing a CC BY-NC photo on a postcard that is sold.
consider a certain use commercial, there is some prob- In that case the use would be commercial although the
ability that other licensers will share that opinion. Obvi- institution itself is a non-profit organisation. Whereas, if
ously there is no guarantee that this applies to the a company funded a foundation that conducted a project
particular case or that the argument stands up in court. to foster the public health system and used an CC BY-NC
photo for the invitation to a conference (which was open
73 The survey reflects only the perception of certain to the public and free-of-charge) the use would be
groups of licensers and licensees. Only US creators and non-commercial.
users were interviewed. In addition, the questions related
solely to online content. Unfortunately it does not 78 If the company mentioned in footnote 77 would itself
consider the applicable law either. Hence, the findings organise the conference, there would be a strong indica-
might reveal interesting facts. However, for the legal tor that it served at least remotely its business interests,
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 59
i.e. that the use was at least “directed towards commer- 85 See in detail: Klimpel. 2013. Free knowledge thanks
cial advantage.” to Creative Commons Licenses – Why a non-commercial
clause often won’t serve your needs, p.12; https://www.
79 For example, if an employee of a company copies wikimedia.de/w/images.homepage/1/15/CC-NC_Leit-
articles that are licenced under CC NC for her col- faden_2013_engl.pdf.
leagues or customers of the company, the use is commer-
cial, since she only uses the material to fulfil her 86 See, for instance, the explanation at: http://en.
job-related duties. wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft#Viral_licensing.
80 See chapter 3.4, section b: The CC licences do not 87 See section 1.a. of the legal code: https://
apply for uses that are permitted by law. Hence, the creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode.
licence would not restrict any uses that are legitimate
according to limitations or exceptions under the applica- 88 The meaning of the term “sharing” is explained in
ble law. chapter 3.4, section b.
81 See e.g. the FAQ of the MIT OCP under: 89 See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-
http://ocw.mit.edu/terms/#noncomm. The MIT notion nd/4.0/legalcode.
of the NC clause is partly more restrictive and partly
more liberal than my general interpretation. 90 See also the FAQ: “What constitutes an adaptation
depends on applicable law, however translating a work
82 Since the interpretation, if any, of the licenser is a from one language to another or creating a film version of
relevant indicator for the interpretation of the licence, a novel are generally considered adaptations. In order for
from the mere legal standpoint it is recommended to an adaptation to be protected by copyright, most national
follow it. Apart from that, I think that also a moral per- laws require the creator of the adaptation to add original
spective suggests that the view of anybody, who voluntar- expression to the pre-existing work. However, there is no
ily dedicates their creative efforts to the commons, international standard for originality, and the definition
should be respected. differs depending on the jurisdiction. Civil law jurisdic-
tions (such as Germany and France) tend to require that
83 An example: A printed book is directed at a different the work contain an imprint of the adapter’s personality.
audience than an online publication. It is marketed Common law jurisdictions (such as the U.S. or Canada),
through very peculiar distribution channels that are on the other hand, tend to have a lower threshold for
hardly accessible for “outsiders.” If a publisher adopted originality, requiring only a minimal level of creativity and
an eBook that was published online free of charge, the 'independent conception.' Some countries approach
author would in most cases benefit from that. Even if the originality completely differently. For example, Brazil’s
publisher decided not to share any profits, the author copyright code protects all works of the mind that do not
would still benefit from the increased attention and fall within the list of works that are expressly defined in
potential rise in popularity. the statue as 'unprotected works.' Consult your jurisdic-
tion’s copyright law for more information.” See: https://
84 It is worth mentioning, however, that a dual licencing wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_
strategy will not help to differentiate between copies of Questions#What_is_an_adaptation.3F.
the work in different qualities. The approach is compara-
tively widespread as a business model: Image files in 91 Again: The CC licence restrictions, such as ND, do no
low-resolution or low-quality music files are freely shared prohibit what is legitimate under the applicable law. In
under NC or other Open Content licences with the some jurisdictions, remixes and mashups can be pub-
intention and belief that the rights in high quality versions lished without consent of the copyright owners. This is
of the material are effectively reserved and can therefore especially true for the US, where these acts can be legal
be exploited commercially. This strategy is based on a under the fair use doctrine. However, in present Euro-
wrong legal assumption. The Open Content licence pean copyright law no such rule exists. It is therefore
applies to the work and not to the copy of the work. The unlikely that mashups or remixes are subject to copyright
work is the photo as the author’s individual creative limitations in one of the member states. However, every
achievement. That means that if low-quality copies are copyright jurisdiction limits the protection of pre-existing
shared under an Open Content licence, the licence material against its use for the creation of new material to
applies also to high-quality copies of the same work. If a some extent. Under German law, e.g. a creator of a new
user gets hold of a high-resolution copy, they can share it work can be inspired by existing works. Defining the
under the terms of the Open Content licence. Some borderline between modifications that are subject to
protection of the business model can be reached by copyright and “free uses” which are not is therefore
making high-resolution copies accessible on sites with considerably difficult.
limited access and pay walls only. However, this cannot
prevent that possessors of high-resolution copies to share 92 Whether the collage is allowed under ND depends on
them under the Open Content Licence. CC acknowledges the technique applied. If the images are merely grouped
this fact, see: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Fre- together, it is most likely not considered as an adaptation.
quently_Asked_Questions#Can_I_apply_a_CC_ If they are, however, merged into a new work with an
license_to_low-resolution_copies_of_a_licensed_work_ aesthetic expression of its own, it will most probably be
and_reserve_more_rights_in_high-resolution_copies.3F. regarded as an adaptation.
60 3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme
93 Parodies of works will often require adaptation. 102 In fact, SA licences can efficiently protect certain
However, many jurisdictions provide a statutory excep- kinds of projects, e.g. Wikipedia, from appropriation or
tion for parodies. In that case the ND restriction would misuse. Wikipedia articles are licenced under CC BY-SA.
not be effective. The licence ensures that the articles stay open, even after
they were extended, updated or improved. The use of
94 It should be noted again that the widespread appre- BY-SA in Wikipedia is an aspect to be generally consid-
hension that the original creator is associated with ered in one’s own licencing decision. Content under
modified versions of her work made by third parties is incompatible licences cannot be combined with articles
unfounded. As already mentioned, the licence requires from Wikipedia, which is currently the largest resource
anybody who shares adapted versions of the work to for open knowledge in the world.
indicate that fact.
95 In relation to this argument, see section E.1.b.
96 The adaptor’s licence is defined in section 1b of the
legal code as “the license You apply to Your Copyright
and Similar Rights in Your contributions to Adapted
Material in accordance with the terms and conditions of
this Public License.”
97 See: http://creativecommons.org/compatiblelicenses.
98 For example, an adapted version could be made
available on a website that obliges every user in its
general terms and conditions to report every use or to
resist from certain ways of redistribution. For further
information, see: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/
Frequently_Asked_Questions#What_if_I_have_
received_CC-licensed_material_with_additional_
restrictions.3F
99 See: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/5/5b/
CC_License_Compatibility_Chart.png. For more
information on CC0, see: https://creativecommons.org/
publicdomain/zero/1.0/.
100 Combinations in terms of the chart are such that
qualify for adaptations according to the CC licences, see:
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_
Questions#Can_I_combine_material_under_different_
Creative_Commons_licenses_in_my_work.3F. Under this
assumption, ND material is always x-ed because it cannot
be modified (i.e. not even combined with public domain
material). However, also ND works can be combined with
otherwise licenced material if the combination is not
considered an adaptation (see for the details, chapter 3.5,
section b). In general, licence compliance issues arise
only in larger works (remixes, mashups, etc.). Mere
aggregations (collections) of material are not considered
an adaptation. Hence all works can be licenced under
their own terms without conflicts unless the works were
aggregated on a platform (such as Wikipedia) where
according to the platform policy all content has to be
published under the same licence.
101 CC explains the chart as follows: “The chart below
shows which CC-licenced material can be remixed. To
use the chart, find a licence on the left column and on the
top right row. If there is a check mark in the box where
that row and column intersect, then the works can be
remixed. If there is an “X” in the box, then the works may
not be remixed unless an exception or limitation applies.”
https://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_
Asked_Questions#Can_I_combine_material_under_
different_Creative_Commons_licenses_in_my_work.3F.
3. The Creative Commons licencing scheme 61
62 4. Practical Guidelines: Using Creative Commons licences
4. Practical Guidelines:
Using Creative
Commons licences
This picture of Pilea involucrata, the friendship
plant, was one of the finalists in the competition
“Picture of the Year 2012” which takes place
annually on Wikimedia Commons, the biggest
online media archive for Open Content.
4. Practical Guidelines: Using Creative Commons licences 63
4.1 Choosing the are actually in the licenser’s interest and/or
“right” licence even actually permitted by the licence (e.g.
in cases where interested users are put off
The selection of the licence is an essential by legal uncertainty).1
step in an Open Content strategy. Advan- This does not mean that one should
tages and disadvantages of the respective decide for CC BY, the most permissive
licence should be thoroughly balanced be- licence, in all cases. As already mentioned,
fore the material is licenced. The prevailing there can be good reasons to opt for a more
factor for the choice should be the individu- restrictive licence type. However, as these
al intention pursued with the licencing. One will generally also have disadvantages for
should ask oneself: Why do I licence my the licenser, it is recommended to carefully
work under the CC scheme? Which rights weigh up the advantages and disadvantag-
do I want to reserve and why? es. This is all the more relevant for broad
The potential motivations behind such Open Content publication strategies of, for
a decision are manifold. However, in many instance, companies or public institutions.
cases the licence selection is based on
intuition: “I do not want anybody to make 4.2 Generating
money with my work, so I use an NC
license.” – “It should not be possible for a the licence
publisher to adopt the publications of our
foundation and generate profit with it.” – Attaching a CC licence to a work is very
“I will not have anybody tampering with simple. The first step consists in going to
my creative work, so I use an ND license.” the CC website which contains a “licence
All of these arguments can often be heard chooser.”2 To choose a CCPL4 licence, two
in numerous variations. They are, although questions need to be answered in order to
perfectly understandable from a psycholog- determine the licence elements (ND, SA,
ical standpoint, not a good basis for select- NC). After that, the licence chooser dis-
ing restrictive licences. plays the respective licence and the respec-
In the sections about the NC, ND and tive links to the licence text and the short
SA clauses, I emphasised that the licence explanation of the licence features (the CC
restrictions are always accompanied by the “Deed”). Moreover, an HTML snippet is
risk of legal uncertainty. They lead to com- automatically generated that can be inte-
plex legal questions and prevent uses that grated into the code of websites.3
64 4. Practical Guidelines: Using Creative Commons licences
Licence chooser 4
Choosing a licence
On the website of Crea-
tive Commons it is easy
to choose an open
licence according to
one’s needs.
4. Practical Guidelines: Using Creative Commons licences 65
The CC licences consist of three layers The ground layer is the “Legal Code,” i.e.
visualised in a graph on the CC website.5 the full text of the licence contract, written
in “legalese.” This layer is the main element
The three layers 6 from a legal perspective, although most
non-lawyers will never read it in detail.
The middle layer is the CC Deed, also
The three Layers known as the “Human Readable Version.”
of Creative Commons
licences as visualised on
The Deed is a short summary of the most
their website. relevant terms and conditions of the licence.
The Deed is not itself a licence in the legal
sense. It serves only as a handy tool which
makes the rules of the licence easily un-
derstandable. As CC puts it: “Think of the
Commons Deed as a user-friendly interface
to the Legal Code beneath, although the
Deed itself is not a licence, and its contents
are not part of the Legal Code itself.“
The upper layer is the “Machine Readable
Version of the Licence.” It is a code snippet
The legal code 7
The Legal Text of
the Creative Commons
licences is the main
element from a legal
perspective.
66 4. Practical Guidelines: Using Creative Commons licences
The deed 8
The Deed serves to
help users understand
the main criteria of the
respective licence.
which will be implemented into websites doms and obligations are summarised in a
enabling especially search engines to locate machine-readable language, the CC Rights
Open Content. In the code, the key free- Expression Language (CC REL).9
HTML-Snippets enable
search engines to find
freely licenced content
<a rel=”license” href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ on the Internet.
by/4.0/”><img alt=”Creative Commons License” style=”border-
width:0” src=”https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png”
/></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel=”license”
href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/”>Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>.
4. Practical Guidelines: Using Creative Commons licences 67
4.3 Attaching Creative be made. More in-depth information about
marking works with CC licences in different
Commons licences
contexts can be found in the CC Wiki. 11
to different works
Attaching the licence to web
How to best practically attach a CC licence content
to a particular work depends on the media
the material is published in. The basic Website providers use Open Content in
principle is simple: The licence should be different ways. In some cases, all of the
attached in a way which allows any poten- content on a website is licenced under the
tial user to recognise the work, or even an same licence. In this case, it might be sug-
entire publication (e.g. a website or a book) gested to implement a general licence
as being licenced under a particular CC notice, e.g. in the footer of each webpage.
licence. The licence notice is essential for The wording of this general notice is irrel-
the granting of usage rights: If the user is not evant. CC itself uses this notice: “Except
aware that a particular work can be used where otherwise noted, content on this site
under a CC licence, and, more importantly, is licensed under a Creative Commons
does not know the terms of the licence, Attribution 4.0 License.”
no rights would be granted and no licence The hyperlink leads the user to the
contract would be concluded. CC Deed of the CCPL4 BY licence. In the
CC does not specify how the licenser Deed, anyone can find another hyperlink to
should implement a licence in certain situ- the full licence text. In addition, it is recom-
ations. Please note that this question is not mended to provide the particular licence
the same as the question of how third party logo as a banner in order to attract the at-
content must be attributed.10 Where the tention to the licence notice. The full notice
licence notice should be located, depends on the CC webpages, for instance, looks
on the use-case. One rule of thumb applies like this:
in general: The licence notice should be as
evident as possible. The closer it is attached The licence notice 12
to the licenced work, the more likely it will
be found by the user.
The perfect way to apply a licence notice
for example to a photo used on a website is
Except where otherwise noted, content on
to include it in the caption. The least feasi-
this site is licensed under a Creative
ble solution would be to include the licence
Commons Attribution 4.0 International
notice in a central place, e.g. a subdomain
such as the “About” or “Terms of use” license.
pages. Most users would not find such hid-
den information and the licence would thus
not be effective.
In the following paragraphs some rec- It should be noted that it may be necessary
ommendations for typical use-cases will to apply different notices to some particular
68 4. Practical Guidelines: Using Creative Commons licences
material. If someone published a photo on tively, the full licence text could be included
their CC-licenced website which was CC- in the document or book as well.18 If the
licenced by a third party under a different entire publication was licenced under the
licence, this difference would have to be same licence, a central licence notice
highlighted. In that case, the other licence would be the best solution. In a book, e.g.
notice should be as closely attached to the the licence notice could be printed in the
material as possible in order to prevent the imprint or another prominent location.
assumption that the general licence notice Please note that the more hidden the notice,
also applied to the particular photo. In fact, the less likely it will be found and recog-
it would be appropriate to include the li- nised by a potential user, contrary to the
cence notice in the photo’s caption, together interest of the licenser.
with the attribution notices.13
This would also be an appropriate ap- Licence notices in videos, music, radio or
proach in cases where the website provider TV shows
published Open Content only occasionally
(rather than licencing all content on the site Giving adequate licence notices in non-
under the same public licence). textual publications can be tricky. Where
should the licence and attribution notices
Licence notices in digital documents or be included in a radio broadcast? Where to
books put such licences and notices in a video?
If such media was published online as well,
If a book or a PDF document contained a simple solution would be to implement
occasional copies of Open Content works the notices into their online source. If not,
(e.g. an occasional photo, text or graph), the notices would have to be implemented
the aforementioned approach would also be into the work itself. Due to the different
suitable. Ideally the notices (i.e. licence or, nature of e.g. video and radio broadcasts,
if third party material, attribution) would no general answer on how to do it can be
have to be attached directly to the respec- given. However, since the original author
tive copy, e.g. in a footnote or a caption. does not have to comply with licencing
In addition, the licence could be embedded obligations,19 there are a variety of possible
into a PDF file by applying the Extensible solutions.20 Again, the more prominent and
Metadata Platform (XMP).14 descriptive these solutions are, the more
Alternatively, it might be possible to likely they will be noticed by users.
centralise the notices in an annex, which
should be as descriptive as possible.15 If,
however, someone chose such a solution,
there would have to be an evident recipro-
cal connection between the centralised
reference register and the particular work.16
Moreover, the licence notices should include
at least a reference to the licence text,17
e.g. a hyperlink to the CC website. Alterna-
4. Practical Guidelines: Using Creative Commons licences 69
4.4 Finding Open e.g. “content that can be freely used and
Content online shared,” “content that can be freely used
and shared also for commercial purposes,”
Search engines are essential to finding etc. The Google Image Search features the
Open Content on the web. Google pro- same function.
vides a specific Open Content search func- Usually, users search for certain kinds
tion which can be found in the “advanced of content. In this case, the use of content
search” options. platforms might be more convenient than
The advanced search option allows us- the use of general search engines. There
ers to filter the search results according to are several platforms for images, videos or
usage rights. Several options can be chosen even music which allow searching specifi-
to limit the search results, these include, cally for Open Content.
Google: Advanced Search 21
70 4. Practical Guidelines: Using Creative Commons licences
A) Searching for Open Content
images
Flickr is the world’s largest photo communi-
ty. Millions of images are uploaded onto the
platform, many of which are licenced under
CC licences. To find them, the advanced
search offers a respective setting:
Flickr: Advanced Search 22
4. Practical Guidelines: Using Creative Commons licences 71
Another large image archive is the Wikimedia Commons Database. Most of the photos
contained therein are published under a public licence or even dedicated to the public
domain.
Wikimedia Commons 23
72 4. Practical Guidelines: Using Creative Commons licences
B) Searching for Open Content videos
The video platform Vimeo is particularly progressive in the field of Open Content. It ena-
bles the user of self-created content to choose a CC licence before uploading the video
content to the site. Moreover, if someone searches for certain content, there is a link called
“advanced filters” which contains an option to search for CC licenced content.
Vimeo Search 24
C) Searching for Open Content with the meta-search-function
of Creative Commons
The CC website features a special search function for Open Content of different types.
It allows a user to search on a number of platforms including YouTube, Jamendo (music),
SoundCloud (music) or Europeana (multiple kinds of works).
Creative Commons Search 25
4. Practical Guidelines: Using Creative Commons licences 73
Notes
1 See the remarks in chapter 3.5, section a, b, and c. 16 One should provide at least the page number, or, if
more than one third party work is used on the same page,
2 To open the licence chooser click the link “choose a further identifiers.
licence” on the homepage http://www.creativecommons.
org. The direct link can be found at: 17 Apart from the licence text location, the notice should
https://creativecommons.org/choose/. name the licence and its version. See the example from
the CC website in “Attaching the licence to web content”
3 For online publications it is highly recommended to in chapter 4.3.
copy and paste metatags into the site’s source code.
Proper meta-information is essential especially for search 18 Such a solution will, however, hardly be suitable if the
engines in order to interpret the licence information publication contains content from third parties that was
properly and thus create correct search results. released under a number of different licences
4 Source: Creative Commons, https://creativecommons. 19 For the argument see footnote 13.
org/choose/?lang=en.
20 For the issue of proper attribution in such media,
5 See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/?lang=en. see the CC publications about proper crediting at:
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Marking/Users or
6 Source: Creative Commons, https://creativecommons. http://creativecommons.org.au/content/
org/licenses/?lang=en. attributingccmaterials.pdf.
7 Source: Creative Commons, https://creativecommons. 21 Source: Google, http://www.google.com/
org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. advanced_search.
8 Source: Creative Commons, https://creativecommons. 22 Source: Flickr, https://www.flickr.com/search/
org/licenses/by/4.0/. advanced/.
9 Find more information about the embedding of licence 23 Source: Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.
concerning metadata of licences at: http://wiki. wikimedia.org.
creativecommons.org/XMP.
24 Source: Vimeo, https://vimeo.com.
10 The initial implementation of the licence is the
licenser’s task. The licenser is not the licensee, i.e. they 25 Source: Creative Commons,
themselves are not bound to the terms of the licence http://search.creativecommons.org.
they use for their content. The attribution issue, however,
addresses the licensees of other people’s work.
11 See: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/
Marking_your_work_with_a_CC _license.
12 Source: Creative Commons,
https://creativecommons.org/.
13 For the attribution requirements for the use of third
party material see chapter 3.1, section a.
14 See: http://wiki.creativecommons.org/XMP.
15 The chapter could, for instance, be titled:
„License notices for third party material.“
74 4. Practical Guidelines: Using Creative Commons licences
5. Final Remarks
Open Content licences have the great potential of making it possible to share copyright-
protected content with others in a legally feasible and transparent way. However, one
needs to be aware of potential pitfalls. This is true for both, the right holder and the user.
Not only to be legally compliant, but also in order to respect the rights of those who
share their creative efforts freely with others, every user should be aware of their duties
and obligations. On the other hand, those who would like to publish their content under a
public licence should take an informed decision about the licence they choose. The tenden-
cy to use restrictive licences, e.g. NonCommercial licences, is problematic for the free cul-
ture movement in general and can jeopardize the sharing of content, thereby most likely
undermining the right holder’s original objectives. It is therefore of utmost importance to
think carefully about which licence will best meet one’s own particular intentions.
5. Final Remarks 75
76 4. Practical Guidelines: Using Creative Commons licences
Subject index
The first cultural hackathon “Coding da Vinci”
took place in 2014. It brought together coders,
designers and cultural enthusiasts in order to
gain new insights into cultural heritage data.
This image of a scarab beetle is part of one of
these datasets, donated by the Museum for
Natural History Berlin.
4. Practical Guidelines: Using Creative Commons licences 77
A M
Adaptation: 23, 30 ff., 34 ff., 48 f., 52 ff. Mashup: 23, 49 ff., 52, 54 f.
All rights reserved: 9,12, 14 f. Modification: 8, 13 f., 16, 23, 30 f., 34 f., 40 f., 48 ff., 52 ff.
Attaching a licence: 68 f. Moral rights: 41 f.
Attribution: 28, 38 ff.
Authors’ rights: 12 ff., 16 ff., 19 ff., 22, 31 f., 41 f.
N
No Rights Reserved: cf. CC0
B NoDerivatives: 28, 48 ff., 51 ff.
Benefits of Open Content: 9, 13 ff., 22 f.
NonCommercial: 28, 43 ff., 46 ff.
Broad distribution: 8, 13 f., 22, 30, 35 f., 38, 47 f.
Non-commercial vs. commercial: 19 ff., 34 f., 43 ff., 46 ff.
C O
CC0: 31 f.
Obligations of users: 34 ff., 37 ff., 40, 43 ff.
CC BY: 29 f.
Open Educational Resources: 52
CC BY-NC: 30 f.
Open source software: 12 ff.
CC BY-NC-ND: 31
Ownership of rights: 18 f., 22, 31, 35
CC BY-NC-SA: 31
CC BY-ND: 30
CC BY-SA: 30 P
Centralised licensing scheme19 ff. Patents: 41
Choosing a licence: 64 Personal rights: 41 f.
Collection: 49 ff. Ported licenses: 32 ff.
Combination : 22 f., 30 f., 49 f., 54 f. Practical effects: 16 ff., 22 f.
Commercial vs. non-commercial: 19 ff., 34 f., 43 ff., 46 ff. Preconditions: 18 f.
Commons (digital, cultural): 8, 12 ff., 52, 55 Privacy: 41
Copyleft principle: 13, 23, 48 Public: 36 ff., 46
Copyright infringement: 18, 22 f., 42 f. Public domain: 9, 12, 22, 31 f.
Creative Commons: 12 f., 28 ff. Public domain mark: 32
Crediting (requirement): 38 f. Public domain tools: 31 f.
Private use: 36, 46
D
Database rights: 40 f.
Decentralised licensing scheme: 19 ff., 33 R
Deed: 64, 66 ff. Remix: 8, 13 f., 23, 49 ff., 54 f.
Disclaimer of warranties: 39, 42 f. Republication: 21 ff.
Royalties: 14, 17
E
Enforcement: 22, 47, 52 S
European Copyright Directives: 37 f., 43, 49 Search engines: 70
ShareAlike: 28, 53 ff.
Sharing: 36
F Some rights reserved: 9, 14 ff
Finding Open Content online: 70
Free software; 12 ff.
T
Technological Protection Measures: 43
G Termination of a license: 22, 43
Generating a license: 64 ff. Trademark rights: 41
Traditional copyright regulations : 8 f., 12 ff., 15 ff.
Translation: 13, 34, 49
I
Intellectual Property Rights: 9
U
Unported (generic) licenses: 32 ff.
L
Legal code: 66
Liability: 42 f. W
Licence chain: 18 ff, 35 Wikipedia: 19 ff., 30
Licence chooser: 64 ff.
Licence contract: 18 ff., 21 f.
Licence incompatibility: 22 f., 54 f.
Licence notice: 18, 29 f., 39, 68 f.
Licence violation: 22, 42 f., 47, 52
78 Subject Index
WIKIMEDIA
DEUTSCHLAND