Copyright and Creative Commons

Introduction to Creative Commons

From “HLF: Thinking about… Using digital technology in heritage projects”

A huge amount of our cultural heritage resides within institutions such as museums, galleries, libraries, archives, universities and similar organisations. Creative Commons (CC) and similar licences are increasingly being used to make such collections more visible and more useful. Creative Commons licences give the creators of digital outputs a greater degree of control over how they can be used, rather than ‘reserving all rights’.

There are six main Creative Commons licences, each of which includes the Attribution condition (all work must be attributed to its original creator). The licensor should specify the way in which that credit is given (e.g. to a group or to an individual). There are three ‘conditions’ that licensors can add:

• A Non-Commercial condition in the licence means that the licensee cannot use the work for commercial purposes (if not included commercial use is permitted).
• A Share Alike condition means that all derivative works must be released under the same licence as the original work. Licences without this clause permit derivative works to be released under different licences.
• A No Derivatives condition means that the licensee is forbidden from altering, transforming or building upon the work; otherwise this would be allowed. When the No Derivatives condition is in force, there can be no derivative works to which to apply the Share Alike condition, so the two are mutually exclusive.

Combinations of these conditions give six possible licences:

•  Attribution (CC BY)
• Attribution Share Alike (CC BY-SA)
•   Attribution No Derivatives (CC BY-ND)
•  Attribution Non-Commercial (CC BY-NC)
•  Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike (CC BY-NC-SA)
• Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)

For further information see the Creative Commons wiki:  wiki.creativecommons.org/Main_Page

How to mark your digital outputs with the Creative Commons licence:
Our Terms of Grant require you to ‘grant licences in respect of the Digital Outputs under the Creative Commons model licence Attribution Non-Commercial but not on other terms without our prior written consent’.

You do this by marking your digital outputs with the licence CC BY-NC unless we have agreed a different licence with you.
CC licenses should always be clearly cited and visible on your digital material as they let other people know what they can and can’t do with your outputs.

Creative Commons provides icons and text for marking:

•  web sites (HTML code);
• images;
• audio; and
• video

To mark your digital outputs:

• Step 1: read wiki.creativecommons.org/Before_Licensing
• Step 2: follow the Creative Commons Best Practices for Marking Content with CC Licenses: Creators at wiki.creativecommons.org/Marking/Creators

Seeking copyright p35
If your project requires you to digitise, copy and/or distribute anything to which someone else holds the copyright, it is essential that you contact the copyright holder directly for written permission or negotiate the purchase of an appropriate licence. If the material is low-risk (no problems are anticipated) initial contact can be done by phone or e-mail, but make sure that the content of each and every telephone call is confirmed by you in writing and every email is saved. Allow plenty of time for approval, as the process is usually fairly slow. An example of a letter/e- mail for obtaining copyright clearance is given in as Appendix 5.
For high risk material, such as commercially published photographs or music, you must opt for a more formal contract, rather than a brief letter or an email. If you believe you’ll be dealing with high risk materials, first seek assistance in the preparation of this formal detailed licence within your own organisation.

Addressing moral rights p35
Copyright isn’t the only intellectual property right: moral rights include the right to have a work attributed to the creator(s) or alternatively the right to have a work published anonymously or pseudonymously.
Let’s consider a scenario: as part of a community-based project you decide a mural should be painted and pay an artist to carry out the work. You prepare a short contract to make sure you (as commissioners) retained the right to copy the mural (for publicity purposes, for instance). Although you’d then become the copyright holders for the mural you wouldn’t be able to claim it as your creative work. There is a moral right for the artist to be recognised as creator and this right is retained by the artist. It is the artist who decides the nature of this attribution information but it usually consists of their name, a title and the year of creation.
It’s important to keep careful records of information such as this in order to make sure accurate attribution information can be presented and moral rights respected. In the example above, attribution information should accompany any images of the mural you publish (whether they are published online or in print).
If you’re planning a project which involves user generated content, many of the rights issues discussed here will also apply; remember to ask for the required permissions for files to be shared and used and gather adequate information for a contributor to receive correct attribution.
One of the commonest scenarios requiring moral rights to be addressed is the recording of a person’s voice or image. A ‘model release’ form (see Appendix 6) is a signed permission document which expresses the subject’s agreement to be recorded and that they are happy for that recording to be used in a specified way. There are other likely scenarios too, the National Biodiversity Network has a Model Data Collation licence (www.nbn.org.uk/Share- Data/Managing-Permissions/Model-Agreements/Data-Collation-Licence-Agreement.aspx), intended to formally authorise an individual or organisation to collate and pass on wildlife information captured and created by another individual or organisation. Within practical limits, the best course of action is to acquire and document any permissions relating to digital outputs which you suspect may one day be required.

From:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
Licence embed creator:
http://creativecommons.org/choose/

Attribution-NonCommercial
CC BY-NC

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

Embed code:

<a rel=”license” href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/”><img alt=”Creative Commons License” style=”border-width:0″ src=”http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc/4.0/88×31.png” /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel=”license” href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License</a>

(See below)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

CC BY-NC: Attribution-NonCommercial
This license lets anyone remix, tweak, and build upon this work for non-commercial projects, providing you acknowledge ‘Our Broomhall’ as the author.