Anatomy of a CC License
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Introduction
Do you “speak CC” yet? This lesson covers the acronyms, terms, and symbols used in connection with Creative Commons’ tools, as well as some key things to know about how the licenses were designed.
Learning Objectives
- Differentiate meaning of different CC icons
- Identify three layers of CC licenses
Big Question – Why it Matters
Given that most of us are not lawyers, what do we need to know about the legalities in order to use the CC licenses properly?
Creative Commons’ legal tools were designed to be as accessible to everyone as possible while still being legally robust. CC’s founders made several design decisions that make these legal tools relatively easy to use and understand.
Exercises
Have you ever come across a CC licensed Flickr image that you really liked but were afraid to use because you weren’t sure of the legal terms and conditions? Have you ever been frustrated because you didn’t understand how to decide which of the CC legal tools to use for your own work?
Acquiring Essential Knowledge
Copyright operates by default under an “all rights reserved” approach. Creative Commons licenses function within copyright law, but they utilize a “some rights reserved” approach. While there are several different CC license options, all of them grant the public permission to use the works under certain standardized conditions. The licenses grant those permissions for as long as the underlying copyright lasts or until you violate the license terms. This is what we mean when we say CC licenses work on top of copyright, not instead of copyright.
The licenses were designed to be a free, voluntary solution for creators who want to grant the public up-front permissions to use their works. Although they are legally enforceable tools, they were designed in a way that was intended to make them accessible to non-lawyers.
The licenses are built using a three layer design.
image
- The legal code is the base layer. This contains the “lawyer-readable” terms and conditions that are legally enforceable in court. Take a minute and scan through the legal code of CC BY to see how it is structured. Can you find where the attribution requirements are listed?
- The commons deeds are the most well-known layer of the licenses. These are the web pages that lay out the key license terms in so-called “human-readable” terms. The deeds are not legally enforceable but instead summarize the legal code. Take some time to explore the deeds for CC BY and CC BY-NC-ND and identify how they differ. Can you find the links to the legal code from each deed?
- The final layer of the license design recognizes that software plays a critical role in the creation, copying, discovery, and distribution of works. In order to make it easy for websites and web services to know when a work is available under a Creative Commons license, we provide a “machine readable” version of the license—a summary of the key freedoms granted and obligations imposed written