Using CC Licenses and CC Licensed Works
23
Introduction
Combining and adapting CC licensed works is where things can get a little tricky. This lesson will give you the tools you need.
Learning Objectives
- Describe the basics of what it means to create an adaptation
- Explain the scope of the ShareAlike clause
- Explain the scope of the NoDerivatives clause
- Identify what license compatibility means and how to determine whether licenses are compatible
Big Question – Why it Matters
The great promise of Creative Commons licensing is that it increases the pool of content from which we can draw to create new works. To take advantage of this potential, you have to understand when and how you can incorporate and adapt CC licensed works. This requires careful attention to the particular CC licenses that apply, as well as a working understanding of the legal concept of adaptations as a matter of copyright.
Personal Reflection – Why it Matters to You
Have you ever wondered how to use CC licensed work created by someone else in something you are creating? Have you ever come across CC licensed work you wanted to reuse but were unsure about whether doing so would require you to apply a ShareAlike license to what you created?
Acquiring Essential Knowledge
Copying a CC licensed work and sharing it is pretty simple. Just make sure to provide attribution and refrain from using it for commercial purposes if it is licensed with one of the NonCommercial licenses.
But what if you are changing a CC licensed work or incorporating it into a new work? First, remember that if your use of someone else’s CC licensed work falls under an exception or limitation to copyright (like fair use or fair dealing), then you have no obligations under the CC license. If that is not the case, you need to rely on the CC license for permission to adapt the work. The threshold question then becomes, is what you are doing creating an adaptation?
Adaptation (or derivative work, as it is called in some parts of the world) is a term of art in copyright law. It means creating something new from a copyrighted work that is sufficiently original to itself be protected by copyright. This is not always easy to determine, though some bright lines do exist. Read this explanation on the CC site about what constitutes an adaptation. Some examples of adaptations include a film based on a novel or a translation of a book from one language into another.
Keep in mind that not all changes to a work result in the creation of an adaptation, such as spelling corrections. Also remember that to constitute an adaptation, the resulting work itself must be considered based on or derived from the original. This means that if you use a few lines from a poem to illustrate a poetry technique in an article you’re writing, your article is not an adaptation because your article is not derived from or based on the poem from which you took a few lines. However, if you rearranged the stanzas in the poem and added new lines,