Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and you can browse or search through content under each type of license. Here are some recently added bits and pieces: Attribution License. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike licenses are informed and inspired by the principles and lessons of the Free Software movement. Although certain Creative Commons licenses allow granting of relatively narrow freedoms, in this document we use Free and Libre in the sense used by the Free Software movement.

• Creative Commons Attribution-sharealike 4.0 License
• Creative Commons Attribution-sharealike License‎ - Wikipedia
• Creative Commons Attribution-sharealike Licence

One of the best ways to find usable copyrighted works, especially images, is to find someone who wants to share their work under a Creative Commons license. Since 2002, Creative Commons has been giving creators a way to share their work without having to relinquish copyright or individually license their work. These licenses have provided the public with the ability to use works under set circumstances without needing to pay for a license or pass along royalties.

Unfortunately, most people don’t know what all these little icons mean and how the licenses work. This has led to challenges for creators who find their work being used in ways not intended, as well as users who pluck out a work and use it only to find that the creator is unhappy and seeing a DMCA Takedown. Neither situation is ideal and is contrary to what the creators of the Creative Commons license program set out to do.

Many people who find works that are covered by one of the following license want to do right and not upset the original creator of the work. Few people purposefully ignore a license and just do whatever they wish. But what do the little icons mean? And once I understand the icons, are there certain rules I need to follow?

Key things to know:

• Every Creative Commons license requires givingappropriate credit. It’s important to understand this, and to also know what this phrase “appropriate credit” means.
• A Creative Commons licensor (the person granting you the license) may not revoke your license so long as you are following the terms of the license. This is often a sticking point because many do not provide credit as required.
• There are 6 Creative Commons license and they apply worldwide.
• The license, once granted, lasts as long as the copyright on the work so long as the license is used properly.

Note: These specifically reference Creative Commons 4.0, but the explanations also apply to prior versions.

Attribution Only– This one is likely the most straightforward of all the Creative Commons licenses because it’s the one they all build from. This license requires anyone who uses the copyrighted work to provide “appropriate credit” AND indicate what, if any, changes were made. In plain English, it means you have to give credit. According to the Creative Commons the credit must be in a certain way. Interesting that this is one of the most broad categories but most people actually get it wrong.

Creative Commons defines “appropriate credit” as (a) the name of the creator and attribution parties, (b) a copyright notice, (c) a license notice, (d) a disclaimer notice, and (e) a link to the material.

Once you understand that then you can do whatever else you wish with the work, regardless of whether it is for commercial, non-commercial, non-profit, educational, internal purposes at work, etc. Doesn’t matter how you use or distribute the work, give credit and say how you’ve changed the work and you’re good to go.

In reality, though, what I usually see is a “photo courtesy of” remark with a name. Sometimes the name is hyperlinked to the original work, but not always. And, to be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a use where the user indicated what changes they made.

Bottom Line: every CC license user needs to get better at giving credit!

Attribution, ShareAlike – This license is often confusing to many people. It carries with it all the same flexibility as the Attribution Only license but it brings along with it the rights YOU have to give to YOUR new work. In plain English, this license means that once you complete your changes to the underlying work then your new work, when shared, carries with it the exact same license and you can not prohibit others from changing or sharing your work. This license is the foundation for the idea of open-source works where various people “improve” upon others work. It’s like hitting the ‘Save’ instead of the ‘Save As’ button.

Attribution, No Derivatives – This license is kind of the opposite of what you can do with the Attribution Only license. You have to give credit, or used in the Creative Commons license “appropriate credit”, but you can’t change the work in any way. Want to crop it? No. Lighten it up a bit? Nope. Make it black and white? Again, No. In plain English, this license means you can use the work for ANY – commercial, non-commercial, educational, work, gaming, or what have you – purpose, so long as you provide the license-required credit and not alter the work in any way.

Attribution, Non-Commercial – This license is a little trickier because there is no clear definition of what “commercial” means as far as Creative Commons licenses go and thus “non-commercial” is not as black and white as you may think. Under the Creative Commons license, “commercial” is defined as “primarily intended for commercial advantage or monetary gain”. When Creative Commons licenses were created we didn’t have the concept of social media sharing that we do now. The value placed on posting photos on social networks may be to gain a commercial advantage in the form of likes or pins or tweets, etc. It hasn’t been further defined from when the original understanding of commercial advantage had a decidedly different paradigm than it does now.

Of course, as with all Creative Commons licenses, with this one you must provide attribution, as defined by the license. However, you are able to add to, modify, change, etc., the underlying work so long as YOU are not doing it in a commercial way. THEN if you were to share or distribute the work you may only do so in a non-commercial manner. Put that in to plain English, please!

We’ve got a number of things going on here.

A – provide attribution
B – you changing the underlying work in a non-commercial way
C – you sharing the new work in a non-commercial way
D – licensing the new work

So let’s tackle these separately.

A – provide attribution. That’s easy enough, you’ve got this! (Note: see above)

B – you changing the underlying work in a non-commercial way. If you plan to make changes you can not do it in a commercial manner. Obviously, that means you can’t charge for your work. This is important if you’re a designer and need to create something for a client or if you work in-house and are modifying something for use within your own organization. Those are obvious “commercial” activities – getting paid for your work. While it would only be speculation, as there is no case law or commons commentary, as to whether “in kind” compensation would amount to “commercial” if you’re not normally in the business of charging or being paid for your work. But, for the most post, I don’t think this is the sticking point with this license, it’s the next part.

C – you sharing the new work in a non-commercial way. Obviously, you can’t put it up for sale or charge clients for this new work. But can you ask for donations but make it available whether or not someone gives? Can you include it on your website where you have ads, affiliate links, and/or other paid business relationships? Can you include it on your website if your website is basically an advertisement to hire you? These are all gray areas and if a problem arises you’d need to deal with it on an individual basis. The difficulty is that just because one creator may see a means of sharing as commercial doesn’t mean others necessarily do.

D – licensing your new work. You may attach any Creative Commons license you wish to the new work. This may seem crazy. You can’t sell your new work, but you can license it to someone else (for no money) and they can use it for either commercial or non-commercial purposes. That doesn’t sound right, does it? You can’t make money off the new work, but someone else can. But, yes, that’s exactly what this means.

Attribution, Non-Commercial, and Share Alike – Now that we’ve established the basics, this one starts to put them together. This one makes a change from the prior Attribution, Non-Commercial and adds on the Share Alike license.

Again, in plain English it’s the same as the prior license except when it comes to how YOU share the new work. The new work MUST be licensed in the same manner as the work you started with. So, since you started with an “Attribution, Non-Commercial” license you must license your new work in the same way. Whereas with the “Attribution, Non-Commercial” you can license your new work as either commercial or non-commercial, with this Share Alike license you may not provide a different license on your new work than you had on the underlying work. It’s that idea of fairness, really.

Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivatives – Basically, with this license all you’re able to do is share the work. Of course, you must provide “appropriate credit”, but you can not modify the work in any manner then distribute it even if the distribution is not for commercial gain. With this license, all you’re allowed to do is share it for free with other people and in doing so give credit to the original creator.

Added 2/15/14:

Public Domain (CC0) – I had a number of people ask me about public domain works. While that’s a separate discussion, I want you to know there is a Creative Commons designation (CC0 1.0 Universal) for works someone wants to place in the public domain. Since the assumption is all works are subject to copyright unless otherwise designated or known, if a creator wants to make their work available without any restrictions they can add what is called the “CC0” or “CCZero” designation. A work that carries this designation has “No Rights Reserved” and is free of copyright restrictions, and likely other restrictions (i.e., moral, publicity, and privacy rights). This is a very broad designation and it is clearly understood within the Creative Commons community that no work carries this designation unless it is explicitly marked as a CC0 work.

Thank you for reading all the way through this. I know it’s a lot, but I hope you now have a better understanding of what all these licenses mean. Does this help you better understand how to use Creative Commons work? Do you feel more confident that your work will be used as you intended?

You can use CC-licensed materials as long as you follow the license conditions. One condition of all CC licenses is attribution. Here are some good (and not so good) examples of attribution. Note: If you want to learn how to mark your own material with a CC license go here.

• 1Examples of attribution
• 2Title, Author, Source, License

Examples of attribution

Here is a photo. Following it are some examples of how people might attribute it.

This is an ideal attribution

Because:

Title? 'Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco'

Author? 'tvol' - linked to his profile page

Source? 'Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco' - linked to original Flickr page

License? 'CC BY 2.0' - linked to license deed

This is a pretty good attribution

Because:

Title? Title is not noted (it should be) but at least the source is linked.

Author? 'tvol'

Source? 'Photo' - linked to original Flickr page

License? 'CC BY' - linked to license deed

This is an incorrect attribution

Because:

Title? Title is not noted.

Author? Creative Commons is not the author of this photo.

Source? No link to original photo.

License? There is no mention of the license, much less a link to the license. 'Creative Commons' is an organization.

This is a good attribution for material you modified slightly

Because:

Title, Author, Source, and License are all noted

Modification? 'Desaturated from original'

This is a good attribution for material from which you created a derivative work

Because:

Original Title, Author, Source, and License are all noted

Derivative? 'This work, '90fied', is a derivative of...'

New author of the derivative work is also noted

Note: If you're at a point where you are licensing derivative works, go to Marking your work with a CC license.

This is a good attribution for material from multiple sources

Because:

Title? Specific works are named, eg. 'Box-and-whisker Plots'

Author? Different authors noted for the different works.

Source? Original materials are linked for each work

License? The different licenses (Creative Commons Attribution for Collaborative Statistics and Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike for the Khan Academy video) are spelled out and linked for each work

Lastly, it is clear which attribution belongs to which work.

You can visit the Saylor.org Introduction to Statistics course page to see how they marked it up directly.

Title, Author, Source, License

A good rule of thumb is to use the acronym TASL, which stands for Title, Author, Source, License.

Title - What is the name of the material?

If a title was provided for the material, include it. Sometimes a title is not provided; in that case, don't worry about it.

Author - Who owns the material?

Name the author or authors of the material in question. Sometimes, the licensor may want you to give credit to some other entity, like a company or pseudonym. In rare cases, the licensor may not want to be attributed at all. In all of these cases, just do what they request.

Source - Where can I find it?

Since you somehow accessed the material, you know where to find it. Provide the source of the material so others can, too. Since we live in the age of the Internet, this is usually a URL or hyperlink where the material resides.

License - How can I use it?

You are obviously using the material for free thanks to the CC license, so make note of it. Don't just say the material is Creative Commons, because that says nothing about how the material can actually be used. Remember that there are six different CC licenses; which one is the material under? Name and provide a link to it, eg. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ for CC BY.

→ If the licensor included a license notice with more information, include that as well.

Lastly, is there anything else I should know before I use it?

When you accessed the material originally did it come with any copyright notices; a notice that refers to the disclaimer of warranties; or a notice of previous modifications? (That was a mouthful!) Because that kind of legal mumbo jumbo is actually pretty important to potential users of the material. So best practice is to just retain all of that stuff by copying and pasting such notices into your attribution. Don't make it anymore complicated than it is -- just pass on any info you think is important.

→ Regarding modifications: Don't forget to note if you modified the work yourself (example). If you are at the point where you are creating and licensing derivative works (example), see Marking your work with a CC license.

These best practices are based on actual CC license requirements. Noting the title is a requirement of all CC licenses version 3.0 or earlier, optional for 4.0. Noting the author, source, license, and retaining any extra notices is a requirement of all CC licenses. See Devil in the details.

Devil in the details

If you have any doubts or questions, you can read the complete attribution requirements which are spelled out in detail in the legal code of every CC license, eg. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode#s3a. This chart compares the detailed requirements across all versions of CC licenses.

Don't make it too complicated

The license tells you to be reasonable:

You may satisfy the conditions in (1) and (2) above in any reasonable manner based on the medium, means and context in which the Licensed Material is used. For example, it may be reasonable to satisfy some or all of the conditions by retaining a copyright notice, or by providing a URI or hyperlink associated with the Licensed Material, if the copyright notice or webpage includes some or all of the required information.

There is no one right way; just make sure your attribution is reasonable and suited to the medium you're working with. That being said, you still have to include attribution requirements somehow, even if it's just a link to an About page that has that info. (More on different mediums below.)

Attribution in specific media

As stated above, best practices for attribution apply as reasonable to the medium you're working with. For media such as offline materials, video, audio, and images, consider:

1. Publishing a web page with attribution information. For example, on a webpage featuring your audio recording, provide a credit list of material you used that adheres to best practices above. Doing so allows not only your material, but the materials you attribute, to be found by search engines and other web discovery tools. If possible within the medium, make the Author, Source, and License links the user can follow.

Creative Commons Attribution-sharealike 4.0 License

2. Mentioning the credits within the media itself. For example, crediting videos can be a simple list of the materials used with their associated licenses in a screen at the end of a video. For audio, it can be a verbal recitation of credits at the end of the recording.

If you want to get Technical

If you really want to go there, we have a document about marking materials so that they are machine-readable.

Also, several groups are exploring ways to make attribution easier and simultaneously machine-readable for the web. Here are some tools that have been developed:

• Open Attribute - a browser plugin for Firefox and Chrome that grabs the CC license metadata on a web page and turns it into an attribution for you
• Commons Machinery - a suite of plugins for Firefox and open office tools that enables copying and pasting images with the attribution info already attached

Other guides to attribution

Creative Commons Attribution-sharealike License‎ - Wikipedia

• How To Attribute CC Photos poster by foter
• Attributing Creative Commons Material (pdf) - Creative Commons Australia's publication is full of examples with colorful imagery.
• How to attribute works you reuse under a Creative Commons license by New Media Rights provides real world examples by different media type
• Library Resources Fox Valley Technical College provides examples of suggested OER attribution and citations. They recommend the following TASL format: “Content Title” from Encompassing Container Title, Version, by Author © Copyright date [Alternate owner if different from Author] is licensed with License [URL of license description]. Access at DOI or permalink or URL. Additional Publisher notes or licensing requirements.

Creative Commons Attribution-sharealike Licence