CC logos and trademarks should always be downloaded from this page to ensure high quality. Downloads from other sites may not conform to our standards and may result in improper display or use of our protected logos and trademarks.
Follow the steps to select the appropriate license for your work. This site does not store any information.
Creative Commons search engine.
BOOK: Creative Commons for Educators and Librarians. This book is available in print at the ALA Store, or the CC BY licensed PDF can be downloaded here.
This video is Copyrighted ©BYUIndependantStudy. The video is linked (embedded) to the original YouTube channel so as not to violate copyright law or infringe on the rights of the creators.
Copyright is established in federal law and varies from country to country. In the U.S., copyright was written into the original constitution in 1787, wherein it was stated that copyright was established “to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries” (Article 1.8.8). Thus, at its foundation, copyright in the U.S. exists “to promote the progress of science and useful arts,” and authors are given control of their creative works for a specified period of time so that they can profit from them, thereby encouraging them to create more.
Copyright applies to any tangible or electronic creative work, such as a book, movie, video, song, lyrics, poem, picture, lesson plan, web page content, etc. Any creative work is copyrighted as soon as it is created.
Intangibles, such as ideas, concepts, and mathematical equations and works that lack originality cannot be copyrighted.
Since copyright applies as soon as a work is created, authors do not need to go through any process to copyright their works. They are copyrighted automatically.
However, proving that you hold the copyright on your creative work is another matter. For instance, say that you write a novel and lend the manuscript to your neighbor to proofread. What is to prevent your neighbor from claiming that the novel is her creative work and, therefore, claiming to hold its copyright?
To help in preventing and addressing copyright problems, the U.S. government allows copyright holders to register copyright with the U.S. copyright office. Thus, while an author does not need to do anything to copyright a work, they do need to go through a process if they would like to register the copyright of that work to safeguard against infringement.
The copyright symbol may be placed on a work to remind and inform users of its copyright status: ©. However, the copyright symbol is only a reminder. The absence of the symbol does not mean that the work is not copyrighted, and the presence of the symbol is not proof that the work is copyrighted (as will be discussed further in the case of public domain works).
By default, the author of a work holds the copyright on that work. The main exception to this rule would be if the author was being paid by someone else to create the work and the author had signed a contract stating that work created while on-the-job belongs to the employer—commonly known as “work for hire”. Contracts might also stipulate that this depends upon when and where the work was created (during standard work hours vs. after work hours or in the office vs. at home).
Some educator contracts state that creative works by an educator are owned by the educator, while others state that they are owned by the school or district. So, if you would like to know who holds the copyright of works you create as part of your job, you should check your teaching contract or contact your employer.
Copyright generally means that others cannot use copyrighted material without the permission of the author and that permissions are restrictive. For instance, downloading a bootleg version of a movie is a violation of copyright, because you did not purchase the copy from the copyright holder. Further, even if you do purchase the movie from the copyright holder, you can only use the movie in the ways that the copyright holder allows (e.g., for private home use, not for public use). Thus, by purchasing a copy of a work, you do not “own” that work in the sense that you are not free to do whatever you like with it. You must still abide by any copyright restrictions placed on the work, which might determine how and where you use the work, your ability to make copies of the work, and your ability to modify the work.
You can generally provide a web link to copyrighted material from your own materials without permission from the copyright holder. This is different from copying/pasting the copyright material into your own work, because it allows the copyright holder to maintain control of their content and to generate revenue through web traffic. The primary exception to this rule would be if you provided a link to materials that should not be publicly accessible and, therefore, allowed your users to bypass restrictions placed on the content by the copyright holder.
Copyright comes with a time limit. The purpose of this is that the U.S. government recognizes that copyright can only benefit the copyright holder for so long and that at some point copyright should expire. Currently, the U.S. copyright law states that copyright ends 70 years after the death of the author. Upon expiration, copyrighted materials move into the public domain.
Copyrighted materials may also lose their copyright status under other conditions. For instance, a copyright holder may relinquish the copyright status on their work, thereby allowing it to pass into the public domain.
Advancing technologies, ranging from the player piano to the internet, have always had unintended consequences for copyright law, and copyright law has always been slow to keep up with advancing technologies. Copyright law has changed over time, but as new technologies empower us to share and use copyrighted materials in new ways and at greater scale, copyright law gradually changes in response.
Copyright and Open LicensingLinks to an external site. by Royce Gibbons is licensed under CC BY 4.0
Copyright law varies from country to country, but in the US, public domain is a technical term referring to works that are not subject to copyright protection.
In general, there are three groups of works that are in the public domain:
Under the current US copyright law, any copyrighted work will automatically pass into the public domain 70 years after the death of the author. In general terms, this means that virtually all classics or materials older than 120 years or so are in the public domain. To determine if a specific work is in the public domain, however, you should find out when the author died and add 70 years in order to determine the date at which copyright expires. This time frame has gradually been lengthened in US history, so some works may still be in the public domain that were created less than 70 years ago.
For instance, the John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara movie McLintock! passed into the public domain in 1994.
Copyright can only be applied to specific types of works (e.g., books, movies, images) and cannot be applied to general knowledge. For this reason, you do not need to cite anyone when you state a fact (e.g., “Jupiter is a planet”).
Works may also be exempt from copyright if they are created under certain conditions of employment. The most common example of this is when US federal employees create works as part of their jobs (e.g., active duty servicemen and women in the armed forces). Works that these individuals create (e.g., photos taken) may be placed in the public domain by virtue of their employment.
Any author of a work may willingly choose to release that work into the public domain by simply labeling the work (e.g., “this work is in the public domain”). By doing so, the author gives anyone (e.g., individuals, corporations) the right to use their work for any purpose, without limitation or attribution.
Since they are not subject to copyright protection, public domain works may be used for anything and may even be included in derivative works and may be sold. There are no restrictions on how these works may be used, so citations are not generally needed. However, if you are using public domain content in your own work, it would be helpful for others to know what parts are public domain so that they know how they might also reuse and remix your content.
The terms “open” and “free” colloquially have many meanings. “Free” generally has two that may be best understood by referring to their Latin equivalents: gratis and libre. In the context of openly licensed materials or open educational resources (OER), gratis means that content and resources are provided at no cost. Libre means that you are free to do what you want with these resources.
As an example of this distinction, you may find a website with “free” videos or another teacher may give you a set of old textbooks for “free” (i.e. gratis), but you are not then able to do whatever you want with those videos and textbooks (i.e. not libre). Similarly, Facebook is a gratis service, because you do not pay a fee to use it, but it is not a libre service, because you do not have access to download, delete, or control your data within Facebook. This is an important distinction, because many gratis resources are not libre, and when we talk about openness, we mean both gratis and libre.
That is Gratis + Libre = Open.
Openness may mean different things to different people, but when we refer to openness in terms of open licensing, we mean openness that gives us freedom to do the five R’s:
Hilton III, J., Wiley, D., Stein, J., & Johnson, A. (2010). The four ‘R’s of openness and ALMS analysis: frameworks for open educational resources. Open Learning, 25(1), 37-44.
Sometimes authors of creative works who want to share them openly want to maintain some control over what others can do with their work. Open licenses have arisen as a means for openly sharing content while at the same time preserving desired rights to the author. Open licenses find a nice balance between the restrictions of copyright and the unfettered freedoms of public domain, making them a good option for anyone desiring to share their work with others.
Authors of creative works have the right to release those works under any license they choose (except in cases where they have signed over that right to a publisher, employer, etc.). The table below provides three examples of common open licenses.
| Name | Links |
|---|---|
| Creative Commons | |
| GNU General Public License (GNU-GPL) | |
| MIT License |
To help authors to release their works easily and in a manner that safeguards the rights that they care about, a number of template licenses have been created by Creative Commons. Many works found on the internet are licensed under one of these types of licenses, and in general, you do not need permission to use them in your work as long as you properly attribute (cite) them and abide by any additional requirements set forth in the license.
Creative Commons licenses come in a number of varieties. Two are merely restatements of Public Domain, while the rest provide the author of a work the ability to retain varying levels of control of how the work may be used. The most general Creative Commons license is the CC BY or Creative Commons Attribution license, which basically means that others are free to reuse, redistribute, revise, and remix the creation as long as they properly cite the author. More information about each license is provided in the following table.
| License Type | Brief Explanation |
|---|---|
| Public Domain – By Age | These works are not susceptible to copyright or their copyright has expired. |
| Public Domain – Released | These works are released to the public domain by their authors before the copyright has expired. |
| Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) | Others may reuse, redistribute, revise, and remix the creation as long as they cite you. |
| Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) | Others may reuse, redistribute, revise, and remix the creation as long as they cite you and share their creation under an identical license. |
| Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND) | Others may reuse and redistribute the creation as long as they cite you. They may not remix it or revise it. |
| Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) | Others may reuse, redistribute, revise, and remix the creation as long as they cite you, but they may not use your creation for commercial purposes. |
| Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) | Others may reuse, redistribute, revise, and remix the creation as long as they cite you and share their creation under an identical license. They may not use your creation for commercial purposes. |
| Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) | Others may reuse and redistribute the creation as long as they cite you. They may not remix it, revise it, or use it for commercial purposes. |
Best Practices for Attributing a Creative Commons Licensed Work.
If an instructor has written or created their own content, the instructor can select how they would like their materials to be licensed. If the instructor created OER materials with funding from a grant, the type of license the instructor uses may already be designated. For example, materials created with funding from the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office must be licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license. (See the CCCCO Board of Governor's Procedures and Standing Orders, section 318.) Similar conditions apply to work funded by other major funders of educational projects, such as the Gates, Ford, and Hewlett Foundations.
Creative Commons has created a License Chooser to help creators license their materials if a license hasn't been pre-designated through the content's funding.
Authors of a creative or academic work can release it under an open license or into the public domain. All they need to do is place the Creative Commons license on it or state that the work is in the public domain, and this allows others to know how they can use it. For example, by simply placing “CC BY 3.0” below a picture, anyone is given the right to use it for any purpose as long as they attribute the author.
For a more detailed walkthrough of how you should release your content, follow the steps provided in the table below.
| Step | Question | Yes | No |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Do you want to allow anyone anywhere to use the work however they want without giving you credit? | Public Domain | Go to Step 2 |
| 2 | Do you want to make sure that anyone who uses your work also shares their work in the same way? | Go to Step 3 | Go to Step 4 |
| 3 | Do you want to prevent others from profiting from your work? | CC BY-NC-SA | CC BY-SA |
| 4 | Do you want to prevent people from changing your work? | Go to Step 5 | CC BY |
| 5 | Do you want to prevent others from profiting from your work? | CC BY-NC-ND | CC BY-ND |
More details about the Creative Commons licenses may be found on the Creative Commons website.
To release work under an open license just place a statement somewhere in the work that states what license it is release under. Here are some examples:
Some additional resources that may be useful for exploring these issues include the following: