How to Choose a Creative Commons License

Understand how the Creative Commons (CC) license affects your copyright. Most people think that by using the CC license, they are giving away their copyright, and that they will not be able to sell the work anymore. This is not true. When you use a CC license, you are allowing others to use your work under specific conditions, but you are still the copyright holder. ^[1]

• Assuming you have a photograph that you license under CC-BY-NC, it essentially means that people can use it as long as they acknowledge you in some way or another, and only for other purposes. non-commercial purposes (see more detailed description in the following steps). A non-commercial blogger uses it on their homepage. Then some companies approach you with the desire to use the photograph in one of their brochures, and they are willing to pay you so that they can use it. Having licensed photos taken under CC does not prevent you from doing so.
  • Do you have any obligation to tell that company that you have licensed the work under CC? You should make it clear how your copyright works in all your works; it will reduce the risk and help everyone who wants to use your work to do the right thing.
  • Are companies less likely to want to use CC-licensed work? This will depend on what the company wants to use the photograph for; if you have restricted commercial use (for profit), then the company probably doesn’t want to use it.

Please understand your commitment. Once you apply a CC license to your work, you can always change it. But, if someone used your work under the terms before you changed it, you can’t “reverse it”. Let’s go back to that snapshot example. If you change the license to “all rights reserved”, then no one can use your photos under CC terms from that point forward. But bloggers who already use it can continue to use the image, as they obtained it while the old CC license was still in effect. Furthermore, if they have licensed the image under CC (which may be required if you use a Share-Alike license) others can still use the image under the terms that account. ^[2]

Specify how you want to be credited. All Creative Commons licenses require that users of your work credit you in some way, although some older licenses don’t. You can specify exactly how you want to be credited. Which of your identities should they use? Your username (Your username)? Your name? Your full name? For example, you could say, “Please credit Mply Simonson as the creator of this piece.”

Know why you might want to use a Creative Commons license as opposed to retaining all rights. Reasons to prioritize using copyright of creative commons include:

• Ability to provide clear descriptions of the rights of author(s) and users
• Capable of coming up with proven licensing formulas
• Ability to fine-tune the degree of license recognition
• The ability (for others) to find your content with most search engines, as they endorse your license; and
• If you choose such a license, you can be sure that your name is mentioned and that all material based on your work will be published under the same (share-alike) terms.

Let’s look at the options. Each license variant has its own terms and conditions. They include:

• Do you want permission to modify your work? This means that others can correct, actualize, improve, and adapt the content. This modifiability can help ensure that content is used longer and more often because people don’t feel restricted in using and editing the work.
  • If you decide to allow modifications, you can choose the “share alike” option. This implies, that any modifications must be published under the same license. Please understand that it is very difficult for other content creators to reuse “share-alike” content if they want to mix open content with a different license.
• Do you want to allow others to copy, distribute, display, and perform your work – and derivative works based on it – for non-commercial purposes only? It is implied that others will not be allowed to use the work for any commercial purpose. This can affect even those who teach in public schools or universities. This is also good if you think a publisher might be interested, and you want such agencies to ask for permission to use it in a book or other format they want to sell.
• Do you want your name included in each copy or modified version of that content? If you decide on the “attribution claim”, this can make a good marketing tool.
• Would you like to allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license that is “identical” to the license that governs your work? This implies that the work must have a “share-alike” condition.
• Do you want others to copy, distribute, display, and perform only original copies of your work, without derivative works based on it? There are no implied changes to use the no-derivative condition.