http://www.e-photon-one.org

Creative Commons Public Licences

by F. Neri

e-Photon/ONe+

WP-T Meeting

Summer School 2006

2

Copyright

• Copyright laws protect books, websites, blogs, photographs, films, videos, songs and other audio & visual materials

• Any usage of these creative works must normally be explicitly authorized by the copyright owner (“all rights reserved”)

• Creative Commons – www.creativecommons.org (“some rights reserved”): – no need for explicit request– clear legal framework– all rights preserved for copyright owner

3

Related terms

• Open Access: free (= no fees) access to (electronic) information

• Public Domain: no copyright (= no ownership to be honored); CC positions between the two extremes of Copyright and Public Domain

• Common goals with free software and open source movements: foster information sharing to generate new knowledge

4

Who is Creative Commons?• Creative Commons is a non-profit organization, founded in 2001 with the

support of the Center for the Public Domain. It is currently housed at offices in San Francisco.

• It is led by a Board of Directors that includes cyberlaw and intellectual property experts J. Boyle, M. Carroll, M. Shaffer Van Houweling, and L. Lessig, MIT computer science professor H. Abelson, lawyer-turned-documentary filmmaker-turned-cyberlaw expert E. Saltzman, renowned documentary filmmaker D. Guggenheim, noted Japanese entrepreneur J. Ito, and public domain web publisher E. Eldred.

• Creative Commons released in Dec. 2002 a set of copyright licenses free for public use. Taking inspiration in part from the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), Creative Commons has developed a Web application that helps people dedicate their creative works to the public domain – or retain their copyright while licensing them as free for certain uses, on certain conditions.

• Unlike the GNU GPL, Creative Commons licenses are not designed for software, but rather for other kinds of creative works: websites, scholarship, music, film, photography, literature, courseware, etc.

5

Creative Commons Public Licenses

AttributionAttribution (always) (always)

No Commercial UseNo Commercial Use

No Derivative No Derivative WorksWorks

Share AlikeShare Alike

Basic condition: copy and distribute freely the work, with recognition of the original author(s).CC licences are free and freely usable, and not exclusive: the author is free to enter into other revenue-generating licenses in relation to his work

6

Six Creative Commons Public Licenses

AttributionAttribution

Attribution-No Commercial Attribution-No Commercial UseUse

Attribution-No Commercial Attribution-No Commercial Use-Use- No Derivative No Derivative WorksWorks

Attribution-No Derivative Attribution-No Derivative WorksWorks

Attribution-Share AlikeAttribution-Share Alike

Attribution-No Commercial Attribution-No Commercial Use-Use- Share Alike Share Alike

Other CC licences were and can be created

7

How are CC licences expressed?

• Creative Commons licenses are expressed in three different formats: – the Commons Deed (human-readable code)– the Legal Code (lawyer-readable code)– the metadata (machine readable code)

• The Commons Deed is a summary of the key terms of the actual license (which is the Legal Code) – basically, what others can and cannot do with the work. Think of it as the user-friendly interface to the Legal Code beneath. This Deed itself has no legal value, and its contents do not appear in the actual license

• The Legal Code is the actual license; a document (in National languages) designed to be enforced in a court of law

8

How are CC licences expressed?

For e-Photon/ONe:English Legal Code

The Digital Code permits web searches of information according to the associated copyrights (already possible with Yahoo and Google)

9

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

10

Input material

• For our courseware, all used material (e.g., graphs, figures, block diagrams) must be owned by the author

• Otherwise, written permission must be obtained by the copyright owner (even if the author is the same)

• Grey area: out-of-prints, re-done figures, re-plotted graphs

11

Who owns the rights?

• Either individuals (e.g., Fabio Neri) or institutions (e.g., Politecnico di Torino), depending on local (national) rules, laws, employment contract, etc.

12

How to refer to CC in slides or texts?

• Explicit reference in the download page and in the cover pages or first slides, using a sentence like: “This work is licensed under the Creative Commons [insert description] License. To view a copy of this license, visit [insert url]; or send a letter to Creative Commons, 543 Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA."together with the Creative Commons logo "Some Rights Reserved" which can be found in http://creativecommons.org/policies

13

An MIT OpenCourseWare page

CC logo pointing to the chosen licence (Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5)

Pointer to the Legal Notice

14

Important examples of CC adoption

• OpenCourseWare project at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); all teaching material available under CC: http://ocw.mit.edu/

• Connexions project at Rice University; full e-learning offer under CC: http://cnx.org

• Public Library of Science; several medical journals in open access with growing impact factors: http://plos.org

• Other EC projects distribute courseware under CC; for example: Embedded WiSeNts (FP6 CA Project 004400)http://teachware.distlab.dk/information.html

15

Applications in other domains

• telecom manufacturers: Nokia• publishers: Penguin, Fayard, O’Reilley• music: Gilberto Gil, David Byrne, Wilco• fiction writers: Cory Doctorow, Wu Ming • broadcasters: PBS (USA), BBC (UK)

Often mixed business models are used, in which some creative works are free and shareble, and other are offered in more traditional ways

16

Trends

• National Institute of Health (NIIH): all papers in open access after a short period of timehttp://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7109062

• European Commission: recent recommendation to have all papers funded by EC research programs in open access:http://www.ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/pdf/ scientific-publication-study_en.pdf

• There is a trend to extend open access to all scientific publications funded by public money

• The scientific literature will be mainly distributed on-line and in open access; publication costs will be mainly paid by authors, not by users

17

More information

• CNET paper on CC: http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3000_7-6357305.html

• CC FAQ: http://creativecommons.org/faq

• Flash animation "Get Creative":http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/getcreative/

• Reading list: http://creativecommons.org/about/legal

• "Facts Sheet" on CC: http://www.own-it.org/assets/library/documents/ creative_commons_factsheet.pdf# search=%22Own-it%20FAQ%20Creative%20Commons%22