Creative Commons Licensing

 Thinking of issuing a Creative Commons license to your created material?  Creative Commons' free, easy-to-use copyright licenses provide a simple and standardized way to give your permission to share and use your creative work on conditions of your choice. 

• Check this simple Creative Commons license finder to determine what license is best for you.
• Contact OER Librarian Sarah Romeo at s.romeo@hvcc.edu for more details.

Remember the license may not be revoked.

Once you apply a CC license to your material, anyone who receives it may rely on that license for as long as the material is protected by copyright and similar rights, even if you later stop distributing it.

Make sure the material is appropriate for CC licensing.

CC licenses are appropriate for all types of content you want to share publicly, except software and hardware.

Specify precisely what it is you are licensing.

Any given work has multiple elements; e.g., text, images, music. Make sure to clearly mark or indicate in a notice which of those are covered by the license.

Make sure the material is subject to copyright or similar rights.

CC licenses are operative only where copyright, licensed database rights, or other rights closely related to copyright come into play.  CC licenses should not be applied to material in the public domain. 

Clear rights needed to use the material.

If the material includes rights held by others, make sure to get permission to sublicense those rights under the CC license. If you created the material in the scope of your employment or as a work-for-hire, you may not be the holder of the rights and may need to get permission before applying a CC license.

Indicate rights not covered by the license.

Prominently mark or indicate in a notice any rights held by third parties, such as publicity or trademark rights. This includes any content you used under exceptions or limitations to copyright, and any third party content used under another license (even if it is the same CC license as you applied).

Think about how you want the material to be used.

Consider what you hope to achieve by sharing your work when determining which of the six CC licenses to apply. For example, if you want it to appear in a Wikipedia article, it must be licensed using BY-SA or a compatible license.

Consider any obligations that may affect what type of license you apply.

Think about any obligations you have, such as licensing requirements from a funding source, employment agreement, or limitations on your ability to use a CC license imposed by a collecting society, that dictate which (if any) of the six CC licenses you can apply.

Creative Commons licenses provide a standardized way for authors and creators to grant the public permission to share and use their creative works. Creative Commons licenses mix and match the following elements:

	Attribution (BY) Give credit to the original author
	Share Alike (SA) Distribute derivative works under the same license
	Non-Commercial (NC) Only use the work for noncommercial purposes
	No Derivatives (ND) Only use verbatim copies of the work

Faculty Workshop Day Presentation, February 24, 2021.