n.a type of license, built on copyright, that provides a standardized way for creators to give others the right to share and use their workHirtle, Hudson, and Kenyon 2009, 149Creative Commons is founded on the idea that some copyright owners may not want to exercise all of the intellectual property rights available to them under the law because they want others to know about or build upon their work, because they wish to contribute to an “intellectual commons,” or because they believe that Creative Commons licenses can help attract commercial interest in their work. Creative Commons seeks to promote the creative reuse of intellectual works with a minimum of transactional effort, thereby facilitating the distribution of content online and making access to that material easier and cheaper. A Creative Commons license sits somewhere between “all rights reserved” and the public domain, where no rights are reserved; as their graphic notes, in Creative Commons licensed materials, “some rights are reserved.”Nimer 2009, 323When asked about their preferences for dealing with copyright, most participants (78.8%) indicated that they would prefer to retain copyright in their work or make it available using a Creative Commons license, rather than cede their rights to the publisher (11.9%).Cobourn et al. 2022, 595To help address these student needs, the scholarly communications librarian provided class instruction and a research guide about copyright law and licensing, particularly as they are relevant to this project; intellectual property more broadly; and practical techniques for identifying digital images that are in the public domain or free to use under Creative Commons licensing.Creative Commons 2023Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law. From the reuser’s perspective, the presence of a Creative Commons license on a copyrighted work answers the question, “What can I do with this work?” ¶ The Creative Commons License Options ¶ There are six different license types . . .
Notes
The Creative Commons license was developed by Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that provides free legal tools to enable sharing and use of creativity and knowledge.SAA uses a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 3.0 United States license for articles published in American Archivist. This means the articles can be copied and redistributed in any medium or format and built upon, so long as attribution is given and the material is not used for commercial purposes.
