Creative Commons

Share, remix and reuse educational content legally

Content on the read write web is increasingly being published, shared and made available for others to reuse under a Creative Commons (CC) licence. Creative Commons is a nonprofit organisation that provides free tools for authors, scientists, artists, and educators so that they can mark their work/content with the freedoms they want it to carry. By using CC authors are changing their copyright terms from “All Rights Reserved” to “Some Rights Reserved” and making it easier to share their work and for others to build upon it.  In essence it is allowing indviduals to share, remix and reuse content legally.

The presentation and video below are examples of CC content as well as providing helpful overviews of  what Creative Commons is.  The presentation has been shared on Slideshare and the video on YouTube, two sites where educational content is increasingly being shared for others to reuse.

There are different types of CC licence and they may be used in combination and have differing levels of restriction.  In summary these are

Attribution – The rights holder lets others copy, distribute, display, and perform their copyrighted work – and derivative works based upon it – but only if you give them credit.

Non-Commercial – The rights holder lets others copy, distribute, display, and perform their work – and derivative works based upon it – but for noncommercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works – The rights holder lets others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of their work, not derivative works based upon it.

Share Alike - The rights holder  allows others to distribute derivative works only under a licence identical to the licence that governs their work.