Splat | WiseTome.com

Well, here is something that I promised myself I would write about in my other post about Copyrights. A copyright restricts the distribution of any work and also distribution of any modifications to such works.

There are other types of licenses, where one can release their works under public domain or other creative common licenses. These are done with the motive of increasing creativity, and general propagation of works among the mass.

As opposed to copyrighted works, one can release their works (be it literature, art, music or other works) under the public domain license. It is a kind of work which may be taken and redistributed, modified and/or derived upon by others and given back to the public. A similar theme is used by the softwares developed under the umbrella of ‘Copyleft‘.

The Copyright and the Public Domain licenses are at the opposite ends in terms of rights given to the creator of the work and others who intend to use it. Creative Commons is a set of licenses that provides a spectrum of option between these two. There are many parts in the Creative Commons set of licenses that may be used in combination with each other.

One of the main part is ‘Attribution Requirement License’. This states that whenever the work is redistributed or derived upon, one should always give credit to the creator. This part of the license may be used with other parts of Creative Commons licenses. And whenever it is used under those licenses, if the Attribution Requirement License is attached to the work, the user of such work must give credit to the original author. Giving an example, if I use a photograph by a photographer in my blog post, I should mention the photographer.

One may wish to provide the work they did nor non-commercial purposes. But if someone wants to use the work for commercial purposes then they need to ask for permission from the creator. (This would be the time when the creator would ask for a fee, or something in return). Non-commercial purposes include use of the work for educational and research purposes.

Most of the works that are given out under public domain may be modified upon. But in many cases, the creator of the work chooses not to let others modify their works and distribute it. In such case, the creator attaches a ‘No Derivative Works’ clause to the set of Creative Common Licenses he or she is attaching to the work. For example, if the photographer chooses to attach the ‘No Derivative Work’ clause to his photographs, then if I need to use it in my article but need to even crop it a bit, I would need to ask permission from the photographer first. I may however use the photograph without any modification and distribute my article without seeking permission from the photographer.

A creator of the work may choose any of the combination of the above three licenses. Additionally, if he or she wants people to use the work, and then redistribute (with or without modifications/derivatives) it with the same set of licenses as chosen for the work, then another clause called ‘Share Alike’ is attached along with the work.

So, if you are a creator of any kind of work, and want to make it available to it available to the public, but want to retain some rights - as in ‘Some Rights Reserved’ - then go ahead to the Creative Commons website and choose the combination you wish to get the deed for your work. Once a choice of the combination of clauses is made, the deed is made available in both human readable format and lawyer readable format.

Check out the human readable deed and lawyer readable deed for the rights I have for the articles I have here at Splat.