Degrees of Openness in Creative Commons Licenses

Imagine you're ready to take the plunge and start creating your own OER, such as an open textbook, online instructional video, or quiz bank. While you'll be thinking about issues such as how you want to design your OER and what tools you'll use in order to ensure your resource can be revised by others, you'll also want to start looking into what kind of open license makes the most sense for you.

Copyright and the topic of open licenses can sometimes make people want to bury their heads...


via GIPHY

But don't let these topics get you down! Instead, keep reading to learn about the various open license options that are available to OER creators.

Copyright and Creative Commons: What's the difference?
Traditional copyright allows creators to have all rights reserved for their creative works such as books, educational materials, or videos. However, by using a traditional copyright license or by not indicating what kind of license you're using, this keeps other educators from being empowered to reuse your content (and coincidentally keeps your resource from being a true OER).

That's where Creative Commons (CC) licenses come into play! CC licenses are tools you can use to clearly indicate that you have decided to keep some of your creator rights, but that you are providing others with clear permissions to re-use your work, remix it, or even create a commercial work with it (Creative Commons, n.d.-b).

Which CC License Works Best for Me?
Ultimately, that decision is up to you! But CC licenses operate on a sliding scale from the most open licenses to the least open licenses. Some of these licenses work a lot better for OER and help creators maintain the 5Rs.

The following image from the Creative Commons' website provides a great starting point for understanding the nuances of CC licenses:

Figure 1: By Creative Commons and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license

Now let's take a closer look at the strengths and weaknesses of each of the above CC licenses:

1) Creative Commons Zero (CC0)

• What does it do? CC0 is a way to license your work directly into the public domain. By licensing your work with CC0 it tells others that you have waived all of your creator rights. This means that other people don't have to provide attribution when they use your creation.
• Some Strengths of CC0: This license allows other educators to build upon your work in the freest way possible, as you waive all of your creator rights with this license.
• Some Weaknesses of CCO: By putting your work in the public domain, it's quite possible you will no longer be attributed as the creator for this work since you've waived all your creator rights.

2) Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY)

• What does it do? CC BY ensures that anyone who uses your work must provide attribution to you as the original creator. However, it doesn't place any other limitations on the use of the work.
• Some Strengths of CC BY: Similar to CC0, this license allows other educators to create derivative versions of your work, or just reuse pieces of it in their own work. However, they must still provide attribution to you.
• Some Weaknesses of CC BY: Your work could potentially be repurposed or remixed into a commercial work, since this license still allows other to reuse, remix, and create derivatives for commercial purposes.

3) Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike (CC BY-SA)

• What does it do? CC BY-SA also requires others to provide attribution to you as the creator, but if they create any derivative works, they must share their remixed work under the same license as yours.
• Some Strengths of CC BY-SA: Not only will you receive attribution for your work, you'll ensure that derivative works created with your content also use a similar license.
• Some Weaknesses of CC BY-SA: This license is somewhat restrictive because it requires creators that build upon your work to release their work with the same license.

4) Creative Commons Attribution NoDerivatives (CC BY-ND)

• What does it do? While the other licenses I just described are higher up on the openness scale, CC BY-ND starts to show how CC licenses can be quite restrictive. This license does not allow others to build on your work by remixing it; instead, they can use your work for free but are no longer allowed to create derivative works.
• Some Strengths of CC BY-ND: This license can be useful if it's important for your work to not have any derivatives in order to maintain the integrity of your work.
• Some Weaknesses of CC BY-ND: As you can see, this type of license doesn't facilitate the 5Rs, since individuals can't build on your work or remix it. So this license may not necessarily be the most useful license to select when creating an OER.

5) Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC)

• What does it do? This license is also more restrictive, as it requires any derivative works to be used in a non-commercial context.
• Some Strengths of CC BY-NC: If you feel that it is important to license your work so that it cannot be used in a commercial context, then this CC license helps achieve this purpose.
• Some Weaknesses of CC BY-NC: Because this license is restrictive, it limits the ability of others to create copies or remix your work for a context that could be deemed commercial.

6) Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)

• What does it do? Now we're starting to get to some of the most restrictive CC licenses! Individuals that create copies of works with this kind of license, must now provide attribution, make sure it's being used in a non-commercial way, and also ensure that any derivatives must be shared with the same license.
• Some Challenges of CC BY-NC-SA: Because this license is very restrictive, it does create some challenges for allowing your work to be used by another educator. It can also create challenges if another educator is trying to repurpose your work. For example, your CC license possibly clashes with other CC resources they're trying to use when creating a revised OER (Creative Commons, n.d.-c).

7) Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND)

• What does it do? This is probably the most restrictive CC license you can use, as it states that individuals must provide attribution and ensure that any copying of this work is done for non-commercial purposes and that no derivative works are created.
• Some Challenges of CC BY-NC-ND: Similar to CC BY-NC-SA, using this type of license will make it really tricky for other OER creators to repurpose your work for their course or educational context. This is probably not the best CC license to use for OER, as it is very limiting.

So now you know a little bit more about choosing a CC license that makes sense for your work! Hopefully you'll consider selecting a license that will allow for others in the OER community to reuse and repurpose your work with greater ease. And if you're planning on copying and reusing some CC content in your OER, I highly recommend watching this video which highlights the complexities of reusing various CC content:

If you're ready to put a CC license on your OER, use the Creative Commons' license selecting tool. It'll make things simple for you by providing you with text or code you can copy and paste to add it directly to your work!

References

Creative Commons. (n.d.-a). CCO "no rights reserved". Retrieved from https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/

Creative Commons. (n.d.-b). Licensing considerations. Retrieved from https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-considerations/

Creative Commons. (n.d.-c). Understanding free cultural works. Retrieved from https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/freeworks/

This blog post, authored by Stephanie Quail,

is  available under a CC BY 4.0 international license