The goal of U.S. copyright law is to give you legal protection of your original creative work so you control who can profit from it and when. Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization created to provide creators of original works an easier way to give others permission to use their original creative work than U.S. copyright laws allow.
Many people and businesses create content that they want others to freely use in their own commercial and/or non-commercial work, including image, text, audio, and video works. Applying a Creative Commons license to their work makes the public aware of what the owner freely allows others to do with it—without having to obtain written permissions or formal license agreements from the owner.
Applying a Creative Commons License to Your Work
Let’s imagine that you create an e-book and you want others to be able to republish it in any way that they want as long as they attribute you as the owner. Just visit the Creative Commons website and pick the license that best matches your goals for your content. You can choose between six licenses:
Attribution
This license only requires attribution to the owner. Works with this license can be used in commercial or non-commercial new works.
Attribution Non-Commercial
This license is the same as the Attribution license but works cannot be used in new commercial works.
No Derivatives
This license does not allow the creation of any derivative works from the licensed work. Works with this license can be used in commercial or non-commercial new works.
No Derivatives Non-Commercial
This license is the same as the No Derivatives license but works cannot be used in new commercial works.
Share Alike
This license requires that the creator of the new work applies the same Creative Commons license to the new work that the owner of the original work used. Works with this license can be used in commercial or non-commercial new works.
Share Alike Non-Commercial
This license is the same as the Share Alike license but works cannot be used in new commercial works.
In our small business example, you’d simply include the Creative Commons Attribution license icon or language in your ebook, and you’re done. Others can use your ebook in their own blog posts, presentations, marketing materials, and so on as long as they attribute you as the source.
Sounds good, right? Not always.
What happens when you change your mind in the future and want to remove that Creative Commons license? What happens when you find someone else profiting from your e-book and you want to stop them?
There are problems looming in the future.
Using a Work with a Creative Commons License Published by Someone Else
Now, let’s imagine that you maintain a blog for your small business. You need to include images with your blog posts because all of the blogging experts and research studies show that blog posts with images perform better than blog posts without images.
You don’t have a budget for images, so you search on Flickr and choose images that have Creative Commons Attribution licenses applied to them that allow commercial use (because your small business blog is a commercial property). You follow the instructions on the Creative Commons website to appropriately attribute the image to its owner and identify the Creative Commons license. You assume you’ve done everything right and that you’ve followed all of the necessary rules so you won’t be accused of copyright infringement in the future.
Sounds good right? Not always.
What happens when you receive the Getty Images Demand Letter like so many other bloggers and small businesses have in the past several years? What happens when the real owner of the work (who is not the person who uploaded it to Flickr and applied a Creative Commons license to it) contacts you and demands compensation?
Again, there are problems that are very likely to arise in the future.
5 Expensive Problems with Creative Commons
Beware of these common problems to your small business when you apply a Creative Commons license to your own work or use a work with a Creative Commons license:
Creative Commons Licenses Offer No Legal Protection
Creative Commons offers no form of protection to the creator beyond what common law provides. Creative Commons licenses have no legal significance beyond the license itself.
Creative Commons Licenses are Irrevocable
According to the fine print on the Creative Commons website, Creative Commons licenses cannot be revoked once they’ve been applied to a work. If you use a Creative Commons license, make sure you’re not going to change your mind in the future about giving everyone open access to your work.
Creative Commons Licenses are Not Simple
Creative Commons licenses can be updated at any time, and those licenses are not simple. Each is pages long with a lot of legal language in them. Make sure you understand what you’re agreeing to before you apply a Creative Commons license to your work or use another person’s work with a Creative Commons license.
Creative Commons Won’t Help You if You Have Problems
The Creative Commons organization absolves itself of any problems you might encounter with one of its licenses in the future within its terms saying, “Creative Commons gives no warranties regarding its licenses … disclaims all liability for damages resulting from their use to the fullest extent possible … is not a party to its public licenses.” If something goes wrong, you’re on your own.
The Creative Commons License on Someone Else’s Work Might Not Be Valid
A big problem with Creative Commons licenses is the fact that anyone can apply them to any work. For example, many of the Creative Commons licensed images on Flickr, Google, and sites that aggregate images weren’t uploaded by the owners of the images. The Creative Commons licenses applied by the people who uploaded the images (but don’t own them) are completely invalid! If you use one of these improperly licensed images, you very well might get caught and find yourself on the losing end of an expensive copyright infringement lawsuit.
The Takeaway
The good news is that Creative Commons is a great option for bridging the gap between copyright law and open access and sharing of creative works, but it’s far from perfect. The bad news is that Creative Commons gives you no legal protection, and it gives other people permission to use and profit from (depending on the license you choose) your creative work—the very things that copyright laws protect you from.
Be very careful both in applying Creative Commons licenses to your own work and using works created by others that have Creative Commons licenses. Things are not always as cut-and-dry as they might seem.
Image: Creative Commons
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