Creative Commons

by Emily A. Moore

 

Creative Commons Introduction Historical Background  Copyright: A Founding Principle of Capitalism The History of Copyright Protection Copyright Basics The Problem with Copyright Creative Commons' Approach How Legal Copyright Protection Works How Creative Commons Licenses Affect Legal Copyright Protection Who Can Benefit from Creative Commons Licensing Relevance to Education Free Content for Students Free Content for Educators (coming soon) The cautionary note Glossary of Terms Start-up Costs Free access How to get started Key players, gurus, and experts Sample Lesson Plans Tutorial

 

Creative Commons (Creative Commons, 2008) is a tax-exempt charitable corporation that offers the creators of intellectual works free, internationally-recognized licensing symbols they can use to advertise their intent to relinquish rights to a specific work.  Creative Commons does not affect copyright law, and it does not offer additional protections for copyrighted works; rather, it makes consuming those works easier.

 

Note: A concise PowerPoint presentation on Creative Commons and how it can be used in education can be found here:   creative_commons.ppt

 

Introduction

 

Anything that saves students and educators valuable time—without shortchanging the learning process—is worth investigating.  And for all its drawbacks, Creative Commons can save students and educators a substantial amount of time.

 

•  Students save time finding legally usable multimedia content for assignments such as research papers, class presentations, and art projects.  Content retrieved from Creative Commons’ directories is clearly labeled with respect to copyright, which means students can get what they want quickly—without having to spend time tracking down copyright owners, without resorting to plagiarism, and without opening themselves (or their educational institutions) up to copyright lawsuits.
• Educators will save time by being able to locate peer-rated, freely available learning materials and curricula online. The launch of Creative Commons’ ccLearn (ccLearn, 2008) later this year promises both to make teaching pick-up courses easier, and to offer a reality check for educators interested in finding out how a particular subject is being taught in different classrooms, and in different areas of the world.

 

Historical Background 

 

Copyright: A Founding Principle of Capitalism

 

One of the founding principles of capitalism is that individuals are guaranteed the right of ownership and control over the works they create (Capitalism, 2008.)

 

This concept is fairly intuitive for physical works. For example, most people understand that a pastry chef owns the cakes he bakes, or that a carpenter owns the chairs he builds, or that a seamstress owns the dresses she sews. Under U.S. law, the rights to these works may only be transferred at the discretion of the creator. A pastry chef who decides to go to work in a restaurant, for example, may exchange the rights to his products for a salary.

 

Theoretically, the same rights of ownership and control rights are enjoyed by people who create original intellectual works—once these works exist in fixed, tangible form.

 

Imagine, for example, that a songwriter has a terrific idea for a song. Her idea is not protected by law, because it does not yet exist in any objective, recognizable form. The minute she writes it down, however, the written form immediately becomes eligible for copyright protection. If a recording artist chooses to record (or otherwise use) her song, he must ask the songwriter's permission and, at her discretion, pay her for the privilege. Subsequently, the recording artist’s recording—being an original, tangible work—also becomes copyrightable, this time by the recording artist who created it. If, a year later, a venue such as a nightclub chooses to play that recording for its patrons, the venue must contact the recording copyright holder and, at his discretion, pay for the privilege. In each instance, copyright confers on the creator of the original work, and the creators of the contributory works are compensated for their contribution (just as a restaurant owner buying cakes pays a bakery owner, who in turn paid a grocer for flour and eggs).

 

The History of Copyright Protection

 

Copyright protection as we know it today didn’t become an issue until the advent of the printing press in the late fifteenth century. Until then, the rights of intellectual property owners were organically protected: in the absence of audio, video, and digital reproduction technology, copying a manuscript by hand was a laborious task that only a very educated few were capable of performing.

 

In England in 1710, the Statute of Anne (Adler, 2007) provided the precursor to U.S. copyright law by establishing the principles of authors’ ownership of copyright and a fixed term of protection for copyrighted works.

 

In 1790, copyright protection found its way into the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 8): “the Congress shall have power … to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”

 

Copyright Basics

 

Most countries recognize some form of copyright protection. Current U.S. copyright law, for example: 

 

1. Protects intellectual works such as literary, musical, dramatic, choreographic, graphic, pictorial, sculptural, audiovisual, and architectural works (U.S. Copyright Office, 2008 Copyright Basics)
2. Allows copyright holders, for a fixed period of time, to decide whether, to whom, and how to grant certain rights, such as the right to copy the work, perform it, adapt it, and so on
3. Provides for fair use (such as criticism and educational use)
4. Addresses “cutting edge” issues such as Internet distribution models and new media
5. Theoretically protects copyright owners the instant a copyrightable work is completed; in practice, however, the law favors those copyright owners who have registered their works through the U.S. Copyright Office (U.S. Copyright Office, 2008, How to Register a Work), and who have access to the financial resources necessary to pursue copyright infringements

 

The Problem with Copyright

 

Several practical considerations negatively affect legal copyright protections:

 

• The benefit of copyright protection is becoming less and less meaningful for individual creators as, increasingly, they must turn over their rights to one of very few corporate publishers/distributors in order to be paid at all. Copyright law is of diminishing value in today’s virtually monopolistic intellectual marketplace, when a creator’s only true choices are to sell his rights cheaply, or not at all.
• The concept of copyright is international, but specific protections vary from country to country. In the context of digitally encoded works distributed over the Internet, the combination of international copyright law and the nature of the Internet—specifically, the nature of distributed processing and data storage—pose complex issues. If someone illegally distributes an unauthorized digital copy of a work over the Internet, for example (a ridiculously easy act to perform), the actual data may be stored on Web servers in several countries—each of which may view copyright differently.
• In the absence of standard controls, unauthorized distribution of digitally encoded works is much harder to identify and police than the distribution of other works (such as a paper copy of a screenplay).
• Theoretically, corporate controls (created and managed by the international publishing and distribution monopoly) could extinguish access to digitally stored works, including fair use access. (Marshall, S. 2008)

 

These considerations have led creators—as well as people seeking royalty-free use of other peoples’ creations, such as educators, curriculum designers, and students seeking copyright-free photos, video clips, and other works—to investigate new approaches to copyright management. One of these new approaches is Creative Commons. 

 

Creative Commons' Approach

 

Founded in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig (Lessig, 2008), a Stanford law professor known for his attacks on legal copyright protections (Eldred vs. Ashcroft, 2008), Creative Commons (Creative Commons, 2008) is a non-profit organization that offers the creators of intellectual works free, internationally-recognized licenses of its own devising.

 

Creators can voluntarily use these licenses to advertise their intent to give away some or all of their rights to a specific work. In other words, Creative Commons does not affect copyright law, and it does not offer additional protections for copyrighted works; rather, it makes consuming those works easier.

 

How Legal Copyright Protection Works

 

Under existing U.S. copyright law, copyright to an existing work is secured immediately—without any further action on the part of the creator—the instant the work exists in a fixed, tangible form. In practice, however, creators are encouraged to register their works with the U.S. Copyright Office; doing so helps to protect the creator’s rights in court: (U.S. Copyright Office, 2008 How to Secure a Copyright).

 

Creators are also encouraged—but not required—to display somewhere on their works a copyright notice similar to the following:

 

© Copyright 2008, Emily A. Moore

 

Legal copyright protections apply whether or not a creator displays a copyright notice similar to the one above; but displaying one is useful in two important ways:

 

• A copyright notice advertises the creator’s intent to protect his or her work. When a student, educator, or any other individual seeking the right to use an existing work sees a copyright notice, s/he knows s/he must contact the copyright owner directly in order to negotiate rights and payments.
• A copyright notice makes the legal prosecution of copyright infringements easier. (U.S. Copyright Office, 2008 How to Secure a Copyright)

 

How Creative Commons Licenses Affect Legal Copyright Protection

 

The Creative Commons organization offers several different licenses—complete with their own, specific copyright notices and symbols—that creators can use singly or multiply to announce their intent to share their works (Creative Commons, 2008 License Your Work). Among others, these copyright symbols include: 

 

Attribution Using this symbol communicates your willingness to let others copy, distribute, display, or perform your copyrighted work (and any derivative works based on it) for any reason, as long as they give you credit.

 

Noncommercial. Using this symbol communicates your willingness to grant others Attribution rights (see above), but only for noncommercial purposes.

No Derivative Works. Using this symbol communicates your willingness to grant others the right to copy, distribute, display, and perform your work verbatim; others are not allowed to create derivative works based on your work.

 

It’s important to note that:

 

• A Creative Commons license does not alter existing legal copyright protections. In the U.S., for example, a Creative Commons license can’t change or restrict the legally defined fair use of a work (U.S. Copyright Office, 2008, Fair Use). A Creative Commons license can only advertise the rights a copyright owner legally wants to, and has the right to, relinquish.
• A Creative Commons license does nothing to protect copyright physically. Employing the Creative Commons “Attribution” license, for example, does not give a creator any additional means for physically protecting her work against unauthorized use, or for identifying unauthorized use if and when it occurs. A Creative Commons license simply advertises a copyright owner’s intent and wishes, which—similar to a legal copyright notice--may discourage unauthorized use and may be useful in court, should the copyright owner choose to pursue copyright infringement allegations in a court of law.

 

Who Can Benefit from Creative Commons Licensing

 

Creative Commons is important and useful to two groups:

 

• Consumers. Creative Commons licenses and content directories (searchable directories of Creative Commons-licensed works) make it easier for consumers such as students, educators, and artists to locate and obtain legal rights to a wide variety of intellectual works, such as photos, drawings, movies, games, and software.
• Creators willing to relinquish rights to their works. Creators of new intellectual works who want to place their works in the public domain, release them for non-commercial use, or otherwise relinquish their rights already have the power to do so under copyright law. A Creative Commons license, however, gives their works increased visibility (through the Creative Commons content directories) and provides a short-cut to the traditional consumer-to-creator communication process. (Get Creative, 2008)

 

Creative Commons is of little value to creators who wish to retain control over their intellectual property.

 

Relevance to Education

 

Creative Commons is relevant to the educational community for two reasons: free content for students of all grade levels and subject areas, and free content for educators.

 

Free Content for Students

 

Creative Commons offers a large and growing repository (ccSearch, 2008) of intellectual works whose availability for reuse—in assignments, student projects, and so on—is clearly labeled, saving both educators and students time and effort.

 

For example, an educator assigning a research paper can direct students to the Creative Commons content directories (ccSearch, 2008). Students can then search for materials

 

• Related to a specific research subject such as Van Gogh
• Based on a specific media format, such as pictures, audio clips, or video clips
• Based on the rights they are seeking to secure, such as the right to use a work freely, the right to use a work with attribution, or the right to use a work to create derivative works 

 

The alternative to using Creative Commons is:

 

• Teaching students about copyright law (Educational Use Copyright Exemption, 2002) including how to obtain the right to use the others' work directly, in the absence of a third-party, self-appointed corporate intermediary such as Creative Commons;
• Requiring students to do the legwork necessary to contact the people who own the copyright to the materials they want to use and to secure the appropriate rights, and
• Following up on that legwork.

 

All of the above is possible, of course; this is what educators strove to do in the years before 2002, when Creative Commons went online.  But there’s no question that this process eats up valuable time and effort. In many cases, time constraints forced educators to look the other way in cases of possible copyright violations.

 

Too, depending on the educational situation, the results might not even justify the investment of time and effort. One can envision a class of second-graders researching dinosaurs, for example: in such a case, the additional complexity and effort of pursuing permission from multiple copyright holders to use every single stegosaurus picture included in a project might well put the assignment out of reach.

 

And yet, ignoring copyright both implicitly teaches disdain for personal property, and puts the institution at risk of legal prosecution (Slocki, Ashley 2007)—leaving educators with little practical choice but to restrict students to producing all of the materials they need themselves.

 

Creative Commons provides an additional option.  

 

Free Content for Educators (coming soon)

 

Currently under construction, ccLearn is a division of Creative Common whose “mission is to minimize barriers to sharing and reuse of educational materials — legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers.” (ccLearn, 2008, paragraph 1)

 

Under development, according to ccLearn’s Web site, are search tools and licenses tailored specifically for educators. Similar in concept to the Open Educational Resources Commons (OER Commons, 2007) of which Creative Commons is a strategic development and outreach partner (OER Commons, Partners), the purpose of ccLearn will be to help educators:

 

• Locate royalty-free educational resources, such as lesson plans and curricula, created by others
• Distribute royalty-free copies of the educational resources educators develop themselves

 

The cautionary note

 

The drawback to using Creative Commons in these ways—as a shortcut to finding freely usable intellectual materials—is Creative Commons’ role as a corporate content filter. Specifically, educators and students must be aware that Creative Commons imposes:

 

• No vetting of content. Similar to the Internet, Creative Commons’ content directories carry no guarantee of quality, accuracy, or fitness for any given purpose.
• Corporate filtering and control of all materials. Unlike the Internet, Creative Commons’ content directories account for only a small subset of the total intellectual materials available by electronic retrieval—and this subset is subject to the control of the Creative Commons corporation, which may or may not align with educational goals and objectives. One can imagine a scenario in which some types of content are screened out, for example, while other types are prominently displayed.   “When one examines closely just exactly what sort of 'freedom' is ultimately to be had within these licenses, one is quick to discover that they are primarily set up as tools meant to feed directly into corporate co-option.” (Hardie, Martin, 2007 paragraph 5)

 

Glossary of Terms

 

Attribution –  The ascribing of a work to its creator; in other words, giving credit to the creator of a work wherever the work appears.  Creative Commons offers an Attribution license that lets people use the creator’s work for whatever purpose they like, as long as they attribute (give credit to) the creator following specific instructions defined by the creator.

 

Copyright notice - A line of text that signals a work is protected under copyright law by clearly stating the name of the creator and the year first published.  (Example: Copyright Eileen Dover, 2008.  All rights reserved.)  Copyright notice is not longer required for U.S. copyright protection of works created on or after March 1, 1989, although it is recommended (http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ03.html#use). Creative Commons offers additional copyright symbols (such as Attribution, Noncommercial, and No Derivative Works) that come with HTML code creators can add to their own Web pages to include their works in Creative Commons-licensed content searches.

 

Derivative – A new work created substantially from one or more existing works http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ14.html; for example, a “quick guide” created by editing an existing book is considered a derivative work.  Creative Commons offers a license that specifically disallows derivative works  http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses. 

 

Public domain – freely usable. In U.S. copyright law as well as in Creative Commons’ licensing scheme, a work that is designated as public domain can be used by anyone, at any time, for any purpose, without the need to pay royalties or  attribute the original creator of the work.  http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-definitions.html

 

Start-up Costs

 

For students and educators who already have access to an Internet-connected computer with a Web browser (such as Microsoft Internet Explorer) installed, getting started with Creative Commons is quick, easy, and free.

 

Free access

 

Although the Creative Commons’ site requests donations, currently its services are free—both for creators licensing their works, and for consumers (educators and students) searching Creative Commons’ content directories.

 

And while ccLearn is not yet available, Creative Commons has not announced any intention to associate fees with the use of its soon-to-exist educational portal. 

 

How to get started

 

Students and educators can access Creative Commons’ search portal from any Internet-connected computer, whether in class, at home, or at a public library. (Educators whose students don’t have Internet access at school may choose to download freely available resources—such as photos and multimedia clips—and burn them to CD, and then distribute the CDs to their classes.)

 

 

 

To search for Creative Commons-licensed works, all a student or educator needs to do is:

 

1. Access http://search.creativecommons.org from any Web browser. An alternative is to access http://www.creativecommons.org and then click Search Licensed Work. In either case, the search page displayed above appears. 

 

2. Type in what s/he is searching for. In the example above, a student is searching for works that reference learning theorist John Bowlby.

 

3. Specify the rights s/he is seeking. In most educational settings, the noncommercial option (circled in the screenshot above) is appropriate. 

 

4. Click one of the search engines listed, such as Google, Yahoo, or Flickr.  The options shown in the example above may increase as more search engines add support for recognizing Creative Commons’ licenses.

 

 

 

5. View a work by clicking a result link. The results that appear (see above) conform to the specified search string (in this example, “John Bowlby”) and rights (in this example, non-commercial) requested. When the student or educator clicks a promising-looking work, s/he is whisked to the site where it resides (see below), where s/he can visually verify that the material still carries the original rights designation. 

 

 

6. Click the Creative Commons license icon that appears on the work to double-check the work's availability. Clicking the Creative Commons license icon—circled above— that appears on the work displays a human-readable version of the license in whatever natural language the work’s creator chose: for example, English, Italian, or Spanish. A quick reading by the student or educator is a great way to double-check whether the work is still available for the purpose the student/educator has in mind. 

 

7. Use the work as you would any other electronic resource. For example, the student or educator may choose to cut-and-paste text, print a photo, or download a sound clip for inclusion in an assignment or project.

 

Key players, gurus, and experts

 

The concept of aggregating freely usable works into a common repository, or commons, is not unique to Creative Commons. For additional resources, explore one of the following:

 

• Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig maintains a blog (http://www.lessig.org/) containing links to articles, books, and a comprehensive wiki devoted to copyright in the digital age.
• Similar to Creative Commons, Wikimedia Commons (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page) lets students and educators search for media—with one simple difference. There’s no need to check rights designations, because every resource listed in Wikimedia Commons is freely usable.
• Internet Archive’s Open Educational Resources (http://www.archive.org/details/education) is a repository of  goodies for educators, including free courses, video lectures, and supplementary materials from universities around the world.
• PBS Teachers (http://www.pbs.org/teachers/) offers free K12- lesson and other educator resources.
• Teacher Tap (http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic98.htm) lists online sources students for photos, drawings, music, and more.
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s OpenCourseWare initiative http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/courses/courses/index.htm is the Web-based publication of virtually all MIT course content.

 

Sample Lesson Plans

 

1. The Creative Commons-licensed Picturing Vietnam lesson plan  is a great example of a multimedia-rich lesson that integrates freely usable resources, including a collection of Creative Commons-tagged photographs.  Created by Edie McDowell and hosted on Learn NC, a program of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Education, this lesson plan is designed to  give seventh grade English, Language Arts and Social Studies students an understanding of Vietnam through pictures, preparing them both to study Vietnam from the perspective of social scientists, and to use documented visual history as a basis for writing historical fiction.

 

Virtually any lesson plan that requires the student to access or incorporate photos, drawings, sound files, or video clips could be patterned on this example—either by pointing students directly to appropriate and freely usable resources, as Picturing Vietnam does, by offering a multimedia library of freely usable resources, or by including a set of instructions for finding the resources they need through Creative Commons’ search portal (such as this set of instructions). 

 

2. Laura Kaemming’s Copyright Lesson Plan does a great job of introducing eighth grade students to the concept of copyright and helping them identify copyright infringement. Updating a lesson plan such as this one to include a section on Creative Commons would both help cement students’ philosophical understanding of the copyright notification process, and give them practical options for avoiding copyright infringement in the course of their academic careers.

 

Tutorial

 

Getting Started (see above) walks you through the process of searching for Creative Commons-licensed material.

 

But if you expect to use Creative Commons often and you’re running Internet Explorer or Firefox, there’s an easier way: you can set up your browser to search for Creative Commons-licensed material automatically.  To see how, click here.

 

References

 

Adler, Prue. (2007). From the Association of Research Libraries Website. Copyright Timeline: A History of Copyright in the United States. Retrieved June 11, 2008, from http://www.arl.org/pp/ppcopyright/copyresources/copytimeline.shtml

 

Capitalism. (2008). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved June 11, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism

 

ccLearn. (2008). From the Creative Commons Website, retrieved June 18, 2008 from http://learn.creativecommons.or

 

ccSearch. (2008). From the Creative Commons Website, retrieved June 19, 2008 from http://search.creativecommons.org/

 

Creative Commons. (2008). Retrieved June 14, 2008 from http://www.creativecommons.org

 

Educational Use Copyright Exemption. (2002). From U.S. Public Law 107-273 (107th Congress). [Electronic copy]. Retrieved June 19, 2008 from http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/pl107-273.html#13301

 

Eldred v. Ashcroft. (2008). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved June 14, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eldred_v._Ashcroft

 

Get Creative. (2008). Creative Commons Presents: Get Creative, a Flash Movie. Retrieved June 14, 2008 from http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/getcreative/

 

Hardie, Martin. (2007). From Martin Hardie and Creative License Fetishism, published online as part of the Summit: Non-Aligned Initiatives in Education Culture conference proceedings. Retrieved June 19, 2008 from http://summit.kein.org/node/308/

 

Lawrence Lessig. (2008). In Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved June 11, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig

 

Marshall, S. 2008. Worlds in collision: Copyright, Technology, and Education. Innovate 4 (5). http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=528 (accessed June 14, 2008). The article is reprinted here with permission of the publisher, The Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University

 

OER Commons. (2007). From the OER Commons Website, retrieved June 19, 2008 from http://www.oercommons.org/

 

Slocki, Ashley. (2007). From OSU Accused of Copyright Violation, published in The 

Daily Barometer, January 9, 2007 edition. [Electronic version]. Retrieved June 18, 2008 from

http://media.barometer.orst.edu/media/storage/paper854/news/2007/01/09/News/Osu-Accused.Of.Copyright.Violation-2606143.shtml

 

U.S. Copyright Office. (2008). Retrieved June 14, 2008, from http://www.copyright.gov/

 

Copyright notice – A line of text that signals a work is protected under copyright law by clearly stating the name of the creator and the year first published.  (Example: Copyright Eileen Dover, 2008.  All rights reserved.)  Copyright notice is not longer required for U.S. copyright protection of works created on or after March 1, 1989, although it is recommended. Creative Commons offers additional copyright symbols (such as Attribution, Noncommercial, and No Derivative Works) that come with HTML code creators can add to their own Web pages to include their works in Creative Commons-licensed content searches.

 

Derivative – A new work created substantially from one or more existing works; for example, a “quick guide” created by editing an existing book is considered a derivative work.  Creative Commons offers a license that specifically disallows derivative works.

 

Public domain – freely usable. In U.S. copyright law as well as in Creative Commons’ licensing scheme, a work that is designated as public domain can be used by anyone, at any time, for any purpose, without the need to pay royalties or  attribute the original creator of the work.