This week as part of this module’s aim to learn all about the different types of work we could get as designers we looked at intellectual property and how different laws can protect us and our work. We looked at copyright, patent, trademark, registered trademark as well as NDA (non-disclosure agreements), and investment and ownership. I feel this has given me much deeper understanding of these laws and now I at least am aware of the protection out there and where I could go for more information.
One of the aspects of copyright we looked at was Creative Commons and I wanted to look at this in more detail as it is something I feel a better understanding of would help me in my work. This is for two main reasons, by understanding creative commons I will be able to mark my own work correctly if I release it online. Also I will better understand what I can do with the work of others which I discover online, giving them proper attribution and using their work as they intended. This will allow me to fully respect their rights as the creator of the work while being able to use the work appropriately to help my own work.
Creative Commons are an international not-for-profit organisation who provide easy to understand licences and public domain tools to allow knowledge and creative work to be freely shared. They do this by helping to overcome legal obstacles to allow the sharing of knowledge and creativity.
There are six different Creative Commons licences that a copyright owner of a piece of work can choose from, these all come with a set of standardised symbols that allow everyone to know what the licence allows and forbids. To apply a Creative Commons licence to a piece of work all you have to do is to clearly state the licence you have chosen to those who come across your work. For this you should include a link to the licence you have chosen. This is so that people that come across your work can quickly and easily work out what they can and cannot do with that piece of work.
Below I am going to look at each of the six licence options and show their symbols.
Source: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/ (Last Accessed 31/12/23)
In simple terms all the CC BY licence requires is an attribution to the creator of the work. If you provide that you can, alter the work, build upon it, use it for commercial or non-commercial use and distribute it as you wish. This is the least restrictive of all the Creative Commons licences.
Source: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/ (Last Accessed 31/12/23)
The CC BY SA licence offers all the same permissions as the CC BY licence and has the same requirement to provide attribution to the creator. The only additional requirement is that if you want to share an adaptation or a piece that was built upon the original piece you must licence the new work under the same terms as the original. Therefore, if the original was licenced with a CC BY SA licence you must share the modified work under a CC BY SA licence.
Source: https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/cclicenses/ (Last Accessed 31/12/23)
The CC BY-NC licence again allows all of the same permissions as the CC BY licence but only as long as the work is used for non-commercial purposes. There is no requirement here to share any modified pieces under the same terms, just that the work is correctly attributed and not used to make a profit.