What is Creative Commons（知识共享）?

What is Creative Commons（知识共享）?

for Teachers and Students 

This information guide was jointly developed by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation through Creative Commons Australia and the Copyright Advisory Group of the Ministerial Council of Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs.  For further information contact Creative Commons Australia at info@creativecommons.org.au.

Creative Commons (CC) is an internationally active non-profit organisation that provides free licences for creators to use when making their work available to the public. These licences help the creator to give permission for others to use the work in advance under certain conditions. 

Every time a work is created, such as when a journal article is written or a photograph taken, that work is automatically protected by copyright. Copyright protection prevents others from using the work in certain ways, such as copying the work or putting the work online.

CC licences allow the creator of the work to select how they want others to use the work. When a creator releases their work under a CC licence, members of the public know what they can and can’t do with the work. This means that they only need to seek the creator’s permission when they want to use the work in a way not permitted by the licence.

The great thing is that all CC licences allow works to be used for educational purposes. As a result, teachers and students can freely copy, share and sometimes modify and remix a CC work without having seeking the permission of the creator.

Standard rights and obligations

CC provides six core licences, each of which allow members of the pubic to use the material in different ways. While there are different CC licences, all CC licences include certain standard rights and obligations.

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User rights

Every CC licence allows you to:

• Copy the work (eg. download, upload, photocopy and scan the work); • Distribute the work (eg. provide copies of the work to teachers, students, parents and the community); • Display or perform the work (eg. play a sound recording or film in class, or stage a play to parents); • Communicate the work (eg. make the work available online on the school intranet, learning management system or on a class blog); and • Format shift verbatim copies of the work (eg copy a MP3 version of music onto a CD or an MP4 version of a film onto a DVD to play in class).

Source: Adapted from 'Baseline Rights', http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Baseline_Rights 

Some CC licences also let you make other uses, however these are the base user rights provided for all CC material.

User obligations

When you use any CC material, you must:

• always attribute the creator of the work (for information on how to attribute a work, see information guide, ‘How to Attribute Creative Commons Material’ at http://www.smartcopying.edu.au/scw/go/pid/956); • get permission from the creator to do anything that goes beyond the terms of the licence (e.g. making a commercial use of the work or creating a derivative work where the licence does not permit this); • keep any copyright notice attached to the work intact on all copies of the work; • indicate and link to the licence from any copies of the work; and • where you make changes to the work, acknowledge the original work and indicate that changes have been made (eg by stating ‘This is a French translation of the original work, X’).

In addition, when you use any CC material, you must not: • alter the terms of the licence; • use the work in any way that is prejudicial to the reputation of the creator of the work;  • imply that the creator is endorsing or sponsoring you or your work; or • add any technologies (such as digital rights management) to the work that restrict other people from using it under the terms of the licence. Source:  Adapted from 'Baseline Rights', http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Baseline_Rights

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Optional Licence Elements

Along with the basic rights and obligations set out in each CC licence, there are a set of ‘optional’ licence elements which can be added by the creator of the work. 

These elements allow the creator to select the different ways they want the public to use their work. The creator can mix and match the elements to produce the CC licence they want. This process is a simple and quick way for creators to indicate how they wish their work to be used.

Each element has its own icon and abbreviation, making them easy to identify. There are four standard licence elements: