Creative Commons Licenses, despite going to great pains to be clear and easily understood, are routinely confused and misinterpreted.

In my experience, with both this site and other works of mine licensed under various Creative Commons terms, a very small percentage of all uses actually fully comply with the license, less than about 5%.

Though most of the uses do try to comply with the spirit of the license, which is why I don’t object to these uses, complying with a Creative Commons License, contrary to popular belief, is not merely a matter of giving a byline and being done. Meeting the terms of the license involves a little bit more effort, though not a significant amount.

So, if you plan on using Creative Commons-licensed works, here is a very quick primer on what you need to do to make sure that your use complies with the license fully and avoids any possible argument.

The Elements

When looking at the main 6 Creative Commons licenses (Note: I’m not delving into the lesser-known ones such as CC0.) There are five different elements to worry about.

Note however that not all licenses have every element. You have to read the license deed itself to find out whether some of these restrictions apply.

Attribution

All of the major Creative Commons Licenses require attribution. However, applying it is not as simple as some think.

First, the author technically gets first choice in how attribution should be applied. The deed itself says “You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.” so, if the author has a specific way they want to be attributed, that’s the way to go.

However, most authors don’t specify a particular way. As such, the full license says that such attribution should include the following:

1. The name of the author and/or licensor
2. The title of the work (if supplied)
3. As far as practical, the URL that is associated with the work (meaning, in most Web uses, a link to the source)

The license allows for you to do this as appropriate for your use of the work. So, for example a Web use would likely require a search-engine friendly link where a printed use would require a footnote. The guidance is admittedly vague here, especially for non-Web uses, but if you act in good faith and give attribution as soundly as possible, meeting the requirements above, you should be ok.

Also, it is important to note that your attribution should not hint at any kind of endorsement from the licensor. That too would be a violation of the terms.

A Link to the License

With every copy of the work, you are also required to either provide a copy of the license it self or a link (URI) to it. This is, without a doubt, the most forgotten element of complying with the license.

The purpose for this is to indicate the terms under which you are using the work, both to others who see your copies and to the original licensor. It “closes the loop” of the license.

Failure to do this is a failure to complete the terms of the CC license, it is that simple.

Commercial Use

Some licenses disallow commercial use. If that is the case, you need to make sure that your use complies with that element of the license.

The full Creative Commons licenses defines a commercial use as that, in “any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation.”

Obviously that leaves a fair amount of gray area, especially on the Web. This is part of the reason why the Creative Commons Organization recently comissioned a study on commercial use.

The good news from the study was that, while there was gray area, users of CC works were more likely to define a use as commercial than those who were granting the license. As such, most likely, if a user thinks that a use is non-commercial, the licensor will agree. This is part of the reason why disputes over this element have been extremely rare.

That being said, it’s best to be careful. If you feel your use in any way meets the definition above, you should probably avoid using the work if the license requires non-commercial use. If you have any questions about a specific scenario, check the full study and see if it was one of the ones polled or, even better, ask the licensor directly.

Derivative Work

When dealing with vanilla copyright law, derivative works is a tremendous mess. Defining the line between an original work and a derivative one is a hair-pulling mess. Fortunately though, there is no such issue with CC licenses.

The full CC license defines a derivative work as “a work based upon the Work or upon the Work and other pre-existing works, such as a translation, musical arrangement… or any other form in which the Work may be recast, transformed, or adapted.”

In short, any time you modify CC licensed work to create another work, be it to translate it, rewrite it remix it, it is considered a derivative under the license and you need to make sure you have permission in order to do that.

However, you do not need this permission to copy and paste a work into your site as that is considered a “Collective Work”, similar to a periodical.

You are allowed to modify the work as far as is “technically necessary to exercise the rights in other media and formats”. This would include things such as converting a movie to another type to upload it to YouTube. But beyond those necessary changes, the work must remain intact and separate from other works.

Share Alike

Finally, many sites that do allow derivative works to be created add an additional stipulation, known as the share-alike requirement, that stipulates the new work be placed under the same terms.

In many ways, it is similar to the GPL and similar open-source licenses that allow free use of a work so long as new creations are licensed under the same terms. These licenses prevent reusers from making derivative works from a CC-licensed work and then locking the new creation away (at least the parts that can be separated from the original).

This only affects derivative uses of the work, not ones that keep the original completely intact and do not build upon it. It ensures that the new content that is added to the work is licensed the same as the original.

So, if you use a share-alike work in a derivative manner, you have to both complete the terms of the original license (attribution, link to license, etc.) but you also have to license the new work under the same terms. This makes compliance, essentially, a two-step process.

Other Issues

On top of the main compliance issues, there are a few other items that you probably need to be aware of.

1. No DRM Allowed: If you use a CC-licensed work, you are barred from placing any copy controls on it. This seems obvious as CC licenses are specifically about allowing copying, but you need to be aware of this if you use any copy control on your site.
2. No Other Rights Affected: Other rights that might be related to the work are not affected. A CC license, for example, is no substitute for a model release. Publicity, moral rights and other related rights are unaffected. This includes your fair use rights as well.
3. All Rights are Negotiable: Finally, a CC license is not set in stone. As long as you get the copyright holder’s permission, you can go beyond the terms of the license. If you want to make use of a work that goes beyond the license or may be questionable, ask.

Bottom Line

If you even glance at the full legalese version of the license, you can quickly see that it is not as simple as the deed seems to make it out to be. There are nuances and variables that the legalese version explains that the simple deed cannot adequately.

Though many of these issues won’t affect you, many seem to relate only to the making of records, it is important to be aware of them.

So, if you have a moment, read through the full legalese on any CC license. Though it is written for attorneys, it isn’t so jargon-filled as to be indecipherable to mere mortals.

Though this post should give you a good primer, it’s no substitute for your own research, especially if it only takes a few minutes to complete.

Licensing your Facebook content has always been a tricky ordeal. If you’re comfortable allowing reuse of your photos, updates and other information, the nature of Facebook made it difficult to express those licensing terms.

However, yesterday, the Creative Commons Organization announced the launch of its new Facebook application, which allows you to embed your licensing terms on your profile page.

While this is great news for Creative Commons buffs who want to make their works licensable (including myself), the app does have some limitations to it that prevent it from being more than the “stop gap” solution that the CC Organization admits it to be.

How it Works

When you click to install the application, you are presented with a screen such as the one to the right. It asks you to choose which items you wish to license, giving you the choice between photos, videos and text or any combination of the three, and then asks you the standard two questions for selecting a CC license.

Once it is done, the application will then embed a box on the sidebar of your profile page (shown below) that will express your license. The finished license box includes information about the person granting the license, in this case you, the works that you chose to license, the license they are under as well as a link to the application’s home page, which explains the license in more detail (including that it only applies to copyright and does not affect right to publicity or privacy rights)

Installing the application, literally, only takes a few seconds and it is very easy to use overall. The process only requires a few clicks and the box added blends in very well with the profile. If you want to see a sample of it, you can look at my Facebook profile.

Limitations

As useful as the application is, it does come with a pair of pretty serious limitations.

First, the license itself is only displayed on the wall and info tabs. It is not displayed along side the photos or other tabs. Though the other tabs may contain content that one doesn’t have the ability to license or would not wish to license in such a manner, the photos can be expressly licensed by the application though the license itself will never appear alongside them.

The second problem is that the license is all or nothing. You either license all of your images or none of them, all of your updates or none of them, etc. There is no way to license specific images or galleries while not licensing others. This may worry many who have a mixture of creative and personal works in their Facebook profile and may not want all of it to be used in the same manner.

Both of these problems are actually due to limitations on the app placed by Facebook. According to the application’s author, until Facebook integrates properly with CC, there won’t be any way to license images individually, as people do on Flickr now. Thus the application, by the author’s own admission, is just a “stop gap” for true integration.

Bottom Line

In the end, the new CC application for Facebook is something of an inelegant solution to the problem of licensing content uploaded to the service. It works well enough to get the job done, and that alone should give CC fans a reason to celebrate, but it pales in comparison to what could be acheived with proper integration.

Hopefully, the outcome of this will be more pressure on Facebook to consider allowing users to license their content and perhaps pushing them to implement a more robust scheme. In the meantime though, this application is the best solution by far and one that Facebook-using fans of the commons should likely jump on.

FairShare, unlike Attributor’s current business service, is targeted at bloggers and Webmasters who want to track how their content is being used and where, but do not require advanced tools and filtering. It works with Creative Commons licenses and tracks where content reappears, how much is used, if the content is linked and if the site displays any advertisements.

Though the service carries with it many different limitations, for bloggers that can not afford or don’t have the time to use a more advanced system, it is likely a very good choice.

How it Works

The principle behind FairShare is simple. After registering for the service, users are then asked to provide the URL of their feed. Then, after doing so, they are asked to select a Creative Commons License (if any) for their work.

Once the process is completed, they are then given the URL of a new feed to follow. It is a feed that will contain the matches that FairShare detects, using similar, though slightly more limited, technology as the regular Attributor system.

The feed will list information about the matches including the domain that the match was found on, the percentage of the original article that was copied, the number of words copied, whether the match site links back, whether it displays ads and provide a link to a FairShare comparison page, where the creator can look at the two works side by side.

If the content has a Creative Commons License, the feed will also show you if each of the elements are compliant with the terms you set forth.

The idea behind FairShare is that users will be able to go through their feed in their regular reader, see which matches are compliant, do comparisons on those which are not and then take appropriate action on their own.

The Good

The greatest advantage of FairShare is that it takes simplicity to a new extreme. Outside of selecting your license, there are no options to deal with or figure out. You simply provide the site your feed, select your content license and subscribe to the RSS feed it generates. Nothing more needs to be done.

The matching technology of FairShare seems to be very solid overall. FairShare and Attributor both rely on their own search engine and database, instead of using Google or Yahoo!. Though this is a risky move that has not worked well for others, usually due to limited database size, it seems Attributor’s results are about on par with results that can be achieved through hand Google searches.

All totaled, FairShare and Attributor both use the same database of roughly 35 billion pages, making it many times larger than most similar services.

FairShare also works with nearly 20 different languages, with more likely on the way, making one of the only choices for many international users.

Finally, the FairShare service is completely free. Though Attributor has not announced if they plan to release a more advanced pay version at a later date, the service is completely free to use and test. If one decides that they no longer want to use the service, all that they have to do is unsubscribe from the feed(s).

FairShare holds a great deal of promise for small to medium sized bloggers. However, this is not to say that the service is right for everyone nor that it is without its limitations.

Drawbacks and Limitations

Though the simplicity of FairShare is one of its greatest strengths, it is also a weakness. The user currently has no control over the exact matches they receive. Many of the matches are going to be ones that are barely over the limit for detection and may not be of much interest to the user. Also, if the user is only interested in matches that are infringing, they’ll have to wade through results that are compliant with their license. Users can, however, subscribe to a weekly summary feed and Attributor does plan to introduce more feed options in the future.

(Note: The feed to my right is not the FairShare feed for PT but for another, much larger, site that I work with.)

Second, also related to the issue of simplicity, there is no way to filter or sort though the matches. There is no way to prioritize or organize matches using the system, unless one uses an RSS reader that makes it possible to do so on their local computer. Even then though, the filtering and sorting will have to be done by hand.

Also, the FairShare system has no compliance tools built in. Though it can help users detect matches of user-supplied content, it is their responsibility to determine what they want to do about any infringements and how they want to do it.

The FairShare system is also limited in its reliance on RSS. Sites that do not have RSS will not be able to use the service and sites that use partial feeds may not get very good matches. Also, the service will not parse any content not on your feed, meaning that pages and content too old for the feed will not be checked. However, unlike Copygator, the service WILL find matches on non-RSS sites.

Finally, sites that have a large volume of matches will find themselves quickly buried in the number of results produced. FairShare feeds can easily produce hundreds of results per day, many of them not of a high priority, forcing a Webmaster to go through the feed every few hours and make quick decisions about which cases to follow up on.

In short, the service is a good solution for small to medium-sized bloggers that don’t expect to see more than a few dozen matches per day. More established ones might need a more advanced solution to avoid being buried in a large number of results that can’t be easily filtered.

Future Plans

As mentioned above, Attributor has stated that they plan on expanding their FairShare offerings by including more feed choices, allowing users to only receive the matches that they want. Also, they plan to provide additional licensing options, for those that don’t wish to use their own license scheme instead of a CC license.

Obviously many of these features will be available only farther down the the beta cycle, but may be reasons for some to consider jumping on board now and seeing how the service works, even if it is not a current match for them right now.

Conclusions

Overall, FairShare is a system to be extremely excited about. For most bloggers the system will work very well and provide all of the power that they need. Though others may require a more advanced system to help them sort through and prioritize matches, most bloggers will not have that issue.

Considering that the service is free, there is little harm in trying it. As I mentioned above, users can unsubscribe from their FairShare feeds at any time if they feel that the service isn’t working.

Despite it’s flaws and limitations, FairShare does provide a great deal to get excited about, namely that it is a simple, free content tracking tool that uses technology on par with a professional service. Though the system is still in beta, and users should expect a few bugs from time to time, it has worked fairly well in my testing and is worth at least a shot.

Disclosure: I have worked as a consultant for Attributor.