Copycat! Explaining the Creative Commons License.
Copycatting is the sincerest form of flattery—or so they say. Think of it like this: did you ever copy & paste direct quotes in academic papers without providing parenthetical documentation? Probably not—many institutions will expel students who have been proven plagiarizers, and professionals have had entire bodies of work discredited. The fact of the matter is that artists, academics, and bloggers alike generally don’t appreciate when their work is copied, mirrored, or altered without notice or credit—but many are happy to lend out materials if they know they’re being cited.
How do I tell people what they can do with my work?
If you’ve ever decided to scroll down a bit and check out my sidebar, you might have noticed a little rectangular icon that looks like this
and states “This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.” That inconspicuous little button is a Creative Commons license that provides the legalese to describe how content may be appropriated and used—if at all. It’s one way that many bloggers choose to protect—and share—their writing the best they can.
Because Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. “reserves all rights” to any Warcraft related indicia, all “files, codes, audio or images incorporated in or generated by the software” are not covered by the Creative Commons License. This means that, technically, while I have painstakingly created each image myself using either screenshots or the WoW Model Viewer, they are derivative works and cannot be sublicensed. Strictly, I cannot legally copyright or pursue any Blizzard licensed graphical derivatives. However, I politely request that if you’d like to use any images I have edited, please credit Unbearably HoT by providing a URL: www.unbearably.net.
So what exactly does the Creative Commons license cover? Everything else. All writing is my own, and when copyrighted and assigned a Creative Commons License, is protected by law. Remember though, it’d be pretty lame to create and write a blog for an audience if nothing in it could ever be reproduced or repeated. To that effect, my specific Creative Commons license specifies that you:
- May copy, distribute, and display my work under the following conditions:
- Work must be attributed appropriately in the manner the author/licensor specifies. Generally, this is easily done by providing a link back to the original article, or by linking to the site itself (www.unbearably.net). Pretty simple.
- Work is used noncommercially.
- Work has not been altered or transformed in any way.
- If you have a specific question about how to use something from Unbearably HoT, feel free to shoot me an e-mail; I’ll probably think whatever you’re doing is cool.
Another stellar example of a Creative Commons license at work: the theme I use for my website (Ayumi 1.1) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. This means that I can essentially do whatever I want with said theme (and I certainly have) so long as I credit the original creator, Nurudin Jauhari. You can see this information permanently in the footer of every page.
For further reading and to find out what sort of licensing may be best for you, I recommend checking out the Creative Commons website, perusing their materials, and paying a visit to the United States Copyright Office (online, of course). If you have further questions specific to my own materials or Blizzard’s legal documentation, feel free to contact me.
Hi Runy!
This is really helpful for bloggers. There’s unfortunately no internet equivalent to the Chicago style manual to tell us exactly how to cite authors we want to use! And I can say from firsthand experience that I love it if people link a post of mine. Is it very common that bloggers use someone else’s ideas without giving credit? I’m new to this whole thing.
Ah, yes. I actually have the CMS 15th Edition sitting on my desk right now, and even as the most recent version, it provides precious little information as to how to properly cite Internet related media (and for good reason, I suppose; there’s a lot of grey area). In general, I really do believe that as long as you link back to the original article and throw quotation marks around direct quotes, it’s all well and good.
Everyone loves being linked to, and it’s particularly cool when folks think that you mentioned something worth relaying. I don’t think there is a lot of “stealing,” so to speak, but I think there’s a lot that gets reposted on forums without any direct link back to the original blog. Bloggers taking from other bloggers though? I really haven’t seen that at all. There’ve been similar posts, sure, but everyone usually has a different spin.
Lately, I’ve actually been made aware of people hijacking images I’ve made for use as forum signatures and avatars. There’s not too much I can do about it, but it’s sort of frustrating when no one bothers to link back to it.
I do think that the Creative Commons License is important though. As I said, it holds up in court if you’ve got actual copyrighting behind your work as well. But even if you don’t, it shows that you’re willing to let others use your work as you’d like, and generally provides direct information as to how that work can be used and how it should be cited. A great resource.