Copyright, Creative Commons, and Confusion

Copyright law is complex and varies greatly across countries – one of the main reasons that authors do not grapple with its complexities. Here I am referring specifically to American copyright law, though of course such law was established when the printing press was introduced to England in the late fifteenth century. Printing presses were firmly in control, and the Licensing Act of 1662 cemented what was effectively their ability to censor publications. By 1710, England’s parliament enacted the Statute of Anne, which established principles of how authors may own rights to their work – copyright. It set a fixed term of 14 years for protection of an author’s work, which could be renewed if the author was still alive when the first 14-year period expired. Copyright law continued to evolve, although you will no doubt be grateful that I will spare you the details of all of its extensions.
However, some key innovations are worth examining. For example, the Berne Convention, which came into being in 1886 and was signed by the US in 1888. The notion was to place the US approach to copyright in context of a broader international approach. Effectively, it recognized that there is a myriad of approaches to copyright laws across the world, which to this day confuses authors and publishers alike, given the global nature of research.
Copyright case law is convoluted: hundreds of important cases up to the present day further refine copyright law. One significant American law is the US Copyright Act of 1976, which substantially revised the Copyright Act of 1909 and essentially provided protection for all authors’ works between 1978 and the present day. Why does this matter? Well, it was the first real recognition that an individual’s work is worth something and needs to be protected, steering away from bookseller and printer monopolies.
A question we have not addressed is, why develop copyright at all? The notion behind copyright law is that authors are more able to express their creative ideas in the arts and sciences if they are protected through ownership of their work, by establishing rights that prevent unauthorized use of content. Too few people recognize that academic product – that is, ideas and knowledge – is the result of considerable hard work, work that should be recognized through attribution at least. An author can look to copyright law to help prevent others from re-purposing their work inappropriately, or altering it to say something different and republishing it under their name. Copyright protects the integrity of the research. This is a primary concern for humanities authors, where the argument is the result. They don’t want anyone else changing their carefully chosen words.
This, in turn, allows authors to benefit financially from publishing their work. I do find this notion appealing, and I sense that in the rush to demonize copyright law in the publishing industry, it is often easy to forget that copyright is indeed in force to protect authors themselves, not so much the publishers.
Let’s fast forward to the present day and take a look at how we have evolved into a world where Creative Commons Licensing is the new normal. Creative Commons Licenses were a successful venture into allowing authors to retain copyright, and allow for publication of their work through licenses that allow for reuse. These licenses come in a variety of flavors and courtesy of the Creative Commons organization, I list them here in their full complex glory, with Creative Commons’ short summary descriptions:

Attribution: CC BY

This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.

Attribution-ShareAlike: CC BY-SA

This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.

Attribution-NoDerivs: CC BY-ND

This license lets others reuse the work for any purpose, including commercially; however, it cannot be shared with others in adapted form, and credit must be provided to you.

Attribution-NonCommercial: CC BY-NC

This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike: CC BY-NC-SA

This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs: CC BY-NC-ND

This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.

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