Copyright information can be found on Purdue University's Copyright Office website.
Any questions about copyright can be directed to copyright@purdue.edu
"Creative Commons is a global nonprofit organization that enables sharing and reuse of creativity and knowledge through the provision of free legal tools" - Creative Commons
Creative Commons licenses are a way for a creator of a work to give other users some rights to use, modify, and share that work.
The CC Licenses have "layers" so that they can be used and understood by different people and machines.
The Legal Code: These are lawyer-readable legal codes. These terms will uphold in court.
The Commons Deed: These are the human-readable terms. These are web pages that lay out the key license terms.
Machine-Readable Version of the License: This is the machine-readable code. It is metadata that can be attached to CC-licensed works
image credit: "3 layers of license" by Nathan Yergler, Alex Roberts is licensed under CC BY 3.0
These icons are combined in different ways to create the six different Creative Commons Licenses
Attribution Symbol (BY): This attribution symbol means you need to include the creator's information in the works that you use and adapt.
NonCommercial Symbol (NC): This means the work is only allowed to be used for noncommercial purposes.
ShareAlike (SA): This symbol indicates that adaptations based on this work must be licensed under the same license.
NoDerivatives Symbol (ND): This symbol indicates that the user can only share the work as it has been created. They cannot make any adaptations to be shared with others
These are the licenses that you will look for and use when wanting to create or adapt an OER
CC BY: This allows you to use and adapt the work for any purpose as long as you give credit to the creator of the work.
CC BY-SA: This allows you to use and adapt the work for any purpose as long as you give credit and make any adaptations that you share with others available under the same or a compatible license.
CC BY-NC: This allows you to use and adapt the work for noncommercial purposes only. You will also need to give credit to the creator.
CC BY-NC-SA: This allows you to use and adapt the work for noncommercial purposes only and make any adaptations you share with other available under the same or a compatible license. You will also need to give credit to the creator.
CC BY-ND: This allows you to use the unadapted work for any purpose as long as you give credit to the creator. You may not share any adaptation that you make with others.
CC BY-NC-ND: This allows you to use the unadapted work for noncommercial purposes only. You will need to give credit to the creator and you cannot share any adaptations that you make with others.
These are two tools that notify users that the work is not limited by copyright.
Public Domain Dedication Symbol (CC0): This symbol indicates that creators have waived their copyright and placed their works in the public domain. This can only be applied by the copyright holder.
Public Domain Symbol: This symbol indicates that the work is known to be free from all copyright restrictions. This is a notification to others that the copyright has expired.
When reusing material that has a CC License that you have not made any changes to, you will still need to give credit to the creator. You will want to remember TASL when attributing the work.
T - Title: The title of the work
A - Author: The copyright holder of the work
S - Source: The link to where to find the work usually the title is hyperlinked to this site.
L - License: Which CC License is used and a link to the CC license page.
There are also good resources out there to help you create licenses and attributions.
The Creative Commons License Chooser will help you choose a license and then provide the code for you.
Open Washington has an Attribution Builder which will help you create text to properly attribute the work.
Collections are a compilation of different works that have not been changed and will be placed next to other works in a new piece of work. Each work will have its own license and attribution statement. There will be a separate CC license for the whole collection. For example, there may be a collection of CC licensed photos and all in a slide deck together and the photos have not been altered. Attribution will be provided for each photo and then there will be an overall CC License to the slide deck.
You can see the example of a collection which is a group of photos from the 1000 Islands in New York all in one slide deck together but each photo has its own attribution statement and there is a CC License on the whole slide deck.
If you are confused about what CC license to attach to your newly created collection, you can pretty much choose whichever license you want as long as you aren't using it for a commercial purpose if one of the works has a NonCommercial license.
Since you are sharing the work as it was created and not making any changes to the original work, you don't have to use the ShareAlike license if one of the works has a ShareAlike license. Also, the NoDerivatives license doesn't prevent you from sharing a work with an ND license since you aren't making any derivatives of the original work.
Derivatives are a CC licensed work that has been changed in some way and looks different than the original work to be original enough to be protected by copyright.
An example of an adaptation is
There are a few things to consider when choosing a license for a work that you have remixed. You will have to see if the licenses for the different works are compatible. You will also have to make sure the license you choose works with the licenses on the original works.
The CC License Compatability Chart shows what works with CC licenses can be combined together.
"CC License Compatibility Chart" by Creative Commons is licensed under CC BY 4.0
The CC Adapters License Chart shows you what license you can choose when you create an adaptation of a work.
"CC Adapter's License Chart" by Creative Commons is licensed under CC BY 4.0
These two images were combined to create a new image. One was an image with the CC BY-SA 2.0 license and one was "A SVG semicircle heart" in the Public Domain. Since one of the original works was in the public domain, it could be remixed with any work except a work that has a NoDerivative license.
"Alexandria Bay, New York" by Doug Kerr is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
They were combined together to create a derivative of the original work.
This work "A-Bay, NY Remix" is adapted from "Alexandria Bay, New York" by Doug Kerr used under CC BY-SA 2.0. This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 by Emily Little.
Since the original creator used a ShareAlike license, the remix also had to use a ShareAlike License.
