Creative Commons - User contributions [en]

Open-Source Audio Database

2011-12-20T02:20:46Z

Culture25: Category:Opensource

{{ContentDirectory
|mainurl=http://www.osaudio.org
|format=Sound
}}

[[Category:Database]]
[[Category:Opensource]]

Creative Commons Case Study Database

2011-12-20T02:19:53Z

Culture25: Category:Opensource

{{Press
|publication=Experience Curve
|date=2008/06/25
|author=Karl
}}
{{Web widget|http://experiencecurve.com/archives/creative-commons-case-study-database}}

[[Category:Database]]
[[Category:Opensource]]

Open Media Database

2011-12-20T02:18:11Z

Culture25: Category:Opensource

{{ContentDirectory
|format=Text|mainurl=http://www.omdb.org/
|ccfeed=http://www.omdb.org/movie/latest.xml
}}
omdb (open media database) is a free database for film media

[[Category:Database]]
[[Category:Opensource]]

Freebase

2011-12-20T01:59:21Z

Culture25: Category:Opensource

{{ContentDirectory
|mainurl=http://www.freebase.com/
|format=Image, Text
}}

[[Category:Database]]
[[Category:Opensource]]

Jamendo

2011-12-20T01:57:34Z

Culture25: Category:Opensource

{{ContentDirectory
|format=Sound|mainurl=http://www.jamendo.com/
|ccportal=http://www.jamendo.com/en/creativecommons/
|size=35000
}}
* CC-only feed: RSS/Podcasts/Javascript feeds
* Notes: Jamendo hosts full music albums, available for both streaming and download on P2P (BitTorrent, eMule) ; Social tools, Web service, amazon-like recommendations ; Services for artists ; organization/recording of CC live performances.
* Size: 2800+ full music albums (as of 20070613)

[[Category:License and CCPlus]]
[[Category:Database]]
[[Category:Opensource]]

Case Studies/Whitehouse.gov

2011-12-20T01:55:12Z

Culture25: Category:Public domain Category:Opensource

{{Case Study
|Description=www.whitehouse.gov is the official website of United States’ President Barack Obama and his Administration.
|Mainurl=http://www.whitehouse.gov
|Author=United States Government
|User_Status=Curator, Creator
|Tag=government, whitehouse, public sector information, technical details
|Format=Image, Text, MovingImage
|Country=United States
|Quote=Our commitment to openness means more than simply informing the American people how decisions are made. It means recognizing that government does not have all the answers, and that public officials need to draw on what citizens know.
|Quote_Attribution=President Barak Obama, 1/21/09, http://www.whitehouse.gov/ope/
|Image_Header=http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/1/1f/Us-whitehouse-logo.jpg
|Image_attribution=whitehouse.gov
|Image_license=http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright
|importance=High
|quality=B-Class
|License_short_name=CC BY
}}
== Overview ==

The United States of America’s President Barack Obama was sworn in on the 20th of January 2009 after being elected on the 4th of November 2008 to be the 44th leader of the American people. During the period between election and inauguration, the President elect’s transitional website (www.change.gov) was licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence.<ref name=”test”> [http://change.gov/about/copyright_policy The Office of the President Elect, Copyright Notice] (2008) at 19 March 2009.</ref> This meant that all content posted by the President elect, his team and any contributors was subject to this licence. During his inauguration, at 12:01pm on the 20th of January 2009, President Barack Obama launched the whitehouse.gov website, the official website of the Obama-Biden Administration also incorporating the same Creative Commons licence (see below).<ref name="test">Benenson, F [http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/12267 Whitehouse.gov’s 3rd Party Content Under CC-BY] (2009) Creative Commons, at 20 March 2009. </ref>

Visitors to whitehouse.gov can choose to view information from a variety of categories, these being:
* “The Briefing Room” which includes the White House Blog, weekly addresses, slideshows, speeches and official statements from the Obama-Biden Administration;
* “The Agenda” which lists the “Obama-Biden Administration’s positions on everything from healthcare and the economy to alternative energy and foreign policy”;
* “The Administration”, which as the name suggests, provides information about the various key figures in the current Administration;
* “About the White House” which provides a historical overview of the US Government; and
* “Our Government” which discusses democracy in the form of the various branches of government.

Of the above, perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the site is the White House blog. The White House blog discusses various events from spring gardening with the First Lady to live blogs of the Vice President’s meeting of the Middle Class Task Force for green jobs. The White House blog is the US Government’s tool to keeping the American people in-step with the most recent developments in politics, and is pitched on the site as offering exactly that - the “Latest News & Updates”.

After visiting the site, it is easy to observe that the US Government’s goal in maintaining whitehouse.gov is to appear connected with its people. This is apparent from the weekly addresses, slideshows and constant blogging, which aim to create a sense of unity and inclusion for the American community. In teaming with this theme, the Office of Public Liaisons which can be accessed from the website’s Administration tab, offers an opportunity for the American people to give the Obama-Biden Administration feedback and suggestions on running the country. The idea behind this is obvious – “to take the Administration out of Washington and into communities across America, stimulating honest dialogue and ensuring that America's citizens and their elected officials have a government that works effectively for them and with them.” This initiative works in accordance with the idea of using the Creative Commons licence, and building a democracy based on true public participation, and will be discussed in detail below.

== Statistics ==

In March 2009, average weekly traffic rankings for whitehouse.gov were 3,080 people which had increased by an average of 2,729 people per week, for three months. From these users, 72.5% came from the United States of America.

== Licence Usage ==

Pursuant to the United States of America Code, Title 17, s 105, “copyright protection…is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.” As a result, the information posted by any of the Obama-Biden Administration on the whitehouse.gov site is not capable of being protected by copyright law.

However, this rule does not apply to third party content posted to on whitehouse.gov. Therefore, to align with the open principles of the website, people posting material to the site are required to license that material under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. The White House copyright policy states that as a result “visitors to this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions to whitehouse.gov.”<ref name=”test”> [http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright/ The White House, Copyright Notice] (2009) at 20 March 2009. </ref> This licence enables visitors to the site to copy, distribute, display or perform any of the text or images contained in the site, as well as to make derivative works of these. The only condition to such use is that visitors must attribute the work remixed, copied, distributed, displayed or performed to the author but not in such a way as to imply that the author has endorsed the derivative work.

This licence is the widest Creative Commons licence available that doesn’t give away all rights of the author. There are no restrictions with respect to using any material in a commercial manner, neither are there any restrictions about share-alike conditions. The use of this licence reflects the prohibition that copyright protection (of any kind) is not afforded to the United States Government or its products. In the event that a more onerous Creative Commons licence was imposed on Third Party content, this may be argued as being out of line with this principle.

== Motivations ==

Creative Commons licensing enables the Obama-Biden Administration to work collaboratively with the American people, and demonstrates a genuine focus on democratic participation in the running of the country. The ability to take information from the site with only an obligation to attribute it to the author means that visitors to the site can be fully informed and in turn can fully inform others. Additionally, this process means that the circulation of inaccurate material is kept to a minimum because of the openness of the collaboration process.

Furthermore, after receiving a great response from using a Creative Commons licence on his change.gov site (even though the content contained was copyrightable at the time given that it was not US governmental material yet), President Obama’s choice to continue with the Creative Commons license for whitehouse.gov was strategically logical. Choosing to use the Creative Commons licence clearly influenced and reached out to those sectors of the community who were in tune with current creative technological advancements, and whose attention may not have been attracted otherwise. Creative Commons blogger, Fred Benenson encouraged the use of Creative Commons by President Obama, as did others with comments like “Thank you again, Mr President,” and “How awesome” posted on blogs all over the internet. The clearly favourable responses from the American people to the use of a Creative Commons licence on whitehouse.gov, indicates that the President’s team was successful in utilizing the licence to create a truly democratic process in a creative online environment. The political results of this move are a clear motivation for the use of the Creative Commons licence.

Finally, the convenience of the archiving process of the website has been made abundantly simpler given the use of the Creative Commons Licence. As one blogger put it, using a CC licence for 3rd party material on whitehouse.gov “would make the archiving of the website a much easier proposition.” Obviously the ability to forego any copyright processes and other such records would be a motivation for the maintainers of whitehouse.gov given that the site will encourage high traffic and be in use for the entire term of President Obama.

It can be gathered from comments by the administration on the site, and in particular those on the site of the Office of Public Liaison, that the current US Government is legitimately interested in generating public interest around policy issues in order to build a greater democracy.

== Technical Details ==
Whitehouse.gov has implemented the license image and linked to the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States deed. The license can be found on the [http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright Copyright Policy page]:

[[Image:whitehouse1.png|link=http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright|border]]

Whitehouse.gov has not implemented any of the [[CC REL]] license metadata specification. The code below generates the license mark above:

<code><nowiki>
<p><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/3.0/us/88x31.png" alt="Creative Commons License" /></a></p>
<p>Except where otherwise noted, third-party content on this site is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License</a>. Visitors to this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions to <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/">Whitehouse.gov</a> under the <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License</a>.</p>
</nowiki></code><br>

[[Category:USA]]
[[Category:Public domain]]
[[Category:Opensource]]

Case Studies/MusicBrainz

2011-12-20T01:51:13Z

Culture25: Category:Public domain Category:Opensource

{{Case Study
|importance=Medium
|quality=C-Class
|Description=[http://musicbrainz.org/ MusicBrainz] is a user-maintained database of information about artists and their music.
|Mainurl=http://musicbrainz.org/
|Author=MetaBrainz Foundation
|User_Status=Curator
|Tag=music
|License_short_name=CC BY-NC-SA
|CC_adoption_date=2003
|Format=Data
|Country=United States
|Quote=Musicbrainz plays an important role in blazing the path for open databases... We work hard to make our data useful and available to people, as we believe that Metcalfe’s law also applies to data. Thus, getting lots of people to use our data makes MusicBrainz vastly more useful and valuable.
|Quote_Attribution=Robert Kaye
|Image_Header=http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/5/5b/Musicbrainzlogo.jpg
|Image_attribution=CC BY-NC-SA by Robert Kaye, MusicBrainz
|Image_license=http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/
}}
== Overview ==
[http://musicbrainz.org/ MusicBrainz] is a user-maintained database of information about artists and their music, including title, artist, release date, format, and other data. MusicBrainz started releasing their database of music metadata under a CC license in 2003.

== License Usage ==

The data on MusicBrainz is available as public domain material free to be reused without restrictions or under the CC Attribution-Noncommercial-ShareAlike. The distinctions between types of data are explained [http://musicbrainz.org/doc/MusicBrainz_License here].

== Motivations ==

From their [http://musicbrainz.org/doc/AboutMusicBrainz about page]:

:"MusicBrainz was initially created by Robert Kaye in response to Gracenote taking over the free CDDB project and charging people for access to the (what up till that point had been free) data."

From [http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/10336 CC Talks With Musicbrainz]:

:"We work hard to make our data useful and available to people, as we believe that Metcalfe’s law also applies to data. Thus, getting lots of people to use our data makes MusicBrainz vastly more useful and valuable. With that in mind, we want to be the de-facto standard for music metadata in the open content ecology."

:"We have a lot of data that is in the Public Domain, but some of it is creative output of our community and thus copyrightable. These copyrightable bits are placed under a CC non-commercial license, which then opens the door for licensing this content for commercial use. The CC data bundled with the Public Domain data gives us a package that we license for commercial use. In this case we do not license the Public Domain data, but we charge for convenient and timely access to the data. The CC licenses make it possible for us to operate with this new business model because people have vetted the licenses and are comfortable working with them."

== Impact ==
'''What is the impact of this CC-enabled project or resource? Specifically, what has the license enabled that otherwise would not exist? Provide statistics or other data if possible.'''

Delete the above questions and add text here.

== Technical Details ==

'''Provide any technical details of the implementation here'''

== Media ==
'''Please include any screenshots, logos, links to videos, audio files, press hits, etc. To upload a file, open a separate window and click through [[Special:Upload]].'''

Delete the above questions and add text here.

[[Category:USA]]
[[Category:Database]]
[[Category:Public domain]]
[[Category:Opensource]]

Applied Stacks - Open Infrastructure Database

2011-12-20T01:45:32Z

Culture25: Category:Database

{{ContentDirectory
|mainurl=http://www.appliedstacks.com/
|ccportal=http://www.appliedstacks.com/
|format=Text, Other
}}
Applied Stacks is a structured wiki that allows web developers to share what tools, libraries, and languages they've used to build specific websites. The database is community built and maintained with its entire contents being licensed under the terms of the GFDL and the CC By SA License.

The site just launched so there's only a few big sites in the database so far (e.g., Google, YouTube, Wikipedia).

If you have your own site, please, feel free to help out by entering it into the database. Or, if you're feeling more ambitious and want to help other web developers in being more informed about what components are behind what sites, please contact me directly about getting involved (e-mail: Daniel.Cer@gmail.com).

[[Category:Opensource]]
[[Category:Coding]]
[[Category:2008]]
[[Category:Database]]

A Database Called The Web

2011-12-20T01:40:14Z

Culture25: Category:Database

{{Presentation
|venue=Open Source Bridge
|date=2009/06/18
|presenter=Nathan Yergler
|slidesurl=http://www.slideshare.net/nyergler/a-database-called-the-web
}}
== See Also ==

* [[ccREL]]

[[Category:Database]]

Open-Source Audio Database

2011-12-20T01:36:26Z

Culture25: Category:Database

{{ContentDirectory
|mainurl=http://www.osaudio.org
|format=Sound
}}

[[Category:Database]]

Online Education Database

2011-12-20T01:35:19Z

Culture25: Category:Database

{{Organization
|Mainurl=http://oedb.org/
|License short name=various
|Open or Free Statement=yes
|Resource URL=http://oedb.org/library/features/150-writing-resources,http://oedb.org/library/beginning-online-learning/200-free-online-classes-to-learn-anything
|Tag=writing
|License_provider=various
}}
provides links to writing sites and free online courses

[[Category:Database]]

Jurisdiction Database

2011-12-20T01:32:00Z

Culture25: Category:Database

The Jurisdiction Database is a dynamic resource containing information for Affiliates, scholars and others interested in CC's international community.

==Research==
The Database contains the full text of the Unported and the jurisdiction-specific 3.0 licenses, which you can query by a range of variables. The license texts have been structured according to [[Property:Relevant_license_sections|tags or keywords]]. [[Special:RunQuery/Jurisdiction_Query|Query]] one or more ported licenses (and Unported) for tagged license sections. Visit the [[Jurisdiction_Database/Research|Jurisdiction Database Research]] page for more information on using the data contained in this database. Please note that Creative Commons is not beginning any new ports in preparation for the upgrade to version 4.0.

==Jurisdictions==
The CC Affiliate Network consists of 100+ affiliates working in over 70 jurisdictions to support and promote CC activities around the world. Members of the Affiliate Network have formal agreements with Creative Commons. Enthusiasm for Creative Commons does not require a formal Affiliate Team. Creative Commoners around the world conduct events and share the news about CC without a formal relationship to Creative Commons. The flags below cover all jurisdictions included in the Jurisdiction Database, both members of the Affiliate Network and those who do not have formal agreements with CC. Click on the flags below to learn more about CC enthusiasts in these jurisdictions.

For more information on what it means to be a formal Affiliate, please see our [[International|Affiliates]] wiki page and our [http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/9/94/Introduction_to_CC_and_Affiliate_Teams.pdf| Introduction document].

<div style="margin-left:50px;margin-right:50px; padding:10px;text-align:center;float:left;display:block;">
{{#ask: [[Category:Jurisdictions]]
|?Flag URL
|?Name
|sort=Name
|format=template|template=Jurisdiction List|link=none|limit=100}}
<div style="clear:both;display:none;"></div>
</div>

<div style="clear:both;"></div>
<center>
==Add a jurisdiction==
{{#forminput:form=Jurisdiction|size=30|button text=Add jurisdiction}}
</center>

==Contributing to the Database==
The Jurisdiction Database contains information on the Unported license and each Creative Commons affiliate jurisdiction (e.g. [[Germany]], [[Estonia]]).

On these pages you have the opportunity to add or edit data about the jurisdiction, or data about the jurisdiction's 3.0 license porting process.

On each page, you can choose to edit the page directly as with a normal wiki page or edit via the "edit with form" link at the top of the page. This form will allow you to input information into labeled boxes and is suggested at least for edits to the sidebar.

The structure of pages follows this schema: <Jurisdiction>/3.0/<License>

* Jurisdiction page (e.g. Germany, Estonia) which has the [[Template:Jurisdiction|template]] and [[Form:Jurisdiction|form]]
* 3.0 page which has [[Template:License|template]] and [[Form:License|form]].
*Specific license page (e.g. CC BY-NC-SA) which has [[Template:Ported License|templates]] and [[Template:License section]] and [[Form:Ported License|form]].

==Map==
{{#ask: [[Category:Jurisdictions]]|?Coordinates|format=openlayers|layers=osm,yahoo,bing,openlayers|height=350|limit=100}}

== Disclaimer ==
{{Infobox|This website provides information about legal topics and information on Creative Commons licenses. It is based on the work of Creative Commons and our Creative Commons Affiliate Teams. Nothing on this website is intended to be used as legal advice. Creative Commons and Creative Commons Affiliate Teams are not law firms and do not provide legal services. Using the Websites or Services or sending us an email does not create an attorney-client relationship. Creative Commons and Creative Commons Affiliate Teams provide this information on an "as-is" basis. Creative Commons makes no warranties regarding any information provided on this website and disclaims liability for damages resulting from their use.}}

__NOEDITSECTION__

[[Category:Database]]

Jurisdiction Database/Map

2011-12-20T01:27:13Z

Culture25: Category:Database

{{#ask: [[Category:Jurisdictions]]|?Coordinates|format=openlayers|layers=osm,yahoo,bing,openlayers|height=400|limit=200}}

[[Category:Database]]

Creative Commons Case Study Database

2011-12-20T01:21:48Z

Culture25: Category:Database

{{Press
|publication=Experience Curve
|date=2008/06/25
|author=Karl
}}
{{Web widget|http://experiencecurve.com/archives/creative-commons-case-study-database}}

[[Category:Database]]

Does Creative Commons Work? Check Out the New Case Studies Database

2011-12-20T01:18:18Z

Culture25: Category:Database

{{Press
|publication=Read Write Web
|date=2008/06/24
|author=Marshall Kirkpatrick
}}
{{Web widget|http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/does_creative_commons_work_database.php}}

[[Category:Database]]

Plant Database

2011-12-20T01:15:49Z

Culture25: Category:Database

{{ContentDirectory
|format=Image,Text,InteractiveResource|mainurl=http://www.mygardenplans.com/plants
}}

===Plant Database===

[[Image:Mygardenplans-screenshot.gif|thumb|300px|right|The Plant Database]]

This interactive [http://www.egardenhome.com/plants plant database] is similar to Wikipedia (e.g. user generated content, share-alike) except that it provides more structured content and search capabilities specific to plants.
*scientific name
*common names
*plant type, for example ''perennial, annual, or shrub''
*minimum and maximum exposure
*minimum and maximum USDA hardiness zone
*minimum and maximum water use
*growth rate
*height
*width
Using this information, visitors can search for plants well suited for their climate.
[[Category:Database]]

Open Media Database

2011-12-20T01:14:18Z

Culture25: Category:Database

{{ContentDirectory
|format=Text|mainurl=http://www.omdb.org/
|ccfeed=http://www.omdb.org/movie/latest.xml
}}
omdb (open media database) is a free database for film media

[[Category:Database]]

Jamendo

2011-12-19T21:27:24Z

Culture25: Category:Database

Freebase

2011-12-19T21:23:46Z

Culture25: Category:Database

{{ContentDirectory
|mainurl=http://www.freebase.com/
|format=Image, Text
}}

[[Category:Database]]

Case Studies/MusicBrainz

2011-12-19T21:18:36Z

Culture25: Category:Database

Category:Database

2011-12-17T23:10:20Z

Culture25: mko

<center><span style="color:red"><big>This category consists of any databases ..</big></span></center>

Case Studies/Whitehouse.gov

2011-08-29T02:57:54Z

Culture25: small change

{{Case Study
|Description=www.whitehouse.gov is the official website of United States’ President Barack Obama and his Administration.
|Mainurl=http://www.whitehouse.gov
|Author=United States Government
|User_Status=Curator, Creator
|Tag=government, whitehouse, public sector information, technical details
|Format=Image, Text, MovingImage
|Country=United States
|Quote=Our commitment to openness means more than simply informing the American people how decisions are made. It means recognizing that government does not have all the answers, and that public officials need to draw on what citizens know.
|Quote_Attribution=President Barak Obama, 1/21/09, http://www.whitehouse.gov/ope/
|Image_Header=http://wiki.creativecommons.org/images/1/1f/Us-whitehouse-logo.jpg
|Image_attribution=whitehouse.gov
|Image_license=http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright
|importance=High
|quality=B-Class
|License_short_name=CC BY
}}
== Overview ==

The United States of America’s President Barack Obama was sworn in on the 20th of January 2009 after being elected on the 4th of November 2008 to be the 44th leader of the American people. During the period between election and inauguration, the President elect’s transitional website (www.change.gov) was licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence.<ref name=”test”> [http://change.gov/about/copyright_policy The Office of the President Elect, Copyright Notice] (2008) at 19 March 2009.</ref> This meant that all content posted by the President elect, his team and any contributors was subject to this licence. During his inauguration, at 12:01pm on the 20th of January 2009, President Barack Obama launched the whitehouse.gov website, the official website of the Obama-Biden Administration also incorporating the same Creative Commons licence (see below).<ref name="test">Benenson, F [http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/12267 Whitehouse.gov’s 3rd Party Content Under CC-BY] (2009) Creative Commons, at 20 March 2009. </ref>

Visitors to whitehouse.gov can choose to view information from a variety of categories, these being:
* “The Briefing Room” which includes the White House Blog, weekly addresses, slideshows, speeches and official statements from the Obama-Biden Administration;
* “The Agenda” which lists the “Obama-Biden Administration’s positions on everything from healthcare and the economy to alternative energy and foreign policy”;
* “The Administration”, which as the name suggests, provides information about the various key figures in the current Administration;
* “About the White House” which provides a historical overview of the US Government; and
* “Our Government” which discusses democracy in the form of the various branches of government.

Of the above, perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of the site is the White House blog. The White House blog discusses various events from spring gardening with the First Lady to live blogs of the Vice President’s meeting of the Middle Class Task Force for green jobs. The White House blog is the US Government’s tool to keeping the American people in-step with the most recent developments in politics, and is pitched on the site as offering exactly that - the “Latest News & Updates”.

After visiting the site, it is easy to observe that the US Government’s goal in maintaining whitehouse.gov is to appear connected with its people. This is apparent from the weekly addresses, slideshows and constant blogging, which aim to create a sense of unity and inclusion for the American community. In teaming with this theme, the Office of Public Liaisons which can be accessed from the website’s Administration tab, offers an opportunity for the American people to give the Obama-Biden Administration feedback and suggestions on running the country. The idea behind this is obvious – “to take the Administration out of Washington and into communities across America, stimulating honest dialogue and ensuring that America's citizens and their elected officials have a government that works effectively for them and with them.” This initiative works in accordance with the idea of using the Creative Commons licence, and building a democracy based on true public participation, and will be discussed in detail below.

== Statistics ==

In March 2009, average weekly traffic rankings for whitehouse.gov were 3,080 people which had increased by an average of 2,729 people per week, for three months. From these users, 72.5% came from the United States of America.

== Licence Usage ==

Pursuant to the United States of America Code, Title 17, s 105, “copyright protection…is not available for any work of the United States Government, but the United States Government is not precluded from receiving and holding copyrights transferred to it by assignment, bequest, or otherwise.” As a result, the information posted by any of the Obama-Biden Administration on the whitehouse.gov site is not capable of being protected by copyright law.

However, this rule does not apply to third party content posted to on whitehouse.gov. Therefore, to align with the open principles of the website, people posting material to the site are required to license that material under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. The White House copyright policy states that as a result “visitors to this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions to whitehouse.gov.”<ref name=”test”> [http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright/ The White House, Copyright Notice] (2009) at 20 March 2009. </ref> This licence enables visitors to the site to copy, distribute, display or perform any of the text or images contained in the site, as well as to make derivative works of these. The only condition to such use is that visitors must attribute the work remixed, copied, distributed, displayed or performed to the author but not in such a way as to imply that the author has endorsed the derivative work.

This licence is the widest Creative Commons licence available that doesn’t give away all rights of the author. There are no restrictions with respect to using any material in a commercial manner, neither are there any restrictions about share-alike conditions. The use of this licence reflects the prohibition that copyright protection (of any kind) is not afforded to the United States Government or its products. In the event that a more onerous Creative Commons licence was imposed on Third Party content, this may be argued as being out of line with this principle.

== Motivations ==

Creative Commons licensing enables the Obama-Biden Administration to work collaboratively with the American people, and demonstrates a genuine focus on democratic participation in the running of the country. The ability to take information from the site with only an obligation to attribute it to the author means that visitors to the site can be fully informed and in turn can fully inform others. Additionally, this process means that the circulation of inaccurate material is kept to a minimum because of the openness of the collaboration process.

Furthermore, after receiving a great response from using a Creative Commons licence on his change.gov site (even though the content contained was copyrightable at the time given that it was not US governmental material yet), President Obama’s choice to continue with the Creative Commons license for whitehouse.gov was strategically logical. Choosing to use the Creative Commons licence clearly influenced and reached out to those sectors of the community who were in tune with current creative technological advancements, and whose attention may not have been attracted otherwise. Creative Commons blogger, Fred Benenson encouraged the use of Creative Commons by President Obama, as did others with comments like “Thank you again, Mr President,” and “How awesome” posted on blogs all over the internet. The clearly favourable responses from the American people to the use of a Creative Commons licence on whitehouse.gov, indicates that the President’s team was successful in utilizing the licence to create a truly democratic process in a creative online environment. The political results of this move are a clear motivation for the use of the Creative Commons licence.

Finally, the convenience of the archiving process of the website has been made abundantly simpler given the use of the Creative Commons Licence. As one blogger put it, using a CC licence for 3rd party material on whitehouse.gov “would make the archiving of the website a much easier proposition.” Obviously the ability to forego any copyright processes and other such records would be a motivation for the maintainers of whitehouse.gov given that the site will encourage high traffic and be in use for the entire term of President Obama.

It can be gathered from comments by the administration on the site, and in particular those on the site of the Office of Public Liaison, that the current US Government is legitimately interested in generating public interest around policy issues in order to build a greater democracy.

== Technical Details ==
Whitehouse.gov has implemented the license image and linked to the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States deed. The license can be found on the [http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright Copyright Policy page]:

[[Image:whitehouse1.png|link=http://www.whitehouse.gov/copyright|border]]

Whitehouse.gov has not implemented any of the [[CC REL]] license metadata specification. The code below generates the license mark above:

<code><nowiki>
<p><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/3.0/us/88x31.png" alt="Creative Commons License" /></a></p>
<p>Except where otherwise noted, third-party content on this site is licensed under a <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License</a>. Visitors to this website agree to grant a non-exclusive, irrevocable, royalty-free license to the rest of the world for their submissions to <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/">Whitehouse.gov</a> under the <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/">Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License</a>.</p>
</nowiki></code><br>
<center>[http://beatles80.narod2.ru <big><tt><span style="color:red">IMAGINE: THE POWER OF CULTURE: THE BEATLES</span></tt></big>]</center>