Introduction

Intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) are using CC to share research, data, and educational materials they produce. IGOs, like all creators who want wide dissemination of their content, realize they can benefit greatly from the use of Creative Commons licenses--maximizing the impact of their resources and efforts. A number of IGOs believe that as publicly minded institutions, adopting an open licensing policy for at least some subset of their publications is the preferred mechanism for ensuring the broadest and most widespread use and reuse of the information they publish.

This page explains some of the benefits for IGOs choosing to publish content under Creative Commons licenses, clarifies some unique legal considerations, provides case study of IGOs already using CC, aggregates relevant frequently asked questions, and addresses common licensing scenarios and options available to IGOs.

FAQ: Why CC Licenses Work for IGOs

Some IGOs have voiced concerns over how CC licenses operate given their status as IGOs. Below are listed some common questions and concerns, and why CC can be used.

Can anyone use a CC license? What about governments and intergovernmental organizations ("IGOs")?

Anyone may use CC licenses for works they own, including governments and IGOs. CC licenses are frequently used by governments and IGOs to license copyrightable works. The reasons for doing so vary, and often include a desire to maximize the impact and utility of works for educational and informational purposes, and to enhance transparency.

Creative Commons licenses have desirable features that make them the preferred choice over custom licenses. CC licenses are standard and interoperable, which means works published by different authors using the same type of CC license can be translated, modified, compiled and/or remixed depending on the particular license applied. Creative Commons licenses are also machine-readable, allowing CC-licensed works to be easily discovered via search engines such as Google. These features maximize distribution, reuse and impact of works published by governments and IGOs.

What should IGOs consider before applying a CC license?

Creative Commons recommends that IGOs use the international (formerly known as the "unported") licenses. While no CC license (ported or unported) waives privileges and immunities that may apply to IGOs, the international licenses may be preferred because they have not been adapted to the laws of any particular jurisdiction. Using these licenses instead of a license adapted to the implementation of copyright law in a particular jurisdiction (a “ported license”) avoids any implication that an IGO has consented to jurisdiction or forum for resolution of disputes arising under the licenses, or has agreed that disputes arising under the licenses should be resolved in accordance with a particular jurisdiction’s laws.

Do CC licenses impose obligations on IGOs (or other licensors) that could result in liability?

No. CC licenses do not impose obligations on licensors, but instead grant others permission to use the licensed works consistent with license terms and conditions. The only exception is the undertaking by licensors not to enforce their copyright as long as the license terms are respected. CC licensors have the choice of enforcing (or not) any copyright licenses they grant.

This point is worth stressing. CC licenses impose no affirmative obligations of any kind on licensors. There are more than 500,000,000 CC-licensed texts, photos, websites and other works. Since the licenses were first published more than 8 years ago, CC has not been made aware of any claim made against a licensor under the licenses. The reason is simple: licensors are only waiving their rights to enforce copyright under certain circumstances, not accepting any affirmative duties or obligations in the license itself. This makes CC licenses qualitatively different from the kinds of contracts or agreements that could subject IGOs to the jurisdiction of any particular country or legal process.

As still further protection, in the unlikely event a claim is made against an IGO under a CC license, nothing in the license waives applicable privileges and immunities, or subjects the licensor to the jurisdiction of any given country’s court or legal system.

What law would be applied if an IGO itself chooses to enforce the terms of the license against a violator?

None of the CC 3.0 international licenses (contains a forum or jurisdiction selection clause. The only ported 3.0 licenses that contain a forum selection clause are the Hong Kong 3.0 licenses. This suite is not recommended for use by licensors who want to preserve their right to bring an action in another forum.

A few of the ported licenses contain a choice of law provision. CC suggests that IGOs use the international licenses because they do not contain any forum selection clause or any choice of law, leaving the decision of which forum and law applies to the tribunal in which enforcement of the license is sought by the IGO.

Those responsible for setting intellectual property or publication policy within an IGO should consider making these points clear in their copyright notice. One suggested implementation is:

© YEAR by ORGANIZATION. TITLE OF PUBLICATION is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License (unported): http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/. For the avoidance of doubt, by applying this license ORGANIZATION does not waive any privileges or immunities from claims that it may be entitled to assert, nor does ORGANIZATION submit itself to the jurisdiction, courts, legal processes or laws of any jurisdiction.

Case Studies

What If... Scenarios of Using CC Licenses

The most common scenario when using Creative Commons licenses is as follows: An IGO posts an article about child hunger in Malaysia to their website under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial license (BY-NC).

What happens: A number of other organizations who are also interested in child hunger, both in Malaysia and in other parts of the world. These organizations print the IGO’s article to hand out to their volunteers in the field, they repost the article on their own sites, and they email the article to others interested in the topic, all the time crediting the IGO who created the article. They do not sell it or attempt to make money using the article.

A “but what if” Scenario: An IGO posts a report to their website under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial NoDerivs license (BY-NC-ND). A blogger posts a large section of the report on his blog without attributing the IGO.

What happens: Creative Commons suggests contacting the blogger and asking the blogger to comply with the terms of the license by posting the full report with attribution or to remove the portion that was posted. In most cases where a licensor contacts a licensee to discuss non-compliance with the license, the licensee adjusts their use to comply or removes the offending work. If the licensee refuses to comply, the IGO can bring a suit in the forum of the IGOs choice.

A second “What if”:

What if the blogger attempts to file a declaratory judgment to have a court declare his use of the report legal after being asked by the IGO to comply with the license? This is very unlikely; Creative Commons is unaware of it ever happening. However, were it to happen, the court would use its choice of law rules to decide what law should apply to license. Since the BY-NC-ND license is very clear about it’s requirements for attribution and what constitutes a derivative work, the chances of such a declaratory judgement succeeding in this case are very slim.