Difference between revisions of "Making TOS Work With CC"

While we try to make CC licensing as simple as possible, the fact remains that copyright is complicated, and there are lots of things to consider when you decide to integrate CC licensing to your website. This page offers guidelines and considerations to help you update your website terms of service to make them work with your use of CC licenses.

Categories of content

There are three buckets of content to consider when integrating CC licensing to your site:

1. content owned by you, the platform provider;
2. content owned by contributors; and
3. third party content uploaded by you and your contributors.

CC licensing can be used for any or all of these buckets. For each bucket of content, regardless of whether you use CC licensing, the terms of use should define the universe of applicable content, and address ownership of the content and its applicable licensing terms, and the conditions of upload where relevant.

1. content owned by you as platform provider

If you choose to apply a CC license to this category of content, you should --

• make sure you have the rights you need to license it under a CC license;

• remove restrictions from the TOS on activities the CC licenses expressly permit;

for example, the terms of service must not prohibit changes to content on the site if the content is licensed under a CC license that permits adaptations.

• remove restrictions from the TOS on uses of the content that are permitted by the relevant CC license.

for example, the terms of service must not require more burdensome attribution than what is dictated by the CC license.

Reps & warranties: Although the CC license itself does not include any reps or warranties, as the rights holder you may include reps and warranties about the content in the terms of use.