Marking

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Best Practices for Marking Content with CC Licensing: Creators

As a creator using a CC license, it is important to properly note the license you have chosen so that others know what they can and can't do with your work. No matter what the context, CC licenses should be cited to enable their full potential as a legal tool.

Our license chooser is designed to make this process simple - answer a few questions and a formatted HTML code will be generated for you:

  1. Insert this HTML code into your webpage so that your work is clearly marked.
  2. This HTML code includes RDFa, a very important aspect of marking your work so that others can find it easily.

From there, here are three steps to marking perfection:

  1. The full URI (link) to the license. Example: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/.
  2. A visible notation (most commonly text) that states the license being used. Example: Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
  3. Optionally, the Creative Commons license icons, including the CC logo.

NOTE: Because each CC license represents a different set of permissions and restrictions, it is important to note the specific license used. Displaying only the CC icon, “Creative Commons”, or “Some Rights Reserved” is insufficient; always include the full URL.

In order for others to credit you for your work, it is preferable to provide an attribution name and URL. If your work is a derivative work using other CC-licensed material, be sure to look at our Marking for Users primer as well.

Markingterms.png

See Also: Tagging

Marking Specific Media

While remaining similar in intent, marking will vary depending on the medium. The following are some helpful tips on making sure your media is marked correctly as they will hopefully be shared beyond the originally hosted file.

Below are general examples for each medium, if a more technical explanation is your goal, please see Marking Works (technical).:

Text

Image

  • As adding a watermark or other visual marker on an image ultimately detracts from the original, a safe method of indicating license choice consists of two actions:
    • ensure that the image has [XMP metadata] support with your name, date, and license choice.
    • When publishing the image on your website or another's, make sure that your license choice is clearly visible to humans. For added benefit, ensure search engines can see it also via the use of [RDFa], which you can take from the HTML code given to you by the [license chooser].

Audio

  • However, it is suggested that all audio files which are licensed with a CC license perform two actions:
    • ensure that the audio file has metadata support with your name, date, and license choice.
    • When publishing the audio file on your website or another's, make sure that your license choice is clearly visible to humans. For added benefit, ensure search engines can see it also via the use of [RDFa], which you can take from the HTML code given to you by the [license chooser].
  • Also, if it is practical to do so (for podcasts, for instance, not song tracks), adding an audio bumper to the beginning of the file with your choice of license indicated works.

Video

  • For movies which have the ability to include a 2-5 second copyright frame, it is advised to use the same format as what is suggested for Textual works:
  • Here is a collection of stills which can be used as license bumpers:

For more advanced instructions, see the following pages:

Marking Specific Formats

Marking on Specific Sites

Content Directories

  • [CC-enabled content directories] help you share your works with others while properly indicating the license they are under. Often, they will also make your content searchable for those looking for reusable/shareable works
  • Does your favorite community not have CC-licenses enabled? You can usually indicate that you are using CC somewhere in an info box, but contact them and let them know it is a feature you would like to see

Specific Directories

Guides to help you CC license your material on specific sites are listed below:

Publishing your licensed music to the Internet Archive

Publishing your licensed music to Soundclick

Posting your licensed images at Flickr

Posting your licensed images at Buzznet

Publishing your licensed video at the Internet Archive

Publishing your licensed music to the Morpheus P2P network

Adding a Creative Commons license to your blog (Blogger, Movable Type, and Typepad)

Best Practices for Marking Content with CC Licensing: Users

When reusing a CC-licensed work, either as pure sharing or as a derivative work, it is your legal obligation to include what license is being used, as well as obeying by the license conditions provided by the licensor (content owner/creator). From our FAQ:

If you are using a work licensed under one of our core licenses, then the proper way of accrediting your use of a work when you're making a verbatim use is: (1) to keep intact any copyright notices for the Work; (2) credit the author, licensor and/or other parties (such as a wiki or journal) in the manner they specify; (3) the title of the Work; and (4) the URL for the work if applicable.

You also need to provide the URL for the Creative Commons license selected with each copy of the work that you make available.

If you are making a derivative use of a work licensed under one of our core licenses, in addition to the above, you need to identify that your work is a derivative work, ie. “This is a Finnish translation of the [original work] by [author]” or “Screenplay based on [original work] by [author].”

Crediting in Video

Adding the appropriate credit information to you videos could be as simple as a list of the works used at the end with their associated license. Eg:

This video features the following songs-

“Desaprendere (Treatment)” by fourstones, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

“Some Other Song” by fourstones, available under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

If possible it is desirable to make the title, author, and license a link the viewer can follow.

Crediting in Text

A similar format to the Video example above would be sufficient with the added ability to create links for text available online.

Crediting in Audio

If available online provide a "credit list" of material used and follow the above Text guidelines.

Crediting in Images

If available online provide a "credit list" of material used and follow the above Text guidelines.

Download Markers

More Technical

We also have a document about marking works that is more technical.

External Guides and Fact Sheets

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