Marking your work with a CC license
Contents
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:
- Insert this HTML code into your webpage so that your work is clearly marked.
- 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 license notice perfection:
- The full URI (link) to the license. Example: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/us/.
- 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
- Optionally, the appropriate Creative Commons license button or CC icon and license property icon(s).
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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.
The license chooser provides the proper license button as well as (if you fill in attribution fields) formatted attribution information. Alternatively, high resolution buttons and license icons are available from our logo download page.
If your work is a derivative work using other CC-licensed material, be sure to look at our Marking for Users primer as well.
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
- For documents that are meant to be printed out (not read online) it is suggested to use a title and/or copyright page to include the Copyright notice and CC license information.
- Sample Copyright notice: Copyright (c) 2009 by Greg Grossmeier. This work is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/.
- Here is a collection of visual markers that can be used:
- Advanced Instructions: 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].
- Advanced Instructions: Image
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. Here are some intro bumpers which you can use to build upon.
- Advanced Instructions: Audio
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:
- Sample Copyright notice: Copyright (c) 2009 by Greg Grossmeier. This work is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/.
- Here is a collection of stills which can be used as license bumpers:
- Adnvanced Instructions: Video
Marking Specific Formats
- OpenOfficeOrg Addin for OpenOffice.
- To mark a Microsoft Office word document, you can use the Microsoft Office add-ins for Office 2003/XP or Office 2007
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.
Here are some guides to help you CC license your material on the specific sites listed below:
- Publishing your licensed music to the Internet Archive
- Publishing your licensed music to Soundclick
- Posting your licensed images at Flickr
- Publishing your licensed video at the Internet Archive
- Adding a Creative Commons license to your blog (Blogger, Movable Type, and Typepad)
- To mark a WordPress blog, see Adding a CC mark to a WordPress blog.
