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Introduction to Creative Commons (CC) Licenses and Finding Open Content

Anali Perry and

Eric Prosser

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Today’s Agenda

What is open content?
How do you find open content?
How do you use it?
What are the benefits?

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Can’t I just use whatever I find on the internet?

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Why do we need open content?

Exclusive rights of Copyright

Reproduction
Distribution
Creation of Derivative Works
Public Performance & �Public Display

Anali - For a bit of context, it’s important to understand a bit about U.S. Copyright law. Copyright protects certain types of works, giving the creator certain rights, for a certain period of time.

Copyright holders have these exclusive rights:

Reproduce or copy your work in any fashion at any time.

Distribute or share your work to anyone.

Create Derivative Works - which includes altering, remixing, or building upon your work.

Publicly Perform & Display your work - in public places at any time.

Within the term of copyright, which is life of the author plus 70 years, the author’s permission is needed to do any of these activities - UNLESS a limitation or exception in copyright law applies!

And copyright applies automatically- you don’t have register nor even place a copyright symbol on a work. Copyright is effectively an opt-out situation - it applies whether the creator intended for the work to be copyrighted or not. This creates two main problems:

It can be difficult to determine the original copyright holder, which makes it a challenge to even ask for permission to use a work
Since many copyright owners aren’t aware of their rights (having not opted out), they don’t even know how to communicate with others about those rights.

Combine all of these factors and put them in an online environment, and you have a winning combination of misunderstanding, fear, uncertainty, and doubt around copyright. Not everyone has time to become an expert in copyright law, even though all of us are copyright owners, and often use the copyrighted works of others without permission.

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Free + Freedom

"Dandelion Seed" by Bird Eye is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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Creative Commons

"Creative Commons" by Karin Dalziel is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Anali - While there are lots of ways to provide permission, one of the most familiar is Creative Commons, or CC licenses. CC licenses provide a standard set of terms ranging from very permissive to more restrictive, allowing copyright holders to choose what permissions they want to give to others in advance. The standard set of terms is incredibly helpful - as people become familiar with the different licenses and their abbreviations, it becomes easy to tell at a glance what you can and cannot do with any given work. We’ll give an overview of the different CC licenses in a little bit.

It’s important to know as well that CC Licenses work alongside copyright - so the work is still protected by copyright, and the standard exceptions to copyright and the ability to ask for permission still apply. If the CC license doesn’t allow for the use you need, for example, you can still ask the author for permission (with the added bonus of knowing WHO that person is), or consider whether your use would fall under Fair Use.

Finally, CC licenses are machine readable, so they can be reliably indexed and searched- which is one of the reasons we’re here today!

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How to find open content

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https://libguides.lib.fit.edu/OEREng

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https://libguides.asu.edu/OpenEducation/home

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open educational resources in economics

site:edu

site:org

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https://oercommons.org/

https://merlot.org/merlot/

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https://oasis.geneseo.edu/

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https://oer.deepwebaccess.com/oer/desktop/en/search.html

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https://www.google.com/advanced_search

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Google Images: https://images.google.com/

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Bing! https://www.bing.com/images

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Diverse image sources

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The Noun Project: https://thenounproject.com/

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Ask a Librarian!

https://askalibrarian.asu.edu/

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How do you use open content?

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CC Licenses-Main Points

All licenses require attribution
Three options related to derivative works
Two options related to commercial use

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The Building Blocks

Attribution “BY”- requires you to provide attribution to the creator of the work

Derivative Works “ND” - means no derivatives “SA” - derivatives must be shared under the same license as the original

Commercial Use “NC” - Commercial use is not allowed

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The Six Creative Commons Licenses

	Derivatives �Can Be Shared	Derivatives Can Be Shared ONLY IF �You Share Alike	Derivatives �CANNOT Be Shared
Commercial Use Allowed
Commercial Use �NOT Allowed

All Licenses Require Attribution

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http://www.openwa.org/attrib-builder/

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Why do all this work?

Eric

So why are we doing all of this work? Well, there are a number of reasons and benefits.

The obvious one, and the one that most students are going to appreciate, is that it provides lower costs to the student, who aren’t going to be required to pay for expensive textbooks or supplemental materials, that might not even be completely used. Textbook costs have been shown to be a significant barrier to performance, retention, and persistence toward graduation, and OERs lower that barrier to keep at-risk students on track.

Second, because they’re open, you don’t need to get anyone’s permission or signature to use the materials. You can simply use them in accordance with the CC licenses and know that you’re good to go.

Finally, and I think this is one of the most important benefits, instructors can modify and customize the OER to meet the needs or interest of their students or to address and fulfill their own learning objectives and pedagogical goals.

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Generative AI

But what about using output from ChatGPT or another generative AI model?

“Make a picture of ChatGPT being the ‘elephant in the room’ among a room full of librarians and instructional designers.” DALL-E 2, OpenAI, 1 Apr. 2024. chat.openai.com/chat

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Additional Resources

Open Educational Resources: https://libguides.asu.edu/OpenEducation/OEResources
Open Access Resources: https://libguides.asu.edu/openaccessresources
Explore publicly accessible materials: https://lib.asu.edu/asuforyou

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Thank you!

Anali Perry�Head, Open Science & Scholarly Communication�anali.perry@asu.edu

Eric Prosser

Head, STEM Division

Engineering & Entrepreneurship Librarian

eric.prosser@asu.edu