As is well known, copyright is an Italian law institute intended to protect the intellectual property of creative works of genius; when an idea is represented in the factual reality, through any artistic form, comes the need to protect it.
Over the years more and more works have been born that spread quickly in the web in the form of files, which means that the copyright’s discipline finds an adequate adaptation to the new requirements of the technology, according to the author’s need that his work obtain greater visibility so as to better exploit its economic potential.
Creative Commons: definition given.
The Creative Commons Public licenses (CCPL) are copyright licenses that allow authors to manage in a practical way how the work can be used, and under which conditions and context, creating a good compromise between “Copyright”, accompanied by terminology all rights reserved (all rights reserved indicating the need for full protection and protection), and “copyleft” accompanied by the term no rights reserved (no rights reserved) which, on the contrary, refers to the need for the dissemination and free movement of the work.
There are 6 different types of Creative Commons licenses that use the following four basic combinable attributes, related to the different usage needs of authors and users:
“Attribution”: the user is obliged to attribute the authorship of the work in the way indicated by the author;- “No derivative works”: states that the work cannot be altered or modified by the user in any way, nor used to create a similar one;
- “Non-commercial”: states that the work cannot be exploited for commercial purposes;
- “Share in the same way”: establishes that the work developed through the modification can only circulate through the original license.
The combination of the four attributes described above results in six licences in total:
- CC-BY (Attribution): the work can be disseminated, modified and used for commercial purposes, provided that you mention or insert a link to the author and specify the CC license used.
- CC-BY-SA (Attribution– Share in the same way): you can spread the work, modify it and use it for commercial purposes, but all changes and modified versions of the work will have the same license; therefore the author and the license must be mentioned and refer to them
- CC-BY-ND (Attribution– No derivative works): the work can be redistributed and used commercially, provided that the author and the license is mentioned, but not processed or modified.
- CC-BY-NC (Attribution– Non-commercial): the work can be disseminated and modified by mentioning the author and the license, but commercial use is not allowed.
- CC-BY-NC-SA (Attribution – Non-commercial – Share in the same way): you can distribute and modify the work, but it is not allowed its commercial use. If you issue a modified version of the work, you must use the original license.
- CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution – Non-commercial – No derivative works): the work can be used mentioning the author and the license, but only for non-commercial purposes and only in original
Advantages on the use of CCs
The use of Creative Commons Public licences brings many advantages to those who work daily on the Internet, such as bloggers, website managers or webmasters. They provide legal certainty because they save users from having to deal with complicated legal issues. They also allow for flexibility by giving the user the opportunity to deal with authors individually. For example, if you want to use a work licensed BY-NC for commercial purposes, you can find an agreement with the artist in writing.
Finally, the licenses allow a great availability of multimedia files since through the use of the CC0 licenses simple and free, the choice of works available for free has increased dramatically. The CC0 licence is an exception, since it distinguishes a’operates as a common public good. The author thus irrevocably waives all rights to his work and can be used, disseminated, modified and reworked in an unlimited manner.