What are Creative Commons licences? How do you recognise them so that you can make the best use of Open Educational Resources? That's the subject of this article.

I have already mentioned Open educational resources and of what you can do with them. These OER are often published under Creative Commons licences.

But how can you recognise them? How can you find out what rights are attached to them? And consequently, what are the limitations on how you can use them?

Creative Commons licences: voluntary limits on copyright

In principle, contrary to common belief, Everything published on the web and the Internet is subject to copyright.

This means that you should obtain permission from the author for each resource you wish to own, modify, use or redistribute. To overcome this difficulty, some authors renounce some of their rights.

Two dimensions of copyright

Copyright consists of two parts:

• financial rights
• moral rights

Financial rights

Financial rights constitute the remuneration of authors. In Europe, this is the Directive on copyright in the Digital Single Market which governs digital rights. This directive dates from 2019.

By using Creative Commons licences, authors waive certain financial rights. We will look at how this works in more detail later in this article.

Moral rights

Moral rights are imprescriptible. While authors may waive their financial rights, they cannot waive their moral rights. These rights allow authors to oppose publication that does not correspond to their values, for example. This is my experience: I opposed the reproduction of one of my texts by a far-right website. It may also be because the modified work is prejudicial to the author (certain comic book images used for pornographic purposes, for example).

The educational exception

Many teachers believe that their profession automatically protects them against copyright infringement. Unfortunately, this is not true.

In reality, teachers may:

• use excerpts from works rather than the entire work (one page of a comic book, but not the entire album)
• by citing the author's name
• exclusively for educational purposes
• within the school grounds

In other words, as a teacher, I could use a page from a Smurfs comic book for a French exercise, for example. However, I would have to cite Peyo's name on my copy.

But I couldn't use this excerpt on the school blog.

A Belgian school I had the pleasure of working with published a photo on its website of a football player who was a former student of the institution and had become famous. It was unpleasantly surprised to receive a bill for €2,500 from the footballer's agent... In the end, everyone involved settled the matter amicably, but you may not be so lucky... So, be careful.

What are these Creative Commons licences?

Creative Commons is primarily an American foundation. It promotes free educational resources. And to help authors who wish to waive their rights to their works, it has created a series of Creative Commons licences that facilitate the use of these resources.

7 types of Creative Commons licences

What types of Creative Commons licences are there? And, most importantly, how can you recognise them?

They are relatively easy to recognise with a little practice, as each licence has its own symbol. The infographic below illustrates each of these symbols.

1 Public domain: This is the most permissive Creative Commons licence. In Europe, 70 years after an author's death, their work enters the public domain. Every year, literary and artistic works become free of copyright (caution : financial rights exclusively. The beneficiaries of an author's rights can always contest the use of a work because it contravenes the original author's intentions or on grounds of public morality, for example. This is the case with the beneficiaries of Conan Doyle, who filed a complaint against the authors of the Enola Holmes series, broadcast on Netflix. They argued that the author did not create this character in the original work. Their case was dismissed by the court. However, the heirs of Hergé had dozens of derivative works banned and obtained compensation from the ‘fraudsters’.

2 Attribution : simply mention the author's name and add a link to the original work. For the rest, you are free to own, edit, modify, use and redistribute the resource, and even resell it without owing anything to the original author.

3 Attribution-ShareAlike : you must always mention the author's name and add a link to the original work, but you must also share it under the same conditions, i.e. you must share it in the same way. This is the type of Creative Commons licence we use to share our own open educational resources.

4 Attribution-NonCommercial : you may, while citing the author and linking to the original work, own, modify and reuse your resource, but not sell it or use it for any other commercial purpose. However, if you use an infographic distributed under these conditions in a course that you sell, you cannot be sued, according to the principle De minima Lex non curat: the law does not deal with details. However, if your entire course consists of resources distributed under this licence, you may be liable to prosecution.

5 Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike : you may, of course, own, modify, reuse and redistribute your resource under the same conditions as the original, but you may not derive any commercial benefit from it.

6 Attribution-NoDerivatives : you can do anything with this licence, except modify your resource. This is often the case with educational videos and other similar content.

7 Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives : This is the most restrictive of all Creative Commons licences. It requires you to credit the author, of course, but more importantly, it prohibits you from modifying or commercially exploiting the resource. There are internal discussions at the Creative Commons Foundation about removing this licence, which is considered too restrictive.

CAUTION :

• except the Public Domain licence, all the others require you to allocate. This is one of the new features of Creative Commons International LicencesSo don't forget to mention the author and add a link to the original resource.
• all these licences are irrevocable : Think carefully about the type of licence you want to use, as you will not be able to change your mind later.

You can download our infographic in PDF format free of charge. and licensed under Attribution – Share Alike.

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