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CC Licenses

ATTRIBUTION (BY) ATTRIBUTION – SHARE ALIKE (BY SA)

Apart from requiring references to the author(s), Just like BY, this CC variant allows all kinds of re-use
rights holder(s), source of the work and the license and editing, even for commercial purposes. Ho-
text itself, this CC variant puts no further restrictions wever, all edited versions of the work (derivatives)
on the user. She can use the work freely and edit it must, if they are published or distributed, be availa-
in any thinkable way. Therefore, using the work in ble under this very same license.
remixes and mashups is allowed.

Only these two license variants are certified to be free licenses in the meaning of free-
domdefined.org and are thus suitable to make sure works licensed under stay re-usable.

ATTRIBUTION – This CC variant does not allow

NO DERIVATIVES the work to be edited. Com-
mercial uses are allowed.

All CC variants above can be combined with the NC module ( for „non-commercial use only“; commercial
use requires additional approval ). This leads to six possible CC variants altogether, these being the addi-
tional three:

There‘s an additional legal tool called CC0 (CC-Zero) for setting a work free without any
specific conditions. CC0 thus is a complete waiver of copyright and related rights. This
is meant to help creatives to voluntarily place works in the “Public Domain.“ According to Creative Com-
mons, this tool is especially suitable for databases.
Preface

All around the world an increasing number of people uses the public licenses offered by Creative
Commons (CC) to free up the results of their creativity for re-use by others. Also projects, institutions
and initiatives ever more often decide to subscribe to the CC motto: “Some rights reserved.” One of
the most popular examples for this is the Wikimedia Foundation, who together with its worldwide
community of activists in 2008 decided to license its universal encyclopedia Wikipedia under the CC
license BY SA – Attribution Share-Alike.

This license is only one of six licenses in CC‘s suite of core licenses. The most widely used licenses
from this set show the additional abbreviation NC for “non-commercial use only” in their names.
Many licensors who intuitively choose such an NC license do so with the understandable intention to
prevent their works from being unwantedly and uncontrollably exploited for business by others. The
many other consequences of this choice, however, are usually unknown. This brochure by Wikimedia
Deutschland, Creative Commons Germany and iRights.info is meant to address this lack of know-
ledge. We are looking forward to comments and suggestions regarding this endeavour and hope that
it will yield many aha experiences.

Special thanks go to the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany who supported and facilitated the
English translation of the original text.

John H. Weitzmann
CC DE Legal Project Lead
CONTENT

PREFACE ............................................................................................................................. 3
introduction ................................................................................................................ 5

1 �� What do we understand by Open Content? ........................................................... 6

2 �� Why is content placed under a CC license? ........................................................... 8
3 �� Why are there different CC licenses? ........................................................................ 9
4 �� How does the NC module affect the way content can be distributed? ................ 10
5 �� What is commercial use?.......................................................................................... 11
6 �� Can a CC license with the NC module prevent that my content is used
by radicals or extremists?.......................................................................................... 12
7 �� I want to keep my content accessible through CC licensing. Is the NC module
the only option to prevent the appropriation of my content through commercial
enterprises?................................................................................................................ 13
8 �� Can NC-LICENSED content be used in the Wikipedia project?............................ 14
9 �� Can you release NC-licensed content specifically and separately for Wikipedia
despite the NC restrictions? ..................................................................................... 15
�
10 Does the NC module prevent commercial usage? ................................................ 15
11 � Am I ready to act against the commercial use of my content? ............................. 16
12 � Can NC-licensed content be printed in newspapers? ........................................... 16
13 � Can NC-licensed content be used in schools, training and universities?.............. 17
14 � How do you classify NC-licensed content that is first used in school,
but later outside of school? .................................................................................... 17
�
15 How does NC affect mashups? Not all CC licenses can be combined
with each other. ....................................................................................................... 18
�
16 Can the commercial usage of a third party benefit the author?........................... 19
17 � Can a user of CC licensed content create the outward impression that the author
endorses at particular usage?.................................................................................. 20
18 � Can the NC module still have any advantages?..................................................... 20
19 � Which is the license Wikipedia content is published under?................................ 21

IMPRINT ............................................................................................................................ 23
Introduction

With the Creative Commons licenses, creatives Within the different modules of the Creative
are offered simple means to free up their works Commons licenses, especially the restriction NC
in a way that allows the public to use them. In – noncommercial use only – is very popular
a time where knowledge becomes ever more im- with the authors. A commercial usage is not allo-
portant for the individual‘s development and that wed under this condition. However, deciding on
of society, the creative commons and knowledge a license that does not allow commercial use has
commons gain in importance. Part of the know- extensive consequences: Many possibilities of use,
ledge commons all works created by humani- like the inclusion in knowledge communities and
ty that are freely accessible and re-usable. Only archives, the Wikipedia, local newspapers, publi-
through commons is safeguarded that all humans cations, compilations and mashups, are in fact
obtain equal chances when it comes to accessing excluded and thus require additional approval –
information, education and knowledge. and that despite the fact that these inclusions are
often wanted by the authors.
Many creatives want to take part in establishing
modern knowledge societies. They do not want This booklet will explain all consequences of
to keep “all rights reserved”– quite the contrary: choosing a CC license variant restricted to non-
They have an interest in seeing their works used commercial use only (NC). Often enough, the
by many. This is particularly due to the oppor- intended effects which lead to selecting the NC
tunities the Internet offers in distributing and module can just as well be achieved by other me-
exchanging knowledge and information in an ans. In some cases, the NC module is completely
unprecedented manner. unsuited to achieve the effects intended by the
author. On the other hand, its use has extensive,
Creative Commons (CC) is the best known set of often unwanted consequences on the possibilities
tools to release own content. However, not every of content distribution. The decision to apply the
CC license is alike. A strong point of CC is to NC module need therefore be carefully consi-
give creatives the opportunity to frame the usa- dered.
ge conditions that are most important to them.
The user (the public) obtains only certain rights,
while the remaining rights stay with the author
or rights holder of the work. This is achieved by
means of a set of different licensing modules.

5
Imagine a world in which every
1
single human being can freely What do we understand by
share in the sum of all knowledge. Open Content?
That‘s our commitment. Content that can be used
­ freely.
Wikimedia Foundation

Open Content is content that is open and freely

accessible – by default, not only after the author
gives individual permission. This is not a matter
of course. Copyright law assumes that content
may only be distributed and used when the ow-
ner of these rights explicitly allows it. However, to
use this ground rule in the digital age is becoming
more and more questionable. Human culture has
always been shaped by the drive to enhance the
existing. Everyone builds on that which others
have created.

Digital content can be reproduced and used as ea-

sily as never before. Therefore, that which is tech-
nically possible should be rendered possible by
law. The ideal of free knowledge, that everything
should always be accessible to everybody, needs a
legal basis which smoothly applies to the context
of the Internet. Scientists in particular have high-
lighted the large potential of the Internet and the
free exchange of knowledge. In 2003, German
scientific organizations demanded free access to
scientific works in the Declaration of Berlin:

“Our mission of disseminating knowledge is only

half complete if the information is not made wi-
dely and readily available to society. New pos-

6
The free knowledge universe

There are now many projects that made it their mission to foster and spread free know-
ledge. This graphic shows only a few of them: The online encyclopedia Wikipedia is the
place where its users can collect the knowledge of humanity; Open Access enables exchange
of knowledge in academia; the Open Source Software Community collaborates to develop
software based on openly available code; the Open Knowledge Foundation promotes the
publication, use and re-use of open knowledge bases. All this is done by applying free licen-
ses, of which the Creative Commons Public License (CCPL) and the GNU General Public
License (GPL) are prominent examples.

7
sibilities of knowledge dissemination not only in the first place. Instead of the usual principle
through the classical form but also and increa- of copyright law, where all rights are reserved by
singly through the open access paradigm via the the author, the use of these licenses only reser-
Internet have to be supported. We define open ves certain rights. The content is made available
access as a comprehensive source of human for the public to use.
knowledge and cultural heritage that has been
approved by the scientific community. In order Creative Commons is not in conflict with exis-
to realize the vision of a global and accessible re- ting copyright law, but is built on it. Without
presentation of knowledge, the future Web has copyright law the public release would not work
to be sustainable, interactive, and transparent. at all. Content protected by copyright, such as
Content and software tools must be openly ac- movies, music, texts and images, can be freely
cessible and compatible.” used by means of such a license.
In the context of software the Open Source
principle was devised. Open Source means that
the source code of software is freely accessible
to everyone. Open Source was introduced, so
that software developers do not have to be-
2
gin all over again when they are writing new Why is content placed
software, but can build on existing works. To
ensure this principle the GNU General Public under a CC license?
License (GPL) was defined. Software under this To make it more usable.
license can be used and extended by everyone.
The Open Source approach in software explicit-
ly also allows commercial use. Its success is even
largely dependent on this option.
Open Content is based on the same basic idea Many creatives want their texts, their music or
as Open Source software: It should also be allo- movies to be used by as many people as possi-
wed to use written works, movies and multime- ble (distribution of works is de jure also a type
dia works freely. The by far best known option of usage). They have an interest in the free ex-
to license content as Open Content and hence change of information. Especially educational
allows free use, is the Creative Commons (CC) content is created with the aim to reach as many
set of public licenses. students as possible. In this case, any legal re-
striction is counter-productive. Here, the most
Creative Commons was developed in 2001 as severe restriction of all is to do nothing. What
an initiative of law professor Lawrence Lessig sounds paradox reflects the legal default: “All
at Stanford University. It is meant to provide rights reserved.” Whoever creates something
comprehensible licenses for the public release new, but does not elaborate if and how his
of content for everybody, and thus further the works can be used, is assumed to say “Nobody
cultural commons, or even make them possible is allowed to use my content.” The CC licenses

8
therefore provide a simple solution to express
the desire to share and say “Everybody is al-
lowed to use my content under the following
terms and conditions.”
3
Why are there different CC
The straightforwardness and comprehensibility
of the CC licenses has contributed greatly to licenses?
their widespread use. They are also legally com- CC licenses reflect the dif-
pliant and adapted internationally to the parti- ferent interests of the au-
cularities of the different legal systems.
People who use CC licenses often do this with thors.
the intent to have their works used in social,
cultural and educational institutions. CC licen-
ses that contain the NC module, which allows Common to all CC license variants is the mind-
only a free, non-commercial use, are often con- set that the usage of content shall be facilitated.
sidered as a counter model to a world where But creatives, authors, directors and musici-
even charitable or not-for-profit institutions are ans do not all have the same understanding of
charged for every single usage. An example for which usage of their works they want to allow.
this are the license fee claims for copying and The six different variants of CC are answering
distributing singing sheets in kindergardens, to these demands. They offer a flexible tool to
which have caused public outrage. However, by tie the usage to certain conditions. A good ex-
existing law, the claims are justified. By applying ample is the question, if the authors want to
a CC license, many authors want to dissociate allow editing and remixing of their works. For
themselves from these practices. The choice of some, it is crucial that their work remains un-
the NC module is often also a statement against changed. These creators can ensure that by ap-
a style of profiteering deemed inappropriate. plying the No Derivatives module (ND for
short), and still allow other usage.
However, not every type of commercial use is
negative. Quite the contrary – it is neither amo- Others are interested in having their work used
ral nor detrimental to the community when in remixes, collages and mashups. They consi-
content is also distributed by those who have a der the creation of content merely a transitional
financial interest. Often, the success of cultural stage in a process. Their own content is based
and educational work depends highly on exis- on the old and shall be developed into newer
ting commercial usages. works. Those who assign a CC license out of
this mindset will not choose the No Derivatives
restriction.

If you hold the Open Content principle very

dear, you can express through the Share-Alike

9
module (SA) that your content may be edited commercial usages and would not be allowed if
and distributed, but only under the same (li- the NC module was included.
cense) terms. It thus remains freely accessible.
In the context of education and training, a great
Some creatives may want to exclude the com- number of institutions depend on their own re-
mercial usage of their content. To address this venues, as they are not (to the full extent) pu-
demand, each of the license types can be exten- blicly funded. The dependency on course fees
ded with the module “Non-commercial use leads to their classification as commercial. They
only” (NC). However, this is not advisable in are therefore not allowed to use content marked
every case, since it restricts many usage rights with a CC license that includes the NC modu-
which may actually be in the interest of the le, at least not without asking for permission of
creator or rights owner of the work. the author.

Even the usage in many blogs becomes illegal

under the NC condition. Many bloggers dis-
4 play advertisements to lower their hosting costs
or have an additional income. Therefore, the
How does the NC module usage in these blogs is no longer – or at least
not unambiguously – non-commercial.
affect the way content can
be distributed?

5
NC-licensed content cannot
be distributed as widely and
easily. What is commercial use?
Any use, that is primarily
directed toward commercial
advantage or private moneta-
If you mark your content as NC, it cannot be
included in free knowledge databases like Wi- ry compensation.
kipedia, in some kind of open media archives
and in Open Source projects. It is often a com-
mercial use that helps not-for-profit initiatives
to have their breakthrough. The Wikipedia
DVD which was produced commercially by Di- When hearing about commercial use, you would
rectmedia has greatly increased the popularity often think of multinational companies like Mi-
of Wikipedia. The same goes for the inclusion crosoft or Shell, of stock trading, quick money
into commercial repositories – both are legally or profiteering. The term „commercial use“

10
however contains no moral evaluation of the Another approach to distinguish commercial
business conduct of the respective institutions from non-commercial use could be to evaluate
or persons, but merely describes that they are not the specific usage, but the type of user. Then
obtaiting a commercial advantage and possibly you would only have to assess whether the user
aim for a financial remuneration. And that is or institution – as a whole – can be considered
necessary for anyone who is not fully financed commercial. Public schools and museums could
by public funds or private donations. then be classified as non-commercial based on
their not-for-profit mandate, and one would not
It is evidently commercial usage if a compa- have to inspect the individual use cases for their
ny uses an image or a text on their company commercial nature. Unfortunately, the NC mo-
website. It is also commercial use if an image dule does not make it this easy, since it explicitly
is printed in a book that is published by a pub- mentions the acts that have to be non-commer-
lishing house, entirely independent of whether cial. Hence we have to assume a commercial
the author receives a remuneration or possibly act if, for example, content is sold in a museum
even has to pay a printing fee to make the publi- shop which is aimed at generating revenue, re-
cation possible. The publishing house acts with gardless of the legal status of the shop and the
a commercial interest in either case. not-for-profit status of the museum.

A more difficult decision is whether private blogs Completely irrelevant for the distinction bet-
act with commercial interest, if they (or their hos- ween commercial and non-commercial use is
ting service) display advertisements and achieve whether the user is even financially able to pay
revenues. These revenues are often minimal and license fees or if they would pay for usage rights
cover barely the hosting costs. There are good in comparable situations. A charitable fund, for
arguments against classifying these undertakings example, that uses a picture within their not-
as predominantly aimed at a monetary recom- for-profit mandate, is considered non-com-
pensation, and therefore allow to call them non- mercial under the NC license terms even if it
commercial. The distinction is difficult, though, disposes of considerable means and would pay
and many cases are disputed. To stay with the photographers in a similar situation.
example of the private blog: At which point does
a blog lose its non-commercial nature? Already if But there are very few not-for-profit institutions
the advertisement revenue surpasses the operati- these days that have adequate funding and do
onal costs? Or when the first penny is earned? Or not depend on additional revenues – which
only when an ‘appreciable‘ income is generated? again places them into the gray area of our att-
empted distinction. To completely avoid the
Out of precaution, this difficult distinction will NC module and its restrictions would avoid
often lead the responsible party to not make these uncertainties.
use of CC licensed content, when the license
contains the NC module. Even where the usage
would actually be acceptable as non-commercial.

11
6 7
Can a CC license with the NC I want to keep my content
module prevent my content accessible through CC licen-
from being used by radicals sing. Is the NC module the
or extremists? only option to prevent the
No. Extremists want to appropriation of my con-
change society, not make tent through commercial
profit. enterprises?
No. There are other options,
such as the Share Alike module.

Radicals and extremists follow a political agen-

da. Their objectives are at the same time not
necessarily commercial, not aimed at a business An equally effective yet often more efficient way
advantage or financial remuneration, but at po- to prevent content from being used with financi-
litical and social changes. Radical political and al intentions is the Share Alike (SA) module. It
religious extremists are often organised in non- allows the publication of adaptations only under
economic associations. Hence, a NC licensing the same or similar licenses.
can in a way even privilege the usage of content
by extremists. Companies or private actors who want to appro-
priate creative content can usually achieve this
In other terms: A scientist who intends to pub- goal relatively easily by editing the work and re-
lish a study of political extremism with a publi- stricting the use of the edited version based on a
shing house will not be allowed to use the con- separate new copyright it carries. The Share Alike
tent, if it is protected by the NC module against module in the Creative Commons license set can
commercial use, because the publisher is acting prevent that. All appropriated versions, must be
with commercial interest. An extremist group, published under the same license as the original
however, which formally acts as an association content. This means that under the restrictions
is well allowed to use the same content under set by CC, the new content remains as freely
the NC terms. accessible as the original content. Furthermore,
when the edit consists in enhancing own content
with freed-up external CC-SA content, the CC-

12
SA license works in a contagious or viral way: be prohibited for major news sources or other
The newly created work (the edited version) as a commercial websites to use Wikipedia content
whole can only be published under the same li- verbatim without payment and without asking
cense. This alone prevents many companies from for permission. Wikipedia benefits greatly from
appropriating free content which is licensed un- the commercial use of their content. They are
der Share Alike. It would require them to release integrated tightly with several search engines,
their own reproduction, advertisement materials which further the distribution of Wikipedia
(or whatever the end result might be used for) to content, and hence the knowledge compiled by
the public under the same Share Alike license – collaboration. The operation of a search engine
and that is one thing most companies, especially is an undoubtebly commercial enterprise aimed
larger ones, are not willing to do. at profits

At the same time the Share Alike module – as Another example for commercial usage which
opposed to the NC module – does not have the supports Wikipedia is the distribution of the
negative effect of hindering the distribution of DVD versions of Wikipedia, such as the Ger-
content (in blogs for example) in general. Qui- man version produced by the Berlin-based
te the opposite: With the Share Alike license all company Directmedia. Within a period of short
edits are under a CC license and the appropriated time this DVD became a bestseller – because of
version can thus be used afterwards not only be its low price tag and a software with extended
the editor but by any third party. search functions. A prerequisite for creating a
Wikipedia DVD was that Directmedia was able
to use its contents simply because it is allowed
by the license. Furthermore, the project encou-
8 raged to sort out incomplete articles, so that
they would not end up in the DVD project. Fi-
Can NC-licensed content be nally, the Wikipedians helped to make the data
indexable and sortable. In return, Directmedia
used in the Wikipedia pro- donated one Euro per sold DVD to German
ject? Wikipedia and inflated the Wikimedia image
No. Wikipedia contents are archive with a content donation of 10,000 re-
productions of public domain artworks.
being used commercially.
The business concept of the Wikipedia DVD
worked because the software added new fea-
tures and made the content more attractive, but
also because it used a different medium. Even
One of the reasons for the widespread and in- if you often get to hear that the difference bet-
tense usage of Wikipedia is that its contents ween online and offline is fading, the traditio-
may be used commercially. Otherwise it would nal lexicon and reference format of the DVD

13
appealed to a different target group than the In May 2005, Wikipedia‘s founder Jimmy Wales
Internet encyclopedia was able to attain. By consequently announced that content which
this process, new readers could be interested can only be used non-commercially or can only
in Wikipedia. But all of this was a commercial be used with separate approval, is not permitted
act, which would not have been permitted if in Wikipedia and has to be deleted.
the license that is used by default in Wikipedia
would contain the NC module.

10
9 Does the NC module prevent
commercial usage?
Can you release NC-licensed
Yes, but often in all the
content specifically and
wrong places.
separately for Wikipedia des-
pite the NC restrictions?
No. The accessibility rules of
Wikipedia must not become
too complex. The NC restriction in CC licenses does indeed
prohibit commercial usage, but – as any clause
in any legal contract – does not in itself guaran-
tee that others abide by this prohibition. Just as
in many other areas of copyright law, breaches
of the restrictions imposed by CC licenses are
Wikipedia rejects separate side agreements – just common. The NC module is no exception.
as all other initiatives and projects that work on
the free content principles. Otherwise, that You have to consider that many companies see
third parties which want to collaborate with Wi- breaches of copyright law as a mere financial
kipedia could be hindered and harmed. These risk, and may intentionally defy its restrictions.
are, for example, local initiative, which want to Seen from this perspective, the NC module
use Wikipedia content in local newspapers, as hinders exactly those companies and institu-
well as search engines and press services wanting tions that respect copyright law most. That
to integrate Wikipedia content. Each of these includes public institutions which cooperate
would have to pay close attention as to which with commercial partners, but also knowledge
content is freely accessible and which is subject databases like Wikipedia, open media archives
to individual side agreements – an additional or Open Source projects. All these projects, ini-
effort that would suffocate many cooperations. tiatives and institutions which explicitly endor-

14
se free access to knowledge are subject to closer copyright law are common, and CC licensed
scrutiny to not breach the restrictive copyright content is no exception – and the decision for
regulations. In order not to endanger their or agains a legal dispute will always depend on
work, they have to study license agreements many considerations. However, if you do not
with the utmost care. Since the possibility of intend to act against commercial use anyway,
commercial use cannot be ruled out altogether the NC license variant will only discourage tho-
– and often it should not be excluded since the- se who observe the law meticulously, especially
se initiatives are interested in spreading know- if they are not perfectly certain whether they are
ledge – content licensed with a NC condition considered non-commercial. These are usually
will not be used by them. the users that you do not want to scare off.

This creates a paradox: The NC restriction is

most minutely heeded where its consequences
are least intended.
12
Can NC-licensed content

11 be printed in newspapers?
No. Newspapers are in any
Am I ready to act against case commercial users.
the commercial use of my
content?
If not, you should consider
not to use the NC module in Newspapers are operated to generate revenue;
the first place. they aim at a commercial advantage and a finan-
cial recompensation. That is a fact irrespective
of the fundamental right of free press and the
great influence of newspapers on public opini-
on and debate. Furthermore, the classification
of newspapers as commercial is valid even when
To restrict a Creative Commons license by me- they are – such as in the case of advertisement
ans of the NC module is only reasonable if the journals – distributed for free. These papers are
author is also willing to act against commercial financed by advertisement, and thus operate for
use, for example in court. a monetary advantage. Of course, a CC licensed
content can be printed in newspapers, despite
That does not mean that you have to fight the NC module, if the author explicitly agrees.
every single breach of copyright. Breaches of This equally applies to any other commercial

15
use. The great advantage of the CC standard sufficient public funding, in further disad-
licenses is, however, that you do not have to ne- vantage, as they can not make use of CC li-
gotiate an agreement in every sincle case. This censed content containing the NC module.
effort-saving effect of standard licensing is lost
if the NC module demands case-by-case nego-
tiations.

14
13 How do you classify NC-
licensed content that
Can NC-licensed content
is first used at school, but
be used in schools, training
later outside of school?
and universities?
If used outside of school,
No, not everywhere.
the use is often to be consi-
dered commercial.

Depending on the legal status of the provider,

a school, trade school or university can be clas- The use of CC licensed content with the NC
sified either as commercial or non-commercial. module is usually not an issue if it happens
Today, a large number of schools, universities, strictly within public schools. These schools
training centres professional schools, scientific have an educational mandate and do not fol-
and cultural institutes are not exclusively pub- low commercial goals. A different case is that of
licly funded and are not exclusively financed by private schools which also generate revenue (see
donations or endowment capital. These educa- question 13).
tional institutions depend on own revenues. By
this orientation, to generate own revenue, their Therefore, a wide spectrum of possible uses of
enterprise is aimed at monetary recompensati- NC-licensed content is opened within those
on to a dregree that can no longer be considered schools that would otherwise classify as com-
negligible. mercial. Students and professors may print
texts, play songs; Students may – as long as the
The less public funding an institution gets, No Derivatives (ND) module is not applied
the higher is the necessity to acquire addi- and thus prevents it – create mashups and col-
tional revenue by commercial means. This lages and edit the content. Even though the re-
puts educational institutions, that already sults are unproblematic in a school setting they
are in a difficult position as they do not have become problematic outside of the school pre-

16
mises. If for example the local newspaper wants
to report on the results of a student competi-
tion, they cannot just reprint the collage with
the CC licensed contents, if the NC module is
15
included. This would require the permission of How does NC affect
the original author.
mashups?
Since the CC-NC license makes the school a Not all CC licenses can be
location of free access to copyrighted content, combined with each other.
many students gain a false sense of security if
they use the same content outside of school. In
this case, the threshold of commercial use is ea-
sily breached. If for example such content is up-
loaded to social networks on the Internet, the Works that are licensed under CC-BY-SA (At-
mere possibilty of access by third parties (for tribution, Share-Alike) license can only be com-
example other people in the social network) bined and used with works that bear the same
would constitute a breach of the NC module license or the freer license type CC-BY (Attri-
in the license, since the hosters and operators bution). The combination of CC-licensed con-
of social networks usuall act with commercial tent with other combinations of the different
interest. Although the actual breach will, in modules, especially those without NC module,
these cases, be effected by the respective hoster is not permitted.
or operator, these companies usually have clau-
ses in their usage agreements that allow them Thus, severe problems are caused by the fact
to claim recompensation for incurred damages that licenses have to be compatible with each
from their users. other if you want to combine contents. This
applies especially to mashups, which originate
This is one more reason why you should not from a culture of free manipulation of content,
use the NC restrictions on content for educa- and consider CC licensing as supporting their
tional purposes. Especially students should not cultural values. In fact, however, many license
be put into the situation that their unproblema- combinations are not compatible, especially
tic conduct within school leads to a carelessness NC licenses cannot be combined with other li-
that puts them in conflict with the law outside censes that do not have this restriction.
of school. Now, as a creative professional you
could take up the position that you will not Furthermore, mashups are often created wit-
pursue or hang a lantern on such unwanted hout the intent of financial recompensation,
breaches of your licenses. However, then you which initially makes the use of NC-licensed
should ask yourself why you had to choose the content legitimate. Later, those mashups can
NC module in the first place (see question 11). become popular and are republished in blogs
and on other platforms. This puts their makers,

17
who legitimately used NC-licensed content
when making the mashup, in a legal gray area
where the usage can be attributed a commercial
character.
17
Can a user of CC-licensed
content create the outward

16 impression that the author

endorses at particular usa-
Can commercial usage ge?
by a third partybenefit the No. A CC-license explicitly
author? Yes. does not suggest endorse-
If you are interested in ment.
distributing your content
widely, you should allow
commercial uses.
CC does not affect the personality rights of the
author. A user must not implicitly or explicitly
assert or imply any connection with, sponsor-
ship or endorsement by the CC licensor. This
„no endorsement“ clause, as it is called in the
A commercial use is not by definition an abu- US, is a standard provision in many open con-
sive use. Wherever publicity and attention for tent license models.
the content are the primary goal, any use of the
content usually benefits the author, as it incre-
ases their popularity. Especially content that is
used in the context of public education initiati-
ves should be permitted to be used in as many
distribution channel as a possible, as maximum
outreach is the primary goal.

18
 However, despite focussing on a business mo-
del that is based on the kind of exclusivity of-
18 fered by classic copyright law, these publishers
can have an interest in their content being used
Can the NC module still in at least non-commercial areas of education
and science, as this may boost sales via classical
have any advantages? distribution.
Yes, but less often than you
would think.

19
Which is the license Wiki-
For private individuals, there is usually no good
reason for a restriction to non-commercial use pedia content is published
only. In many cases there is very little realistic under?
chance that a commercial user is willing to pay The CC-BY-SA license.
money for using the content. A CC license has
the main goal to make the content as widely
spread as possible. For achieving that the NC
module is often a hindrance.
In order to increase the commons of free know-
In turn, anyone who has no intention of seeing ledge and culture, Wikipedia requires every
the content widespread without strict control author to allow the general public a free reuse
over it, can achieve this goal by excluding com- of their articles. This is achieved by a Creative
mercial uses. CC licenses with the NC module Commons license that includes the Attribution
can make sense for publishers, whose business (BY) and Share Alike (SA) modules, meaning
model is based on the traditional “all rights re- that the license requires giving credit to the au-
served”, who invest considerably in a publica- thor and distributing any edited versions under
tion and hold their own distribution channels. the same terms. Texts that were not created by
Such publishers have no particular interest in the authors themselves, or texts that originated
allowing competitors to gain profit from their in a collaboration, may also only enter Wikipe-
investment. The benefits of commercial use by dia if they are put under a CC-BY-SA license or
third parties, namely a better and faster disse- a compatible license.
mination, is less important for them because
they maintain their own, often costly distribu- Up until 2009 Wikipedia had used the GNU
tion operations. Free Documentation License (GFDL) by the
GNU initiative. The Free Software Foundation
had originally developed this license for soft-

19
ware documentation, hence it was too com- Just as the NC module, the No Derivatives
plicated and not ideally suited for Wikipedia. (ND) module is also not permitted for Wiki-
Nonetheless, the GFDL open content licenses pedia articles. Wikipedia thrives from allowing
did not have to be abandoned when Wikipedia its articles to be corrected, extended and edited
was transitioning to a CC-BY-SA license. The by others. Therefore ND is not compatible with
old license is still used to avoid possible contra- the Wikipedia concept.
dictions. Commercial use of content is explicit-
ly permitted by both licenses. The Share Alike
module ensures that content cannot be taken
from the world-wide pool of freely accessible
knowledge by editing and republishing, but
that it remains a part of free knowledge and free
culture.

Attribution to the author is an important part

of every CC license. This is true for Wikipedia
authors as well. Since the encyclopedic entries
were created by a multitude of authors in colla-
boration, the attribution for Wikipedia articles
should be the following:

Users should attribute in one of the following

fashions ...

- through hyperlink (where possible) or URL

to the Wikipedia article to which you contri-
buted,

- through hyperlink (where possible) or URL

to an alternative, stable online copy that is free-
ly accessible, which conforms with the license,
and which provides credit to the authors in a
manner equivalent to the credit given on the
project website; or

- through a list of all authors, but please note

that any list of authors may be filtered to exclu-
de very small or irrelevant contributions.

20
imprint

Free Knowledge based on Creative Commons Licenses Responsible for the content of this publication:
Consequences, risks and side-effects of the license Jan Engelmann (Wikimedia Deutschland)
module „non-commercial use only – NC“ Dr. Paul Klimpel (iRights.info)
John H. Weitzmann (CC DE)
Written by Dr. Paul Klimpel
Translated into English by the community via the Layout
Transifex.com platform studio grau, Berlin
Translation revised and edited by John H. Weitzmann
Copyright May 2012 by Wikimedia Deutschland,
Translation supported and facilitated by: iRights.info, CC DE
Open Knowledge Foundation
Gneisenaustraße 52, 10961 Berlin The text of this brochure is published freely
www.okfn.org under the following Creative Commons licen-
se:
Editorial Team: Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike, Version
Valie Djordjevic, John H. Weitzmann, Philipp Otto 3.0 Unported, (CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported)

Publishers: This license means inter alia:

Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Under the conditions that you attribute the author
Freien Wissens e.V. and publisher as „P. Klimpel - Publ.: Wikimedia
Obentrautstr. 72, 10963 Berlin Deutschland, iRights.info, CC DE“ and cite the
www.wikimedia.de license‘s name „License: CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported“
info@wikimedia.de and URL (see below), you are free to copy, distribute
+49 (0) 30-219 15 826-0 and use the text of this brochure in any manner, also
commercially, whether online, offline or otherwise.
iRights.info – All about Rights in the Digital World Edits and derivatives are also allowed under the addi-
Almstadtstr. 9/11, 10119 Berlin tional condition that, if they are published or other-
www.irights.info wise distributed, they be put under the same license
redaktion@irights.info as this brochure.
+49 (0) 30 5459 8128
The complete text of the license can be found perma-
Creative Commons Germany nently under the following URL:
c/o EEAR gGmbH and newthinking communica- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/le-
tions GmbH galcode
Graefestr. 59, 10967 Berlin
www.creativecommons.de A simplified explanation of this license can be found
legal@creativecommons.de here:
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

21
 The
public
licenses de-
veloped by Creative
Commons (CC) are tools
which make creative works available
for free use under certain conditions. As
rights holders have different needs and motives,
CC offers six different license variants. Some of the
most popular license variants include the condition that the
licensed works must not be used commercially. This has far-reaching
and often unintended consequences for the dissemination of the
respective works and sometimes even entirely thwarts what
the licensor wants to achieve by choosing a CC license.
This brochure wants to offer information on
consequences, risks and side-effects of
the restrictive CC license variants
that don‘t allow commer-
cial use.