At first this question may sound strange: is there any license for the CC-licenses? This means, when using a CC-license (like CC-BY-SA) am I free to modify the terms or are the licenses themselves closed source, so a modification will break a copyright?
Background: I want to start a photography blog myself but CC-license is too restricted (especially in the attribution section). In fact there have been several law suites in germany where people using CC-licensed photos did not exactly follow the attribution regulations.
So I would like to modify CC-BY-NC in a way to make the attributioon part for a viewer and user of photos much easier.
This ends up with this questions:
can I publish using CC-BY-XY and just place terms there removing the attribution pitfalls?
or can I “copy” CC-BY-XY text (copyrighted??) and just write whatever I like? This would be possible if the CC-licenses would be published themselves under CC0.
The text of the Creative Commons public licenses is dedicated to the public domain under the CC0 Public Domain Dedication. Except for the limited purpose of indicating that material is shared under a Creative Commons public license or as otherwise permitted by the Creative Commons policies published at Policies - Creative Commons, Creative Commons does not authorize the use of the trademark “Creative Commons” or any other trademark or logo of Creative Commons without […]
To me that sounds like you can take the license, change it however you want and use that. However, you may not call it “Creative Commons” any longer. But IANAL so this is in no way, shape or form legal advice.
@houz : thanks a lot! That really helps. I had a closer look on CC license explanations and the only save way seems to use/adapt the given text and strictly avoid the wording “creative commons”.
@darix: my problem is the attributions section: for my personal view it’s much too complicated. I am living in Austria and here (and EU) the situation is not too complicated: simply state your intention and what’s not stated is not permitted.
My intention is:
publish my work on a photo blog for free (maybe I will add a paypal donation button)
allow full private use (e.g. high quality printout, usage in non-commercial websites)
if any kind of redistribution is connected with the usage simply give the top URL of my site
I will further advice viewers/users to print out/save this terms offline (for the case I ever will intend to change the terms of usage). A link to this “license” will not be required.
There are too many obligations connected with the usage of creative commons for my taste/intention. Maybe I will give my “license” an own name and URL so it can be re-used (e.g. on pixls.us).
In my opinion the benefits of using a well known license far outweigh what you would accomplish by creating a modified license. I assume hardly anyone likes to read legal texts. At least for me if something does not have a license I’m familiar I try to avoid it. Here would be my suggestion to you:
License your work as CC BY (NC? I’m not sure if you intend) as a base line and just state on your website what you want to additionally allow.
At lot of the provisions in there do make sense, for instance that modifications need to be stated and it needs to be made clear that the author doesn’t endorse them. It’s the internet, what can be done will be done, especially if it’s horrible. ;)( There is an argument to be made that those people will not adhere your license anyways but… )
While I personally don’t like the “The Software shall be used for Good, not Evil” clauses, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to demand that people don’t use my name to support their crazy ideas and beliefs.
@Jonas_Wagner Maybe you are right - I will think it over (currently my photoblog is still in the mental design phase and I can only dedicate parts of my (rare) spare time to it). The argument that people would prefer a well known license to a short but hand forged legal text sounds convincing.