If you are charging for access to someone else’s CC-licensed work—whether a physical copy or digital version—you have to pay attention to the particular CC license applied to the work. If the CC license includes the NonCommercial (NC) restriction, then you cannot charge the public to access the work.
MAKING YOUR WORK ACCESSIBLE
Formats: Simply applying a CC license to a creative work does not necessarily make it easy for others to reuse and remix it. Think about what technical format you are using for your content (e .g., PDF or MP3). Can people download your work? Can they easily edit or remix it if the license allows? In addition to the final polished version, many creators distribute editable source files of their content to make it easier for those who want to use the work for their own purposes. For example, in addition to the physical book or e-book, you might want to distribute files of a CC-licensed book that enable people to easily cut and paste the content into their own works.
DRM: Using a distribution platform that applies digital rights management (DRM), such as copy protection technology, to your work is another way you can inadvertently make it very hard for reusers to make use of the permissions in the CC license. If you have to upload your CC-licensed works to a platform that uses DRM, you should consider also distributing the same content on sites that do not use DRM.
Note that the CC licenses prohibit you from applying DRM to someone else’s CC-licensed work without their permission.
WHAT IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND ABOUT THE CC LICENSE?
Inevitably, there are creators who apply a CC license to a work and then later decide they want to offer that work on different terms. Even though the original license cannot be revoked, the creator is free to also offer the work under a different license. Similarly, the creator is free to remove the copy of the work that they placed online.
In these cases, anyone who finds the work under the original license is legally permitted to use it under those terms until the copyright expires. But as a practical matter, reusers may want to comply with the creator’s new wishes as a matter of respect.
