WHAT IF SOMEONE DOES SOMETHING WITH MY CC-LICENSED WORK I DON’T LIKE?
As long as users abide by the license terms and conditions, authors/licensors cannot control how their material is used. That said, all CC licenses provide several mechanisms that allow licensors to choose not to be associated with their material, or to uses of their material with which they disagree.
- First, all CC licenses prohibit using the attribution requirement to suggest that the licensor endorses or supports a particular use.
- Second, licensors may waive the attribution requirement, choosing not to be identified as the licensor, if they wish.
- Third, if the licensor does not like how the material has been modified or used, CC licenses require that the licensee remove the attribution information upon request. (In Version 3.0 and earlier, this is only a requirement for adaptations and collections; in 4.0, this also applies to the unmodified work.)
- Finally, anyone modifying licensed material must indicate that the original has been modified. This ensures that changes made to the original material—whether or not the licensor approves of them—are not attributed back to the licensor.
- Furthermore, it is important to remember that:
- The Commons is full of good people who want to do the right thing, so we rarely see much “abuse” of openly licensed works. Using CC licenses gives good, responsible people the freedom to use and build on your work.
- Copyright and/or open copyright licenses don’t keep “bad” people from doing “bad” things with your work if they don’t care about copyright in the first place.
LEGAL CASES: OPEN EDUCATION
In the sixteen years since our licenses were first published, the number of lawsuits turning on the interpretation of a CC license has been extremely low, especially considering that more than 1.6 billion CC-licensed works are available on the Internet. CC licenses have fared incredibly well in court, and disputes are rare when compared to the number of lawsuits between the parties to privately negotiated, custom licenses.[1]
NOTE
- ↑ One of Creative Commons’ roles is to serve as a responsible public license steward, actively providing guidance and education about its licenses. When Creative Commons considers weighing in on disputes with commentary or the filing of friend-of-the-court briefs, CC always acts as an advocate for the licenses and their proper interpretation, never in favor of or against a particular litigant. For a detailed analysis of Creative Commons case law, see section 3.4 “License Enforceability.” Creative Commons maintains a database of court decisions and case law from jurisdictions around the world on the Creative Commons wiki for Case Law (licensed CC BY 4.0, available at https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Case_Law).
