Ben Ward

Creative Commons Licensing

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As a small diversion from presentation preparation I want to ask a small question.

I’m weighing up two Creative Commons licences for applying to my blog entries but I’m stuck on the issue of Share Alike. I’ve got no problem with commercial use and all CC licences ensure that credit is given to me for my work. I just can’t decide if I want to impose a restriction of redistribution… I lean towards no restriction. However, I want to know what other’s think about the matter. If you chose a license for your blog, what would you do?

The two options for licenses are:

  1. Attribution, Share-Alike 2.0

  2. Attribution 2.0

Something to ponder.

Comments

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  1. It’s about time I revise the license on my own weblog. It’s also currently under a CC license.

    Personally, I would go for the Share-Alike option. I frequently build on other people’s work, and since they’re forced to release that work under the same license I don’t think it could do much harm.

  2. Hi Ben

    It’s tricky one, really, but I’d probably go with the share-alike licence.

    Although no licence is going to stop the average joe from abusing your content (although it may provide recourse after the fact) those such as businesses will at least have to respect your wishes in terms of distributing any commercial derivative under a ‘friendly’ licence, rather than one which may you may consider too restrictive (as most licences probably are :).

    Apparently Creative Commons are working to port the legal text to conform with UK law (http://creativecommons.org/worldwide/uk/), although I wouldn’t let this put you off choosing a licence now.

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