Reusing materials licensed under Creative Commons licenses

 There is a world of creative work openly distributed under Creative Commons licenses to encourage their reuse – so how can we actually ensure that we reuse this material appropriately?

Now that we have considered the different licenses available from Creative Commons and have discussed considerations for licensing your own work, it is worth going into some detail on the question of how to appropriately reuse Creative Commons-licensed works.

This post is broken down into two sections: the first will discuss considerations for redistributing Creative Commons licensed works unaltered, while the second will discuss considerations for adapting Creative Commons works for redistribution in your own works.

 

Part 1: ND NoDerivatives and redistribution of unaltered materials with permission

The ND NoDerivatives clause is one of the more restrictive available Creative Commons license terms, making up part of the CC BY-ND and CC BY-NC-ND licenses.

This is not to say that these materials must be distributed in the original, completely unaltered form. As long as you preserve the substantial integrity and character of the work, limited alterations are permitted. This may include correcting minor typos or errors within the work, or format shifting -- i.e. conversion between digital file formats, or between digital and analogue formats. As ND licenses point out, changing the format of a work does not constitute an adaptation of the material and is therefore permitted.

Provided the excerpt does not transform the material's content, unaltered excerpts of material distributed under NoDerivative licenses do not constitute adaptations, and are therefore permitted -- although it is worth noting that the nature of the alteration should be described (see Section 3 - License Conditions a)1.B).

 

What is the difference between an adaptation and a permitted redistribution of a work under ND licenses?

Creative Commons NoDerivative licenses permit redistribution but not adaptation of licensed works.

Adaptations are based on preexisting works, but are typically characterized by the addition of original elements to the existing work. Definitions vary internationally, but in jurisdictions including the United States and Canada, the level of originality necessary to characterize an adaptation as a distinct work is not especially high. This is to say that most alterations of a work will constitute adaptations in these jurisdictions.

The right to create and distribute an adaptation of a work is typically reserved to the author across most copyright domains.

Some types of adaptations are more obvious than others. For instance, while most of us would likely understand rewriting the lyrics of a song written by someone else to be a clear adaptation of their work, translating the lyrics of the song would also constitute an adaptation in most copyright jurisdictions. Adapting a work from one medium to another (e.g. creating a play based on a novel) similarly constitutes an adaptation. 

One edge case adaptation which is not consistently defined across jurisdictions is the case of synchronizing existing music to a novel video. Creative Commons licenses with a NoDerivative clause always define this as creating an adaptation of the original material, meaning that music or audio distributed under CC BY-ND or CC BY-NC-ND cannot be used as part of new video material (see Section 1 - Definitions, a.).

While ND materials may not be altered themselves, ND materials may also be distributed within collections of other works. A collection comprises a selection of multiple independent works brought together without altering the individual elements within.

Examples of collections might include photo albums, compilation albums, or short story anthologies. These examples all consist of a combination of multiple existing materials, and preserve each item's identity without alteration. An example of a collection is included below - the three photos are put in a new context by combining each with one another, but are not altered from their original form. The collection below illustrates some examples of limestone buildings in my hometown, Guelph, Ontario in Canada. 

Figure 1: Wellington Hotel - Guelph, ON by JFVoll. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 International.

 Figure 2:  Carden Street and Church of Our Lady by stevenpetric. Licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

 

Figure 3:  Churches in Downtown Guelph by stevenpetric. Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

If you want to create a collection of works like the combination of photos above, what considerations are necessary? Collections of works redistribute them, but do not change their character. Ensure that your distribution satisfies the terms of the license and that you have not transformed the work into new material if it is forbidden by the license.

Part 2: Redistributing adaptations of CC licensed works

Adaptations change the content of the original work, and represent new derivative works. These are not permitted under Creative Commons licenses which include ND clauses.

Additionally, Sharealike provisions force adapted works to use the same license as the adapted material. Whereas we could use differently licensed works within a collection as part of a blog post which uses a different license, remixes or adaptations force the newly created work to use the same license as its basis.

 As such, of the images above, we could include Figures 1 and 2 and 3 into a remix for our own personal use. However, we could only redistribute it under a CC BY NC SA license if we included Figures 2 and 3, or a CC BY SA license if using Figures 1 and 2. 

Hopefully this helps resolve some of the questions around reusing and remixing works under Creative Commons licenses.

The text of this blog post and the collection of images included is copyright Scott Cameron, 2024, and distributed under the terms of CC BY 4.0 International.  This does not include the photographs as individual objects, which are distributed here under the terms specified for each image above.