in the first place. Instead of the usual principle of copyright law, where all rights are reserved by the author, the use of these licenses only reser- ves certain rights. The content is made available for the public to use. Creative Commons is not in conflict with exis- ting copyright law, but is built on it. Without copyright law the public release would not work at all. Content protected by copyright, such as movies, music, texts and images, can be freely used by means of such a license.
sibilities of knowledge dissemination not only through the classical form but also and increa- singly through the open access paradigm via the Internet have to be supported. We define open access as a comprehensive source of human knowledge and cultural heritage that has been approved by the scientific community. In order to realize the vision of a global and accessible re- presentation of knowledge, the future Web has to be sustainable, interactive, and transparent. Content and software tools must be openly ac- cessible and compatible.” In the context of software the Open Source principle was devised. Open Source means that the source code of software is freely accessible to everyone. Open Source was introduced, so that software developers do not have to be- gin all over again when they are writing new software, but can build on existing works. To ensure this principle the GNU General Public License (GPL) was defined. Software under this license can be used and extended by everyone. The Open Source approach in software explicit- ly also allows commercial use. Its success is even largely dependent on this option. Open Content is based on the same basic idea as Open Source software: It should also be allo- wed to use written works, movies and multime- dia works freely. The by far best known option to license content as Open Content and hence allows free use, is the Creative Commons (CC) set of public licenses. Creative Commons was developed in 2001 as an initiative of law professor Lawrence Lessig at Stanford University. It is meant to provide comprehensible licenses for the public release of content for everybody, and thus further the cultural commons, or even make them possible
2 Why is content placed under a CC license? To make it more usable.
Many creatives want their texts, their music or movies to be used by as many people as possi- ble (distribution of works is de jure also a type of usage). They have an interest in the free ex- change of information. Especially educational content is created with the aim to reach as many students as possible. In this case, any legal re- striction is counter-productive. Here, the most severe restriction of all is to do nothing. What sounds paradox reflects the legal default: “All rights reserved.” Whoever creates something new, but does not elaborate if and how his works can be used, is assumed to say “Nobody is allowed to use my content.” The CC licenses
8
Made with FlippingBook Annual report