LibGuides: Affordable &amp; Open Educational Resources (A&amp;OER): Copyright & Creative Commons

Copyright for Complete Beginners, Archived Webinar. Nov. 24, 2021
Open Oregon Educational Resources is partnering with Copyright First Responders Pacific Northwest to offer professional development on copyright. Join Rachel Bridgewater, Reference Librarian at Portland Community College, for a session on the basics of copyright, fair use, and open licenses.

Open Licenses & License Terms

Open Licenses, Community College Consortium for OER
The definition of open educational resources (OER) includes the phrase “resides in the public domain or is released under an intellectual property license that permits its free use and re-purposing,” but what does that really mean....?
Creative commons license spectrum
Creative Commons License Spectrum by Shaddim is licensed under CC BY 4.0

What is Creative Commons?

Creative Commons licenses help you legally share your knowledge and creativity to build a more equitable, accessible, and innovative world. We unlock the full potential of the internet to drive a new era of development, growth and productivity.

Creative Commons is a non-profit organization that created a set of simple, easy-to-understand copyright licenses. These are legally enforceable licenses that are meant to be simple to implement and easy for the average person to understand, and can be used to provide access to creative work in a standardized fashion.

The video below describes the origins and mission of the Creative Commons initiative:

One of the best ways to learn about Creative Commons is to watch our videos.

Get Creative by Creative Commons is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY) license. For more information, please visit the Creative Commons page for this video.

How to Use Creative Commons Videos on YouTube
Ian Corzine, Social Media Lawyer (06:59)

Creative Commons Licensing

Creative Commons Platforms

CC platforms make it easy for users to discover and collaborate on images, video, music, research and educational texts. This page highlights some of the best known platforms for sharing CC content. Content on these platforms is searchable and shareable across the web thanks to CC licenses.

Creative Commons: Choose a License

New to Creative Commons? [ Considerations before licensing ] [ How the licenses work ]

Use Creative Commons tools to help share your work. Our free, easy-to-use copyright licenses provide a simple, standardized way to give you permission to share and use your creative work— on conditions of your choice. You can adopt one of our licenses by sharing on a platform, or choosing a license below.

Creative Commons and Attribution

Creative Commons, Share your work
Use Creative Commons tools to help share your work. Our free, easy-to-use copyright licenses provide a simple, standardized way to give your permission to share and use your creative work.
Marking your work with a CC license (Creative Commons)
You have chosen a CC license for your work. Now how do you go about letting the world know? Here are some examples of how to mark your work with the CC license.
Best Practices for Attribution
You can use CC-licensed materials as long as you follow the license conditions. One condition of all CC licenses is attribution. Here are some good (and not so good) examples of attribution.