Copyright and licensing issues permeate discussion and debate on creation and reuse of OER and are therefore are at the heart of OER as they have important implications for creators and users, and for their institutions. 

As a response to the growing need for an alternative to copyright in the United States, Creative Commons (CC) was launched in 2001, to counteract the restrictive permission culture. Creative Commons is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing the range of creative works (cultural, educational and scientific) available to the public for free, to share and build upon legally.

Creative Commons encourages copyright owners to license their material through open content licensing protocols in order to promote better identification, negotiation and reutilisation of content for the purposes of creativity and innovation. It aims to make copyright content more ‘active’ by ensuring that content can be redeveloped easily. Creative Commons developed a set of user-friendly licenses which would enable creators to share their work under certain conditions.

Creative Commons Licences

Creative Commons developed a set of user-friendly licenses which would enable creators to share their work under certain conditions. These licenses allow creators to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. The licenses help creators keep their copyright while allowing certain uses of their work - a “some rights reserved” copyright. Creative Commons licenses gives creators the ability to dictate how others may exercise their (creators) copyright rights - such as the right of others to copy their work, make derivative works or adaptations of their work, to distribute their work and/or make money from their work. Creative Commons also permits creators the ability to have a “no rights reserved” alternative to copyright.

Creative Commons licenses fall into different license categories according to the following conditions:

The following are the six current license choices available.

Once a licence is chosen, it is non-revocable, and any work or copies of the work obtained under the license may continue to be used under that license. Whilst you can change the license, someone already using it under the previous license will be allowed to do so indefinitely. In the case of works protected by multiple Creative Common Licenses, the user may choose either.

Whilst the original Creative Commons licenses were written under the U.S. legal system, licenses for jurisdictions outside of the US fall under Creative Commons International., which has started to port the various licenses to accommodate local copyright and private law. As of December 2008, there are 50 jurisdiction-specific licenses, with eight other jurisdictions in drafting process, and more countries joining the worldwide project.