A creative commons licence is a method of sharing your work while retaining the protection of copyright where necessary. You can choose from a variety of different licences, but I have chose one which enables anyone to use and remix my work as long as:
- It is for non-commercial purposes (eg teaching, although unis seem obsessed with profits these days)
- You attribute my contribution to your final product.
So you can use anything here within your classroom, for non-profit publication and so forth, just give me a nod such as referring to this blog.
You could not, for example, publish a commercial textbook using material for this site, or put just your name on what is essentially my work. This would be a breach of the licence and I retain all my normal rights under copyright law, as if you had done this with a published textbook.
Creative commons licensing is an excellent way of allowing sharing while still prohibiting abuses. There are different licences that you can choose depending on your needs, for instance you might want to insist that your work is reproduced in whole, without modification. Check out the creative commons site for more info. It's the future of academic publishing and sharing.
