Comments on: Using Creative Commons licensed works on a political website?

Question: Using Creative Commons licensed works on a political website?

Anonymous — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:22:57 -0800

Dear mefites, Is it legal to use creative commons stuff, properly licensed and attributed, on a political website that 1) expresses views that the original author might not like, and 2) raises money, such as for a candidate or a party's branch? Particularly interested in stuff that's got a non-commercial license but is okay to use for derivative works. This is in the U.K. Thanks!

By: Happy Dave

Happy Dave — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:29:48 -0800

That's stretching the bounds of non-commercial. Email the original author and ask them.

By: kalessin

kalessin — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:35:09 -0800

Is it legal? Probably. Is it ethical? Probably not. What do UK laws have to say about letter vs. spirit arguments about law and contracts?

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:40:07 -0800

The definition of ‘Non-Commercial’ (‘Non-Commercial’ means personal use or use for educational purposes within any educational establishment listed in Annexe A, but excludes any commercial use (including professional, political or promotional uses)) is different from that of the CC licences

Bold is mine. From here.

By: grouse

grouse — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 09:48:10 -0800

vacapinta, that is the definition of "Non-Commercial" in the Creative Archive license, not Creative Commons. You have taken that excerpt from a discussion of the CA license and how it compares to CC.

The definition of commercial in the Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported license is:

You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation. The exchange of the Work for other copyrighted works by means of digital file-sharing or otherwise shall not be considered to be intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation, provided there is no payment of any monetary compensation in connection with the exchange of copyrighted works.

By: vacapinta

vacapinta — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:39:26 -0800

Sorry. grouse is right.

By: starzero

starzero — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:27:11 -0800

As far as I'm informed there isn't really consensus on the defintion of non-commercial in CC. I've seen this issue pop up very now and then on Flickr (political case has been discussed here) and other sites, with not definite answers, simply because there is none and it's not defined exactly in the license itself. This might be a potential flaw, then again the idea of CC was to make the license as open as possible, while giving the copyright holder the opportunity to set some boundaries, in which his work can be used.

I have been publishing under CC BY-NC-ND (mainly texts and photos) for a long time now and I occasionally have people asking about the use of things for certain grey areas (license-wise), which I usually agree on unless it's something I don't want to support at all. The consequence of stretching the bounds will lead to less material being available for free use sooner or later, so I think you should simply contact the people who published the material and ask them, it's the fairest thing to do.