Creative Commons Licences 1

We're just working on the latest edition of Comics Biz, the Australian Society of Authors Comics/Graphic Novels Portfolio ezine and we're including a section on Creative Commons (CC) Licences. From our understanding, these are licensing agreements that allow creators to waive certain copyright rights (that is, they “reserve ‘some’ rights” rather than “ reserve ‘all’ rights”). Essentially, CC Licences allow people to use your work in certain ways without payment to you. They can apply to books, comics, music, plays, films, artwork, photos, articles and blog and website content.

We actually didn't know terribly much about CC Licences but after doing some initial research and recognising that we're in an age where copyright is being challenged by the notion of "copyleft", we thought we should also educate our readers in the process. So we'll leave you some research bread crumbs along our way – we're not experts, just students and reporters. We'll bring you some more information soon on the four types of permissions used in CC Licences, as well as the six variations of licences. In the meantime here's a starter video for you.