After ages of thinking and talking about it, I licensed the content of this blog under one of the Creative Commons liberal licenses: the Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States license. The Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license seems to be the best and most popular for bloggers to use a Creative Common license. (Roll call!)
Which means, apart from items
- in the public domain (for which there is no license)
- used under the fair use doctrine (and I’m no lawyer, so I can’t help with that)
you may use the contents of this blog in the following ways (the following is from the Creative Commons site)
You are free:
- to Share — to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work
- to Remix — to make derivative works
Under the following conditions:
- Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
- Noncommercial. You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
- Share Alike. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.
- For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page.
- Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
- Apart from the remix rights granted under this license, nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author’s moral rights. (The full, lawyerly license is here.)
I’m back. You may attribute me:
- by name alone, if you use my work in a verbal way, like in a sermon. For example, “Scott Wells, a colleague in Washington, D. C., wrote . . . “
- by name and citation, in written works, in the style of the work
- like “the Rev. Scott Wells, who writes at the Boy in the Bands blog (www.boyinthebands.com)” in a newsletter article.
- in a footnote or endnote if the paper has them.
- by name, citation and link back to the original page if writing on the Web.
To be clear, you do not need prior permission if you use my content according to the above specifications, but be willing to to abide by the Share Alike provision. Indeed, I decided I wanted to license my work so I would have license to use others’ Share Alike material on this blog.
As always, it’s nice to know when my material is used — and less nice to stumble upon my works (sometimes without attribution, even by certain seminaries) — so please send me an email or a trackback, if publishing on the Web.
Great idea! Glad you’ve decided to take the plunge! :-) My blog has been CC licensed with the same license. It’s a great idea.
I’m on a Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Generic license. I should probably review it and compare. I’ve had it since the early days of my blog.
Maybe it’s my toddler-addled brain, but I’m confused. Excuse my ignorance, but I bet I’m not the only dummy out there on this. My main question is, “How does this change anything?” Because wouldn’t any ethical person attribute you appropriately even without a license? And wouldn’t (and haven’t) you do/done the same? And wouldn’t sloppy or unethical people continue to quote you or snippet you without proper attribution even with a license?
Is this more of a legal thing or is it more of a community-ethos thing?