Using Creative Commons License for publicity and Campaigning materials

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, I have no formal training in copyright law. If you want to be absolutely dead sure of your creative rights, talk to a rights lawyer, I'm just describing things to the best of my UNQUALIFIED knowledge.

One problem with creating graphics, slogans, etc to be used on a range of campaigning materials (posters, postcards, t-shirts...) is the question of copyright.

By default, any original creative works are the property of the creator, unless and until they license the reproduction of those works to another party. That license should be well defined and limited, negotiated each time a third party produces a new form of reproduction.

Also, any "derivative work", that is a creative work which relies on an existing copyright work for it's production, would need to be licensed from the original creator.

The original creator is under no obligation to allow any reproduction or derivative works: I can't reprint "Carrie" by Stephen King, for example, without his say so. I can write a sequel to it, but can't release it to anyone else without Stephen King's say so. I'm presuming, in both cases, he'd want some money too, but that's between me and him.

Until recently, the only common alternative to copyrighting a work was to release it entirely from copyright into the public domain, relinquishing all rights. At present, copyright lapses (at differing times for different media and countries) after a certain time, so eventually all creative works revert to the public domain. No-one has to pay the descendants of Shakespeare in order to make a film of Hamlet, nor do they have to negotiate with anyone to make "King Lear 2: He's back and crazier than ever!" Furthermore, derivative works of public domain material are treated as original works for copyright purposes. "King Lear 2" would be all mine as far as rights went.

Whilst this situation is greatly beneficial to creators who wish to ensure that they are compensated for any reproduction of their work, and to control any derivatives of it, it raises a few problems for people in our position. We want people to reproduce our materials in as many media as possible: posters, T-shirts, animations, songs... But we don't want people to start making cash out of our work. And it would be nice if folks don't copyright derivatives of our work(1) and get control over them by the back door.

So, a couple of years ago, the Creative Commons movement was born: a group of creative types got together with some legal experts(2) to derive a range of licenses that allow sharing of creative materials without realeasing all rights into the public domain.

The Uk home of creative commons is here: http://www.creativecommons.org.uk/

One of the most useful aspects of CC licenses is the "share alike" clause: if included in your license (and you can build your own license on the website), it forces anyone deriving works from yours must license it in the same way as yours. If you don't allow anyone to make money off your work, nor can anyone who mkaes a derivative of it. Anyone making derivative works must allow others to make derivative works of their derivative work.

Suggested licence for AHED campaign materials:

This work is licenced under a Creative Commons Licence.

Which allows anyone to reproduce or "re-mix" the materials as long as they a) attribute the original creator, b) Don't make money from it (that can be negotiated, like any other right, on an individual basis) and c) make any derivative materials available under the same conditions.

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(1)Someone has tried to do this with a work of satirical theology, "Principia Discordia". The PD was released into the public domain in the 60's: last year, someone took the whole text, reformatted it, changed the graphics, copyrighted it and started charging for their reproduciton of it in their "esoteric religion" website. Legally, there was nothing the creators could do about it. Socially, there was a lot of pointing and name calling... and asking why someone would pay for a tacky reproduction of something that was freely available anyway.

(2) before anyone says it, yes, you can be both.