A Guide To Open Content Licences

Lawrence Liang

What is copyright?

How can we share culture in a world where everything has a license?

Scientists, writers, designers, artists, musicians and others are increasingly interested in making their work available in 'the public domain'. This booklet is an overview of the ways in which this has been done and a guide to the growing area of Open Content Licenses through which people design and safeguard access to their work.

Table of Contents

A PDF file of the booklet can be downloaded here.

To receive a paper copy by post, send a self-addressed envelope to:

Open Content Guide,
Media Design Research,
Piet Zwart Institute,
PO Box 1272,
3000 BG Rotterdam,
The Netherlands.

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Black and White (and Grey) of Copyright

Chapter 2: Copyleft Contextualised

• Free Software: Copyright Rearticulated
• Licenses and the Control of Copyright
• Challenges to Copyright
• The GNU GPL
• The Public Domain
• Open / Collaborative Production

Chapter 3: General Characteristics of Open Content Licenses

• Basis of the license / validity of the license
• Rights granted
• Derivative Works
• Commercial / Non Commercial Usage
• Procedural Requirements imposed
• Appropriate Credits
• Open content licenses do not affect fair use rights
• Absence of Warranty
• Standard Legal Clauses

Chapter 4: Mapping Out the Domain of Open Content Licenses

• On the basis of the medium they address
• On the nature of the license
• On the validity of the license

Chapter 5: A Comparative Guide to Key Open Content Licenses

• Free Art License
• GNU Free Documentation License
• Common Documentation License
• EFF Open Audio License
• Open Music Licenses
• The Green OpenMusic License
• The Yellow OpenMusic License
• The Red OpenMusic License
• Creative Commons Licenses
• Open Content and Open Publication License
• The Open Content License
• Open Publication License
• Design Science License
• Ethymonics Free Music License

Further reading

Glossary

About the author

"There is a specter haunting cultural production, the specter of open content licensing"
Karl Marx (reworked for the digital era)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Copyright 2004 Lawrence Liang, Piet Zwart Institute
Additional material, chapter 1: Florian Cramer
Editors: Florian Cramer, Matthew Fuller, Calum Selkirk
Graphic design and book typography: Femke Snelting
HTML version: Florian Cramer
December 2004