Open Content Licenses: Don’t forget to …

John Stack, Digital Director, Science Museum Group27 January 2016

Why open content licenses?

Alignment with mission

new forms of engagement with content

Improves quality of images in circulation

Is compatible with commercial licensing

Is pragmatic

Why Creative Commons in particular?

Well established

Well established

Human and machine readable

<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>.

Human and machine readable

Is international

Covers the dimensions you’ll (mostly) need

But…

Is irrevocable

Not always compatible with Wikimedia Commons

Won’t handle specific requirements you may have

Complex to mix and match

Not ideal for datasets (consider CC0)

Implementation: The easy bit

Audit where you own the rights

Select a licence (or some licenses)

Implement text on the page (+badge +html)

A not so great example…

A not so great example…

Implementation: The harder bits

A collections search facet

In the IPTC metadata too

Define “attribution”

Define “attribution”

Implementation: The hardest bit

Define “commercial” and “non-commercial”

Define “commercial” and “non-commercial”

Thanks