Have you ever searched for “FREE” media on the web? Were you happy with what you got in search results when looking for free content?
Although you might come across with seemingly free content, most likely it is NOT literally “FREE”. This is simply because of the copyright, where you have to give credit to content owners who made efforts to create it!
1. Overview
It is pretty common for most social media users, bloggers, reporters, and content creators to search for media and other content elements on the web. Such elements are helpful in making their content more appealing.
That said, an important fact that online users should care about is that:
It’s always possible that the content you are looking for, sharing on your website or using within your blog, might be not free.
In other words, this content is most probably published under a specific license or condition. Which you have to read, accept, and abide by before redistributing the content to your channels.
2. What is Content Licensing?
Content licensing is when a content creator, publisher, or any other authorized party, grants the content intellectual property to third parties. In order to be used in a specific and predefined way.
Generally speaking, all content types can be subject to a license, even if they are not published online. Pictures, videos, games, names, and many other entities can be protected by usage licenses.
3. Types of Content License
There are different levels of content licensing. It spans from the most limited and restricted conditions of All Rights Reserved, to the fully free and unrestricted licenses of Copyleft and Public Domain.
We present in this article the most common types, phrases, and concepts of content licensing that you might come across when surfing the Internet.
For a full comparison between these different types, please refer to our comparison table in this article.
3.1. Copyright
As defined by Investopedia, “Copyright refers to the legal right of the owner of intellectual property”. In other words, “the original creators of products and anyone they give authorization to are the only ones with the exclusive right to reproduce the work”.
Thus, copyright aims at protecting the authors’ rights and allows them to control the copying of their work, typically for a fixed period of time.
Consequently, copyright provides the author with exclusive distribution, modification, and usage rights of his/her original work.
3.2. All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved is a type of copyright. It is usually used by content owners to explicitly declare that they keep all rights related to their own work reserved.
To clarify, it means that no one can share, redistribute, modify, or use their work for any reason without explicit permission from the copyright holder.
However, All Rights Reserved is often used in conjunction with the Copyright license. Similarly, it represents the most restricted form of content licensing.
All Rights Reserved is the most restrictive form of content usage conditions, where people can do nothing with the content without explicit permission from its owner.
3.3. Some Rights Reserved
Some content licenses provide authors with a spectrum of rights reservation levels. From retaining all rights to granting some of them.
This approach is called Some Rights Reserved. It allows content creators to achieve a balance between the highly restricted All Rights Reserved and completely unrestricted forms of copyright.
Accordingly, when you find content under this principle, you have to check the exact license under which this content is protected. This licence should explain what is allowed and not allowed when dealing with the content.
The most common type of Some Rights Reserved is the well-known Creative Common license.
3.4. Creative Commons (CC)
Creative Commons (CC) is a less restricted form of Copyright license. Where content owners could opt to offer specific usage rights to users while reserving other rights. Creative Commons is also considered under Some Rights Reserved.
Although the Creative Commons license is a copyright license, it is not subject to the All Rights Reserved principle. Thus, Authors who want to reserve all of their rights under copyright laws should not use CC licenses.
There are 6 different Creative Commons licenses, based on 4 conditions.
3.4.1. Creative Commons Conditions
The 4 CC conditions are described in the following table.
| Icon | Condition | Abbr. | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Attribution | BY | Must give credit to the author. |
 | ShareAlike | SA | Must be re-distributed under the same license (can not change the license of the modified work). |
 | NonCommercial | NC | Can be used for any purpose other than commercial. |
 | NoDerivatives | ND | Can not be modified, only to share the original work. |
3.4.2. Creative Commons Licenses
Based on the multiple combinations of previous conditions, there are 6 CC licenses. In the following table, we present available CC licenses and compare them in terms of allowed and not allowed usage forms.
| License | Abbr. | Reuse Original | Credit Original | Modify Original | Commercial Usage | Modify License |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Attribution | CC BY | Allowed | Required | Allowed | Allowed | Allowed |
Attribution-ShareAlike | CC BY-SA | Allowed | Required | Allowed | Allowed | Not Allowed |
Attribution-NoDerivs | CC BY-ND | Allowed | Required | Not Allowed | Allowed | – |
Attribution-NonCommercial | CC BY-NC | Allowed | Required | Allowed | Not Allowed | Allowed |
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike | CC BY-NC-SA | Allowed | Required | Allowed | Not Allowed | Not Allowed |
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs | CC BY-NC-ND | Allowed | Required | Not Allowed | Not Allowed | – |
3.4.3. CC0
In addition to the previous licenses, Creative Commons offers the CC0 option. It usually refers to the “No Copyright Reserved” version of the Creative Commons toolkit.
In other words, it means relinquishing all copyright rights and dedicating them to the public domain. For more details please refer to Public Domain Mark and CC0 PDM comparison chart.
3.5. Copyleft License
Distinguished from Copyright, Copyleft is the license offering users the appropriate rights to freely distribute and modify versions of a work.
It also requires that the same rights be preserved in modified works. Therefore, this license is similar to the CC BY-SA license.
3.5.1. Weak Copyleft License
As Copyleft means all derived works should preserve the same inherited rights, Weak Copyleft refers to where derived works don’t necessarily inherit all copyrights.
The main idea here is how the work is being derived. Examples of Weak Copyleft licenses are GNU Lesser General Public License and Mozilla Public License (see other licenses below).
3.5.2. Strong Copyleft License
Unlike the Weak Copyleft license, there is nothing different between the Copyleft license and the Strong Copyleft license.
Thus, a Strong Copyleft license is the default version of Copyleft. The most well-known license under Strong Copyleft is GNU General Public License.
3.6. Public Domain
The Public Domain licensing scheme aims at waiving all copyright restrictions. In other words, it means that any work can be used freely by anyone and for any purpose, without being restricted by copyright restrictions.
Public Domain is usually used to lable materials that no one owns or controls in any way. Thus, content is being considered under the Public Domain in case it is no longer under copyright protection or if it failed to meet the requirements for copyright protection (Source: U.S. Copyright Office: Definitions).
3.7. Other Licenses
In addition to all mentioned licenses, there are many others being used in different fields. We prmention here common licenses that may affect the usage and redistribution of the content and other similar materials, especially software.
3.7.1. Open License (Free License)
Broadly speaking, an Open License (aka. Free License) gives anyone permission to re-use the work at no cost.
Open licensing does not replace the work’s copyright. Instead, they both work together to promote the shared use of creative works. Accordingly, the Open License can be considered under Some Rights Reserved.
However, no cost doesn’t necessarily mean no attribution is required. Alternatively, the Open License might grant permission to access, re-use, and redistribute the work with few or no restrictions. But with assuming that a proper attribution will be made.
The most widely used open licenses are Creative Commons (CC) and General Public Licenses (GNU) for software products.
3.7.2. MIT License
Originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), MIT License is a permissive Free License designed for software and associated documentation.
MIT License grants permission, free of charge, to any person to obtain a copy of the software and associated documentation files without any restriction. Including no limitation to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software.
The only requirement for an MIT License is to include the following MIT notice with any copies of the software.
Copyright <YEAR> <COPYRIGHT HOLDER>
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
MIT License Notice
Accordingly, MIT License implies that:
- Licensed work can be used for any purpose without any restriction.
- There is no guarantee regarding the licensed work.
- The license can’t be changed or removed, the author will keep having the copyrights.
3.7.3. GNU General Public License (GNU-GPL)
The General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL), is one of the most commonly used free software licenses.
It allows the licensed software to be freely used, modified, and redistributed by anyone, but with some restrictions. Mainly in terms of the availability of the modifications.
Nevertheless, GPL is more restrictive than MIT license. As for an MIT license, it is obligatory to provide attribution with a copy of the license with the re-distributed software. While, in the case of a GPL license, there is also an additional requirement of making the source code available.
Thus, GPL prevents people from making any changes to the licensed work without permission from the author. Except if they make these changes available again freely and openly.
3.7.4. GNU Lesser General Public License (GNU-LGPL)
Compared to the previous GPL license which represents a Strong Copyleft version, GNU Lesser General Public License (GNU-LGPL) is a Weak Copyleft license.
It is a free software license that allows developers to reuse the licensed software within their work. Without being required to re-publish their whole source code publicly and freely. Only modified LGPL code should be provided under the same license.
3.7.5. GNU Free Documentation License (GNU-FDL)
Similar to GNU license, Free Documentation License (GNU-FDL) is a Copyleft license primarily used for free source code documentation.
It is available for manuals, textbooks, instructional materials, and any other text-based work. It gives readers the freedom to copy, redistribute, and modify the work. Providing that all copies should be available under the same license.
Additionally, derived copies might also be used commercially only if produced in small quantities (up to 100). Otherwise, the original document must be publicly available again to be modified by others.
3.7.6. BSD License (Berkeley Software Distribution)
BSD License is a set of open/free software licenses, providing minimal conditions to the usage and distribution of the licensed software.
Unlike many other software licenses, BSD license does not require derived source code to be distributed. There are 4 levels/licenses under BSD license:
- 4-clause license (original BSD License).
- 3-clause license (BSD License 2.0, Revised BSD License, New BSD License, or Modified BSD License).
- 2-clause license (Simplified BSD License or FreeBSD License).
- 0-clause license (Zero Clause BSD).
3.7.7. WTFPL
WTFPL (Do What The F*** You Want To Public License) is a Public Domain license that allows the redistribution of modified work under any terms.
It is a permissive license for software and scientific/artistic works which provides a great degree of freedom.
3.7.8. Unlicense
Similar to WTFPL, the Unlicense is also a Public Domain license that provides a template for dedicating the software to the public domain.
Anyone is free to copy, modify, publish, use, compile, sell, or distribute this software, either in source code form or as a compiled binary, for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and by any means.
Unlicense terms
3.7.9. Mozilla Public License (MPL)
Mozilla Public License, or MPL, is a free/open-source software license designed by Mozilla Foundation.
It is a Copyleft license designed to encourage contributors to share their modifications to source code. While at the same time still allowing them to combine the licensed code with other codes under different licenses.
3.7.10. Less Common Licenses
In addition to the previous detailed list of different common licenses, there are still many others to be considered, here is some examples:
- Free Art License.
- Open Database License.
- Open Game License.
- and many others.
For a full comparison between these different types, please refer to our comparison table in this article.
4. Copyright Spectrum
The common idea of all content licenses is to establish rules to use and redistribute the content.
We depict in the following figure the spectrum of copyright licenses, as per the extent of granted/reserved rights for each license.
5. Conclusion
In this article, we developed a detailed list of the most important and common content licenses that affect the usage of online materials. All these licenses have been published to help protect creative works and their authors.
Now it’s just your responsibility to know under which license the content you are using is published, and what can be done to maintain full abidance with the license usage conditions.