What is an appropriate CC license, if any, for work I may wish to re-use commercially in the future? I am writing a set of cycling route guides, with photographs, which I intend to publish on a website, free of charge. I would like to license the text and images with a permissive Creative Commons license if possible, but retain the ability to re-use the content myself in a future commercial work (e.g. a book), should I choose to create one. I have little knowledge of CC or licensing in general so I would like to know if this is a common tenet of CC and/or if there is a specific CC license I should select that would leave open this possibility for myself in the future, while allowing others non-commercial use now.
A licence is your permission for others to use the work within the specific terms of the licence. You never license yourself, you license someone else or someone else license you. If you are the sole right holder of a work and you do not assign or transfer your copyright interests to others, you retain all rights regarding the work. Licensing your work under a CC licence does not make it impossible for yourself to use it commercially in the past, present or future. Of course, permissive licences like CC-BY might decrease the commercial value of your work since anyone else could reuse your work freely with minimum restrictions. But that does not prevent you legally from use your own work for commercial purposes. The exact choice depends on your wish on other aspects of using your work. For example, CC-BY-NC would require the licensee (essentially, anyone else not having another overriding agreement with you) to attribute/give you credits in order to use it non-commercially only, but they may remix and adapt your work as they wish as long as they credit you and the purpose is non commericial. You may also add an ShareAlike (SA) requirement where if the licensee creates an derivative work based on your work, they must license their derivative work using CC-BY-NC-SA as well. The last kind, CC-BY-NC-ND (NoDerivatives), would not only require credit when the licensee uses your work, but also prevent them from creating derivative works from your work.
Any adapted work derived from a work used under a CC-BY-SA licnese must be distributed, if at all, under a compatible license. The question is whether a large work incorporating a much smaller work is said to be "based on" that work. The CC-BY-SA 4.0 legal text does not use "include" or "incorporate" or any similar term to define an adapted work, instead it says: Adapted Material means material subject to Copyright and Similar Rights that is derived from or based upon the Licensed Material and in which the Licensed Material is translated, altered, arranged, transformed, or otherwise modified in a manner requiring permission under the Copyright and Similar Rights held by the Licensor. For purposes of this Public License, where the Licensed Material is a musical work, performance, or sound recording, Adapted Material is always produced where the Licensed Material is synched in timed relation with a moving image. If including a single work makes your book Adapted Materiel, than you must either release the book under the same license, or else not rely on the CC license. I am not at all sure if such use would make the book Adapted Materiel. If the content could be quoted (perhaps only in part) based on fair use or fair dealing or a similar theory, you would not be relaying on the license. But whether such use is legitimate is always a very fact-bound question, which will depend on various specific facts. See Is this copyright infringement? Is it fair use? What if I don&#39;t make any money off it? for a summary of US fair use principles. If the materiel you want to use would not qualify under fair use (or whatever similar principle applies in your jurisdiction), and the book would be considered Adapted Material, then you would have to omit it or put the book under the CC license. I see in The CC case law page the statement that: The atlas was a compilation not a derivative work, so did not need to be licensed under the SA term, Which might apply to your book. If it does, you would not need to place the book under a CC license. Update: On reading CC's detailed wiki page on Drauglis v. Kappa Map Group, LLC I find the statement that Use of a whole work is suggestive of a "compilation" rather than a derivative work subject to the ND/SA terms. attributed to the US District court (DC district) that decided this case in 2014. If that decision were followed, it would seem that the book would not be considered a derivative work and while proper attribution must be provided, and the applicable license must be indicated, the book itself need not be released under CC-BY-SA.
License to use does not mean license to create derivative works These are different rights under copyright. If you want to make a derivative work, which your animations are, you must have a license to do so.
I believe the author has published it online. I agree. It is posted at his publisher's website. However, I am unsure if I'm allowed to read it. This answer assumes you are in jurisdiction whose copyright laws is based upon the Berne convention (i.e. the civilized world + USA). Assuming it was the author published it online, it is perfectly legal to read it. Technically, the author is performing his work by putting it online, and by reading it, you are just enjoying his performance. Also, if you are in a jurisdiction with an explicit exception from copyright for personal use, or where fair use allows making copies for personal use, it would also be legal to download it, or to print it on paper (but for personal use only). As for downloading and printing for non-personal use - that is not legal in Berne jurisdictions.
You give SE 2 licences The CC-BY-SA one and the one that goes “the perpetual and irrevocable right and license to access, use, process, copy, distribute, export, display and to commercially exploit such Subscriber Content … as reasonably necessary to, for example (without limitation):”. SE can choose which one it uses. Even though the enumerated cases are “without limitation”, they indicate the general area where the 2nd licence would be “reasonably necessary”. If SE used it outside that domain and did not comply with CC-BY-SA they would arguably be in copyright violation.
A car, or other useful object, is not generally a copyrighted work. There can, in come cases, be a copyright on the aesthetic aspects of the design, which might prohibit a different car maker from making a different car with a very similar appearance, But taking a picture of a car is not an infringement of copyright, and the photographer does not need permission from the car maker to take the picture. Such a picture would itself be protected by copyright, and the book author would need permission from the photographer or other copyright holder to use the image, unless that use came under fair use or fair dealing. (If the book author took the picture, this would not be an issue, of course.) This would be true whether this was a &quot;commercial use&quot; or not. Such permission is often granted freely if proper credit is given, but that is the choice of the copyright holder, and in some cases a fee would be charged, or permission might be denied on any terms.
This would likely be considered a derivative work. You would need permission from the copyright holder to make it, especially if you intend to distribute it for profit.
As long as you own the copyright to the works, you can even publish the source code itself under two different licenses, which can be radically different. For example, MySQL is licensed under both a commercial and an open-source license. Given that you can publish a single piece of work as multiple licenses, it is your choice which one you wish to grant to the book or the code, as long as you own the copyright.