HOWTO Negotiate a Creative Commons License: Ten Steps

Step 9 Do your CC homework

Allay any of their fears by doing your homework, and answering their questions. One of the issues that came up was the inclusion of (C) images in our CC licensed work. The legal department thought that might mean that we were infringing on the (C) of the images, forcing them to be CC. Similarly, we had concerns that the Public Domain images might be restricted by the CC license on the book, something known as Commons Enclosure.

After a number of phone calls and emails we got confirmation that in fact this was not true. Nathan Yergler of the Creative Commons Foundation wrote us to say

"You can use a copyrighted work, assuming you have the rights to do so (either under fair use or explicitly negotiated), in a CC licensed work so long as you point out the exceptions in the license notice. This is effectively what Creative Commons does with our website--see the footer text where it states except where otherwise noted..."

And as I mentioned on the phone, Creative Commons can not offer legal advice or opinions and this should not be interpreted as such.

Of course we could include (C) images in a CC book, we simply had to state that they were (C). Likewise, we stated on the front page of the book (right below the CC declaration) that all images in the book were Public Domain unless otherwise noted. The lawyers liked this.

Image below CC Cayusa