Earlier this week I was asked this on Twitter:
An entirely reasonable question given that I had entirely failed to provide clarity on how my content is licensed on each page. So, thanks, Elio, for helping me to fix this. You will now see a licensing blurb at the bottom of each post as well as a licensing drop-down item in the menu.
To clarify, all content on my blog is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license. I have been a long-time free culture and Creative Commons fan, supporter, and artist (see my archive of music, podcasts, and more here), so this license is a natural choice.
Let’s now explore what you can do with my content under the parameters of this license.
What You Can Do
The license is pretty simple. You are allowed to:
- Share – feel free to share my blog posts with whoever you want.
- Remix – you are welcome to use my posts and create derived works from them.
…there is a requirement though. You are required to provide attribution for my content. I don’t need a glowing missive about how the article changed your life, just a few words that reference me as the author and point to the original article, that’s all. Something like:
‘My Blog is Creative Commons Licensed’ originally written by Jono Bacon and originally published at https://www.jonobacon.com/2016/08/12/my-blog-is-creative-commons-licensed/
will be great. Thanks!
To learn more about your rights with my content, so the license details.
What I Would Love You Do
So, that’s what you are allowed to do, but what would I selfishly love you to do with my content?
Well, a bunch of things:
- Share it – I try to write things on this blog that are helpful to others, but it is only helpful if people read it. So, your help sharing and submitting my posts on and to social media, news sites, other blogs, and elsewhere is super helpful.
- Include and reference it in other work – I always love to see my work included and referenced in other blog posts, books, research papers, and elsewhere. If you find something useful in my writing, feel free to go ahead and use it.
- Translate it – I would love to see my posts translated into different languages, just like Elio offered to do. If you do make a translation, let me know so I can add a link to it in the original article.
Of course, if you have any other questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch and whether you just read my content or choose to share, derive, or translate it, thanks for being a part of it! 🙂
