Copyright for Educators

Bongani’s use of content with a Creative Commons non-commercial (NC) clause is not the problem here, even if there are Google Ads on her blog. The NC clause of the CC license is generally interpreted as restricting the direct sale of the licensed content, but ad-supported sites such as blogs are not prevented from using content in this interpretation (see this article for Lawrence Lessig’s reading of NC with regard to ad-supported sites). Bongani can charge her students for copies of NC works since the fee simply pays for the paper copies and no additional revenue is generated by the content.

The more problematic issue Bongani faces is license incompatibility. She will have no problem using the content licensed CC BY-NC, but the CC BY-NC-SA contains a “share-alike” clause, which means that in order to create a derivative work or adaptation of this content she must license her resulting work with the same CC BY-NC-SA license. She may have license compatibility problems, a situation with two distinct licenses requiring that any derivative content be licensed in two different ways (see the CC license compatibility matrix). This is the unfortunate limitation of stipulating the “share-alike” clause in a CC license. It is not clear from the case study whether Bongani wishes merely to reproduce the NC-SA-licensed works on her blog, or to adapt them in some way. If she simply wants to post the material on her blog she can do so because she won’t be creating a derivative work, she is just copying the work. However, if she does wish to modify or remix the NC-SA licensed work, she will either have to release those remixes under the NC-SA license, or find different source material.It is also the case that a CC license does not preclude the option to contact the content creator to request permission under different terms, nor does it affect fair use rights. Bongani could resolve this issue by requesting explicit permission to use the CC BY-NC-SA content on her CC BY-SA blog and on Siyavula. The other, easier option would be to simply link to the CC BY-NC-SA content, thus respecting the creator’s original license.