Free Knowledge based on Creative Commons Licenses. Consequences, risks and side-effects of the license module 'non-commercial use only – NC' | Documentatie | Vlaamse Erfgoedbibliotheek

Abstract:  All around the world an increasing number of people uses the public licenses offered by Creative Commons (CC) to free up the results of their creativity for re-use by others. Also projects, institutions and initiatives ever more often decide to subscribe to the CC motto: 'Some rights reserved'. One of the most popular examples for this is the Wikimedia Foundation, who together with its worldwide community of activists in 2008 decided to license its universal encyclopedia Wikipedia under the CC license BY SA – Attribution Share-Alike. This license is only one of six licenses in CC‘s suite of core licenses. The most widely used licenses from this set in their names show the additional abbreviation NC for 'non-commercial use only'. Many licensors who intuitively choose such an NC license do so with the understandable intention to prevent their works from being unwantedly and uncontrollably exploited by others for business. The many other consequences of this choice, however, are usually unknown. This brochure by Wikimedia Germany, Creative Commons Germany and iRights.info is meant to address this lack of knowledge.