Licensing Steemit Content: Who Owns Your Posts?
You Have the Right To License Your Content
The Seemit Terms of Service do not state that any license is applied to the content you post on this website. Without any license on your content, your posts may be legally liable to be taken and used by anybody, for any purpose, without consequence. However, you can take steps to protect your content by attaching a simple license to your posts.
Options for Post Licensing
Licensing gives you power over how your content is used. Here I summarize a few different popular licenses and how you can apply them to your own work. A popular service for licensing work is Creative Commons, an organization that creates and utilizes licenses that allow work to be redistributed and used most effectively. Currently, there are over 1.2 billion works licensed by Creative Commons. For an example of how a license is used, check the bottom of this post!
| License | Use |
|---|---|
| Copyright (©) | All rights of usage belong to the author of the work. |
| Public Domain (CC0) | The author resigns all rights to the work, which may be used for any purpose with no restriction. |
| Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) | The work can be distributed and used freely for any purpose, so long as the author is credited. |
| Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) | The work can be distributed and used freely for any purpose, so long as the author is credited, and derivatives of the work are shared under this same license. |
| Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND) | The work can be distributed and used freely for any purpose, so long its copies remain unmodified, and the author is credited. |
| Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) | The work can be distributed and used freely for noncommercial purposes, so long as the author is credited. |
| Other Creative Commons | While the basic features are covered here, there are more options for CC licensing. |
The Collaborative Commons and You
The collaborative commons is the idea that as an online community, we all benefit when we share resources with each other. It's a core concept of the Steemit community that has been written about before, and it is also an inspiration behind the founding of the @sndbox incubator.
In order to support the collaborative commons, it is important to produce Free Cultural Works that can be "readily used, shared, and remixed by others" and contribute "toward creating a commons of freely reusable materials." Steemit is an incredibly valuable platform simply because can reward the creation of these works, and incentivizes contribution to the collaborative commons.
A Copyright logo on a DVD. This image belongs to the public
domain (CC0), and therefore does not require attribution.
My Choice: CC BY
I personally care that I get credit for my work, and I would like things that I create to support the creative commons. To this end, CC BY is a satisfactory license for me. This issue initially came to my attention around the practice of publishing academic literature. Many scientific publishers, such as the Public Library of Science use CC BY in all of their publishing, in order to disseminate the results of research most effectively. I hope you've found a license that will work for you, too!
Sources
About The Licenses. (n.d.). Retrieved September 26, 2017, from https://creativecommons.org/licenses/
CC0. (n.d.). Retrieved September 26, 2017, from https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/
Frequently Asked Questions. (2017, August 29). Retrieved September 26, 2017, from https://creativecommons.org/faq/#what-is-copyright-and-why-does-it-matter
kevinwong. (2017, August 1). Why Should You Consider Putting Your Extra Time, Effort, and Resources Into Being Part of The Collaborative Commons? Retrieved September 26, 2017, from https://steemit.com/futurology/@kevinwong/why-should-you-consider-putting-your-extra-time-effort-and-resources-into-being-part-of-the-collaborative-commons
State of the Commons – Creative Commons 2016. (2016). Retrieved September 26, 2017, from https://stateof.creativecommons.org/
Terms of Service. (2016, April 28). Retrieved September 26, 2017, from https://steemit.com/tos.html
voronoi. (2017, August). Why I Left My Office Job : The Blockchain Ecosystem Will Empower A Better, Stronger, More Collaborative Future. Retrieved September 26, 2017, from https://steemit.com/freedom/@voronoi/why-i-left-my-office-job-the-blockchain-ecosystem-will-empower-a-better-stronger-more-collaborative-future
Why Open Access? (n.d.). Retrieved September 26, 2017, from https://www.plos.org/open-access
Related Posts
- How to Keep Track of Facts by @somethingburger (me)
- Why Should You Consider Putting Your Extra Time, Effort, and Resources Into Being Part of The Collaborative Commons? by @kevinwong
- Why I Left My Office Job : The Blockchain Ecosystem Will Empower A Better, Stronger, More Collaborative Future by @voronoi
Thanks for reading!
This work is free for any use with attribution under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY) License.
Thanks a lot for this information! I have been looking for succinct, clear and easily understandable information about it and couldn't find anything. I'm glad the sky has brought us in the same vortex for me to know about it and for you to be upvoted diligently and gladly resteemed.
Thanks again for a very well written article. All for one and one for all! Namaste :)
Thank you @eric-boucher! Glad this has been informative and helpful :)
I think it's one of the best ways to boost all Steemit content quality, people were frustrated with spam and plagiarizing and all the community is still in search of this one option to make Steemit even more awesome
Thanks @anforo! Open licensing is good for everyone :)
Bots like cheetah and originalworks do help to see if the post is copied or not but we also need to make sure that original content is being promoted more on steemit!
That's a good consideration @fury123!
But what happens with your original content once it's part of the Blockchain, who owns it?
For me the system of blockchain, the fact that a content remains forever that you can always trace back the original one, is vaguely associated with copyright. For a specific content that I produce and upload on Steemit, I should look into copyright as well..
This is a good point, @mintvilla. The Steem blockchain stores information, Steemit displays it, and that is definitely usable to trace the origin things that have been posted here. However, if you don't want other people to re-use your work in a way that you don't like, or want to explicitly give people permission to use you work, a license is worthwhile!
A little remark: If you don't give a license than the law (copy right) of the country where you publish the content is valid.
For example, the default copy right in Germany is 'all rights reserved'.
As a F(l)oss fan boy I use der (CC) BY SA for photogaphy, etc. and GPL for coding, etc.
Why I use SA? As a F(l)oss fan boy I like that the same license is used again so that the work stay open source. If I only use BY then the next one can set an closed source license.
Interesting! Thanks for sharing this.
like your post.
Thanks, @youthhunger :)
Yea, i have always wondered what happens to authors contents after posting it on steemit, could it be stolen and used else where as it has no license, this info is indeed a relief to many authors
Glad it's useful, @tony-duke!
@cheetah is doing the great work to identify the copied content. Hats off for @steemit team
Glad there are community initiatives to keep down plagiarism!
Very informative post, thank you and I shall definitely be looking into this further.
Cg
Thanks, @cryptogee!
Well I didn't know about this. It is great but I'm probably not going to use this. When it comes to copyrigh issues I'm not really a fan !
Good consideration. If you're fine with people using your work for anything, there's not necessarily a need to specify a license. Nice to know what your content is liable to be done with, though!