Creative Commons Licensing
Thereafter, you may want to think about procuring a Creative Commons Licence (“CCL”) for your material. That sounds so complex and convoluted though, is it not? No, it isn’t. As long as you say your material is granted under a CCL, others can distribute and share it, generally provided that they reference you and do not use it for commercial purposes. Simples.
Go Compare the Copyright and IP Terms and Conditions of Comparison Websites
Go compare Compare the Market and Compare the Meerkat dot com and you’ll see that those sites vary in terms of their copyright permissions. None of them use Creative Commons Licence for the material produced therein.
The terms and conditions of Compare the Market and Compare the Meerkat, for instance, state the following:
10. Intellectual property
10.1 All information, data and copyright material contained on this website, including any trade marks (whether officially registered or unregistered), trade names, brands, logos and devices belong to us or to people whom we have given ownership or permission to use such information data and/or copyright material. You must not use such information or copyright material unless you have written permission from us or the owner to do so.
10.2 You may download or copy the content and other downloadable items displayed on this website for personal non business use only, (i.e. to assist with a purchasing decision), provided that you are not otherwise breaching these Terms and Conditions.
Compare that with the terms and conditions of Gocompare.com which is much more practical, while still not providing a Creative Commons Licence:
Commercial use
Please note this website is for non-commercial, personal use only (which means for use by an individual or for a business to source their own products and services). We reserve the right to take legal action against any person or company who uses our website and/or services for commercial use or in any other unauthorised manner. This includes (but is not limited to) breach of copyright, processing multiple quotes for other customers or companies, and other companies checking their prices against those presented on this website.
Intellectual property
We are the owner or the licensee of all intellectual property rights in our website, and in the material published on it. This includes, but is not limited to, all trademarks, logos, business names, trading names, design rights, database rights, copyright and any other intellectual property rights in our website. The website is protected by copyright laws and treaties around the world. All such rights are reserved save as expressly stated in these terms.
You may print off one copy, and may download extracts, of any page(s) from our website for your personal reference only and you may draw the attention of others within your organisation to material
* the material may not be used for commercial purposes without obtaining a licence to do so from us or our licensors;
* the copies must retain any copyrights or other intellectual property notices contained in the original material;
* any images on the website are protected by copyright and may not be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission from the owner; and
* you must not modify the paper or digital copies of any materials you have printed off or downloaded in any way, and you must not use any illustrations, photographs, video or audio sequences, logos, designs or any graphics separately from any accompanying text.
* our status (and that of any identified contributors) as the authors of material on our website must always be acknowledged.If you print off, copy or download any part of our website in breach of these terms of use, your right to use our website will cease immediately and you must, at our option, return or destroy any copies of the materials you have made (in whatever format).
Nevertheless, that site does have money to spend on high-priced lawyers. Why, though, would you spend thousands on lawyer or solicitor when you can copy, paste and edit other big companies’ terms and conditions to suit you? Simples? Nevertheless, bespoke terms and conditions are to be welcomed to ensure your business is protected as best as possible.
WardblawG’s Creative Commons
WardblawG uses one of the most common types of Creative Commons. This is referenced in the Legal page on this site and reproduced verbatim, below. Feel free to copy and paste any of this legal stuff for your own site, amended for your own purposes.
Copyright
Anything written here can be freely re-published elsewhere without asking permission, so long as it is credited to this site and the author, or if applicable pseudonym of the author, of the work, whether it be posts, comments or otherwise, since all WardblawG material is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
Click here to view a summary of the licence
Click here to view the full licence terms.
Scottish and UK governmental material on or downloadable from this site, including case reports, is Crown copyright and is reproduced under licence.
There are other different types of Creative Commons that may be considered and chosen by you at the Creative Commons website after answering a brief questionnaire about your business.
By saying you grant a certain type of Creative Commons Licence, you are doing just that: no fancy legal documents required, because they’ve already been drafted for you.
