Creative commons, and my commercial usage

[simon_a]

Hi,

I have a web site with users submitting content. I want that content to be available to others under "Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License". The web site states that any content submitted is submitted according to that license.

That's fine, I think.

But in the future, I may also wish to use the content from the site for commercial products (selling the content in other forms). A simplified example would be the selling of the data in formatted PDF documents.

By asking users to accept the Creative Commons license when submitting their content, can I, as the owner of the site, still use the content commercially (without having to make it available free of charge under that license)?

Simon

[Quadrille]

So long as you keep to the conditions of the license [creativecommons.org], commercial use is not prohibited.

[vincevincevince]

It depends who holds the copyright. If you have a lawyer write your terms so that the full copyright assigned to you and then you license the content under CC, then you (and you alone) are able to release it commercially (as well as through CC). What you don't want to happen is that the user keeps the copyright, licenses it with CC and you are just a licensee under CC.

[simon_a]

vincevincevince: ok, that's what I was trying to get around in my head. As it stands, it seems I'm just a licencee of their content. I will change it so that the site owns the content, but makes the content available under a CC license.

[tangor]

Get a lawyer to make the changes desired. Too many times folks attempt to do it themselves and get tangled in a mess.

Unless the creator truly gives it up, they can come back at you.

You will also need a verified "I accept" to make it stick. Do a little more research!

[ytswy]

Wouldn't it make more sense to amend your Ts&Cs to grant yourself an additional licence to use user content commercially, rather than try to get copyright assigned to you?

You'd be putting your posters in a position where they would actually need your permission to reproduce their own content if you owned the copyright; maybe that makes sense for what you are doing, but thinking generally it would seem to be something that would discourage people from contributing.