"Ripping" is as common as Anime here at deviantArt. As if deviants didn't have enough to contend with from other, quite often naive deviants who dont realise that they are not free to just take one's work as use it as they wish; we now have to deal with international websites dedicated to the art of taking, displaying and using our works without our knowledge and permission.

Well - dA has a significant new feature which we should all become very familiar with. It is much needed ammunition in the battle againt digital theft or "borrowing".

Incorporated into the submissions process in the ability to license your work through the use of a Creative Commons License. Creative Commons helps you publish your work online while letting others know exactly what they can and can't do with your work.

With a Creative Commons license, you can, if you so choose, allow people to use, copy, and share your work while giving you credit. Generally, licenses are available to cover Audio, Images, Video, Text, Education and Software.

When submitting to dA, you are asked the following questions:

Use a Creative Commons License?
Yes
No

Allow commercial uses of your work?
Yes
No

Allow modifications of your work?
Yes
Yes, as long as others share alike
No

Creative Commons licenses provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators. They have built upon the "all rights reserved" concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary "some rights reserved" approach. They are a nonprofit organization. All of their tools are free.

Offering your work under a Creative Commons license does not mean giving up your copyright. It means offering some of your rights to any member of the public but only on certain conditions.

All of Creative Commons licenses require that you give attribution in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

Attribution Attribution. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.

The core licensing suite will also let you mix and match conditions from the list of options below. There are a total of six Creative Commons licenses to choose from the core licensing suite.

Noncommercial Noncommercial. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only

No Derivative Works No Derivative Works. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

Share Alike Share Alike. You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

Note: A license cannot feature both the Share Alike and No Derivative Works options. The Share Alike requirement applies only to derivative works.

Taking a License

When you've made your choices, you'll get the appropriate license expressed in three ways:

1. Commons Deed. A simple, plain-language summary of the license, complete with the relevant icons.
2. Legal Code. The fine print that you need to be sure the license will stand up in court.
3. Digital Code. A machine-readable translation of the license that helps search engines and other applications identify your work by its terms of use.

Using a License

If you chose a Creative Commons license, the small logo and license description will appear next to your deviation. It will link back to the Commons Deed, so that the world can be notified of the license terms. If you find that your license is being violated, you may have grounds to sue under copyright infringement. The machine-readable translation will be embeded in your deviation page.

* More examples are available on the examples page
* Things to think about before selecting a license: [link]
* Detailed explanation of all licenses
* Wikipedi article [link]

The CCL is global; following is a link to countries covered: [link]

For artists and photographers, information regarding the Images license is here [link]

For Writers, information regarding the Text license is here [link]

For anyone who has a personal website; free, open-source license scripts are available at the creativecommons website.


sources: creativecommons.org and dA