ANATOMY OF A CC LICENSE - 47 -
not apply, or that a work is in the public domain. Or, for the savvy licensor, they may realize that their work is in the public domain in some countries but not everywhere, and they want to be sure that everyone everywhere will be able to reuse it.
For a real-life example, let’s look at what happens when you want to use CC licenses in a field like 3D printing. Look at the resource provided by Public Knowledge (licensed CC BY-SA 3.0, available at https://www.publicknowledge.org/assets/uploads/documents/3_Steps_for_Licensing_Your_3D_Printed_Stuff.pdf) about how to apply a CC license in the 3D printing field. It is easy to see how complicated the legal issues can become, particularly in newly emerging fields like this one.
One other subtle but important difference about the scope of CC licenses is that they also cover other rights that are closely related to copyright. These are defined as “Similar Rights” in the CC license legal code, and they include related and neighboring rights and what are known as “sui genesis database rights,” which are rights in some countries restricting the extraction and reuse of the contents of a database. See section 2.1 “Copyright Basics” for a refresher on what Similar Rights covers. Just as with copyright, the CC license conditions only come into play when Similar Rights otherwise apply to the work and to the particular reuse made by someone using the CC-licensed work.
The other critical part of the statement “CC licenses are copyright licenses” is that there may be other rights in a work upon which the license has no effect—for example, privacy rights. Again, CC licenses do not have any effect on rights beyond copyright and Similar Rights as defined in the licenses, so other rights have to be managed separately. Read the FAQ about this issue at https://creativecommons.org/faq/#does-a-creative-commons-license-give-me-all-the-rights-i-need-to-use-the-work.
While it is not required, Creative Commons urges creators to make sure that there are no other rights that may prevent the reuse of their work as intended. CC licensors do not make any warranties about the reuse of the work. This means that unless the licensor is offering a separate warranty, it is incumbent on the reuser to determine whether other rights may impact their intended reuse of the work. Learning more about this can sometimes be as easy as contacting the licensor to inquire about these possible other rights. Read through the complete list of considerations for licensees of CC-licensed works, licensed CC BY 4.0, at https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Considerations_for_licensors_and_licensees#Considerations_for_licensees.
