In Canada, whenever you create something you own the copyright to it as long as you meet certain criteria. Please see the Government of Canada’s guide to copyright for more information. Or, for a more entertaining background on the issue check out the playlist below. Not all of it is relevant to your creation of content for this course, but it raises a lot of thought proving points to consider as you think about if you want to create open content.

Creative Commons licensing allows creators to opt-out of the restrictions copyright places on what consumers can do with the content. Open educational resources are licensed under creative commons licenses (or something similar) in order to decrease barriers for users to access and use them. If you decide to make an open educational resource (OER) and license it under creative commons that means that anyone can keep a copy, reuse it, change it, combine it with other resources and redistribute it. With creative commons licensing you can grant people unsolicited permission to engage in these activities.

Here is a helpful video explaining Creative Commons licensing. Creative Commons makes it easy for creators to grant permissions to others to share and use the content they create.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YkbeycRa2A

There are six different types of creative commons licensing options, with varying degrees of openness. If you want to you can visit the creative commons website to choose the license you want on your work and include it on your submission. It is important to note that choosing to license something under creative commons licensing cannot be revoked, even if someone uses it to make millions of dollars (likely not going to happen in this course).

Below is more information on the different degrees of freedom and control that the licenses allow:

From: How To Attribute Creative Commons Photos by Foter   For a more detailed discussion of creative commons licensing please visit the following links

This video provides a brief overview of some of the licensing options for your content.

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