Earth.org is using Creative Commons
The aim of the non-profit organization Creative Commons (CC) is to build a shared culture. It is a license for open content and redefines the rules of copyrights.
This idea comes very close to our vision for the open travel guide Earth.org. Earth.org wants to build a travel guide, which lives and grows through the collaboration of people worldwide. Using Creative Commons enables Earth.org to support the open culture of the web even more by combining and enriching existing information and letting others use the work we create together on www.earth.org .
The organization has released several copyright licenses known as Creative Commons licenses.
Earth.org is using the Attribution Share Alike License
To be more specific. Earth.org is using the CC Attribution Share Alike License (CC-BY-SA). Sounds complicated? Don't worry, we will show you how you can get travel information and use it for your purposes:
Learn about what you can do - and what this specific license CC-BY-SA means
1. First of all - you can easily take editable* travel guide content from Earth.org. Imagine you've just read a great article about the history of Rome on www.earth.org. You like it so much that you think your friends should see it as well. So naturally you want to be able to publish it on your blog or website. At Earth.org, we say no problem at all. Go for it!
The only thing we ask you to do: Show where the information is from - link to www.earth.org.
* Editable means: Content that is written by Earth.org travellers. Some content from other partners (e.g. weather information) might be copyrighted.
And - you are not only allowed to copy travel guide content, but also encouraged to re-write and re-mix it. Let's get back to the history article about Rome. Now you want to add information because you are currently writing on a scientific paper about history of Italy? Take the article, rewrite it, make it even nicer and enrich your paper with it! If you do so, you simply have to put it under the same licence as we do: It's called Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike.
2. You can also take content from other websites (e.g. Wikipedia) and add it to your contribution on Earth.org. You have just found an interesting detail about the history of Rome on Wikipedia. You are allowed to take that information from there and add it to your travel information in the Earth.org travel guide. When it's done and the article is finished, click on "I have taken this content from another webitse" or enter the URL where you have taken the content from and press "Save".
What content you are able to use:
In the beginning we told you: You can take editable travel guide content (or: user generated conent); this means content which is written by other Earth.org travellers. However some content (e.g. weather integration, hotel information) is provided by third parties which do not want their content to be freely copyable and therefore might stil be copyrighted.
This means: Earth.org's content is under a CC-BY-SA license unless otherwise stated. Of course user profiles and profile pictures as well as the internal pages (About us) are privacy protected and not available for sharing. You can use pictures and articles - unless we tell you not to do so on the particular page.
Want to be more specific? You can read the legal codes of the licence by following the links below:
View License Deed | View Legal Code
Now and then
For Earth.org using CC licensed content is a tremendous opportunity. CC allows Earth.org to enrich its travel guide content with information and grow fast by receiving quality content from other websites using CC license, for example Wikipedia.
