SURF recommends liberal licence for material reuse

In a recent report now available in English, the Netherlands’ SURFdirect (SURF’s Digital Rights Expert Community) and Creative Commons Netherlands recommend the most liberal Creative Commons licence (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Netherlands Licence; CC:BY) for reuse of material in the context of education and research.

SURFdirect says that the choice of licence must not create barriers to the future use of educational and research material. According to the  report, ‘On the basis of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Netherlands Licence, users of the licensed work are permitted to copy it, distribute it, and pass it on, and produce derivative works and distribute them on condition that the work is attributed to its author. This licence freely permits commercial use and derivative works as long as users comply with the requirements regarding attribution. These comprise not only giving the name of the author but also the obligation to clearly designate derivative works as such.’

Another important recommendation in this report is that SURF should set up an effective awareness-raising campaign in order to introduce and explain Creative Commons licences to those ‘in the field’.