The latest version of the Creative Commons licenses — Version 3.0 — are now available. To briefly recap what is different in this version of the licenses:
Separating the “generic” from the US license
As part of Version 3.0, we have spun off the “generic” license to be the CC US license and created a new generic license, now known as the “unported” license. For more information about this change, see this more detailed explanation.
Harmonizing the treatment of moral rights & collecting society royalties
In Version 3.0, we are ensuring that all CC jurisdiction licenses and the CC unported license have consistent, express treatment of the issues of moral rights and collecting society royalties (subject to national differences). For more information about these changes, see this explanation of the moral rights harmonization and this explanation of the collecting society harmonization.
No Endorsement Language
That a person may not misuse the attribution requirement of a CC license to improperly assert or imply an association or relationship with the licensor or author, has been implicit in our licenses from the start. We have now decided to make this explicit in both the Legal Code and the Commons Deed to ensure that — as our licenses continue to grow and attract a large number of more prominent artists and companies — there will be no confusion for either the licensor or licensee about this issue. For a more detailed explanation, see here.
BY-SA — Compatibility Structure Now Included
The CC BY-SA 3.0 licenses will now include the ability for derivatives to be relicensed under a “Creative Commons Compatible License,” which will be listed here. This structure realizes CC’s long-held objective of ensuring that there are no legal barriers to people being able to remix creativity in the way that flexible licenses are intended to enable. More information about this is provided here.
Clarifications Negotiated With Debian & MIT
Finally, Version 3.0 of the licenses include minor clarifications to the language of the licenses to take account of the concerns of Debian (more details here) and MIT (more details here).
As part of discussions with Debian, it was proposed to allow the release of CC-licensed works under DRM by licensees on certain conditions — what was known as the “parallel distribution language” but this has not been included as part of Version 3.0 of the CC licenses.
Below is a list of CC blog posts about Version 3.0:
Getting to Version 3.0
Version 3.0 — Public Discussion Launched
Version 3.0 — Revised License Drafts
Version 3.0 — It’s Happening & With BY-SA Compatibility Language Too
the link : version 3.0 – are now availible – at the beginning of the posting goes to a german part of your organisation, but not to the accepted version of creative commons license.
I am currently using version 3.0, but will I need to upgrade when version 4.0 becomes available or the license automatically transferred?
Sabrina — the link points to our license chooser. If your jurisdiction is pre-selected to Germany, they have not updated to 3.0 yet. Switch to “Unported” to get version 3.
remotegurus.com — if you offer work under 3.0 the offer is not automatically switched to 4.0 when that is (eventually, hopefully a long time from now) released, but the licenses are upward compatible, so someone could take your work licensed under 3.0, make a derivative work (assuming you aren’t using a NoDerivatives license) and release the new work under 4.0.