Ads and CC-NC Licenses

My general rule about "non-commercial" with CC licenses not just about ads. For the most part I ask myself "is this person who posted my material making their living off of my work?" Basically a personal/group blog effort that's more for fun than profit usually falls into the fair area.

But if this is someone's job and the site is owned by a company, then it's commercial. It's only relevant for those who have listed the non-com ... remember to post the full license that you're utilizing in your credit.

Obviously that's just me, there are some others in the discussion forums a CC.org that take a much harder line about it ... and others that only say that their non-com license mean that other people can SELL their images.

I think the best thing to do is ask the license holders, especially if you'd like to use their material in the future.

Yeah, the thought had occurred to me that non-commercial meant no use by a company. The ads are planned as a way to (hopefully) recoup the cost of registering a domain name, which is currently about $10 through Google. Anything that doesn't pay for the site would, however, end up in my personal savings. I think I'll go with the "ask the rights holders" method, when the time comes.

Thanks for answering, cybele! Any other opinions from anyone?

First, I agree with Cybele and I think she illustrates a major problem here. That no two or three CC users will interpret the non-commercial element the same way. All it takes is one who takes a hard line to make your life difficult.

The CC license itself says the following, that if you set the content to non-commercial one can not use the work "in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation."

That is what is is interesting. If you were using ads just to recoup costs, that would not be, on paper, a use "primarily intended" for commercial advantage. However, how would a licensor know that? You could be a charity in a third world country or an evil spam blogger, they wouldn't know off hand.

And that is the problem, even if it is technically and legally acceptable to use CC iicensed works on ad sites, it is hard to judge if the use is legitimate and many are prone to shoot first and ask questions later.

Personally, I avoid any and all CC licensed materials that are not available for commercial use because of that. I worry that my consulting business could cause some to feel that the use is commercial and file takedown notices or worse against me.

Fortunately, there is plenty out there to use still.

I would go that route to be safe. But as you said you can always ask the copyright holder and gain permission to use the work with ads, if you explain your reasons for running them and that you really won't be making any money, I'm sure that they will be fine with it.

But yes, it is always better to be safe...

Jonathan Bailey - plagiarismtoday.com

But as you said you can always ask the copyright holder and gain permission to use the work with ads, if you explain your reasons for running them and that you really won't be making any money, I'm sure that they will be fine with it.

It is by far less hassle to ask for permission than to deal with a lawsuit later.

Personally, I avoid any and all CC licensed materials that are not available for commercial use because of that.

+1 I definitely do that too (or I ask).

This is part of why I hate dealing with licenses. All the edge cases and judgments of intention make things really difficult.

Obviously the easiest solution is to just stop using CC-NC content after the ads are added. The problem comes when I note that I've already used non-commercial content on the site. That's probably a case to just ask the rights holders, before adding advertisements, and removing the images if they don't give permission.

Good thing I tag all my third-party images with image attribution text at the end of the post! Example:

[Image from Google Blogoscroped, used under CC-BY-NC]

"Google Blogoscoped" links to the post I got it from, and "CC-BY-NC" goes to the CC license summary page (the latest version as of that post if not specified by the source site).

Mixed images are referenced by page order. If I make the first screenshot and take the second from another site, I just say "Second image" instead of just "Image", with the rest being the same.

Re making money, I assume I won't be because I don't get very many visitors. I don't know what AdSense earnings are usually like for a 1,400 visit/month site, but I doubt it's any large amount.

But as I said, I have time to think about this before it's even possible to add ads (that's getting really confusing to type!), so this forum topic could conceivably continue producing ideas for a long time to come.

To those who have left their opinions, I wish to express my thanks!

> 1,400 visit/month site

eCPM of ~1$ = 1,4 x 1
eCPM of ~5$ = 1,4 x 5
eCPM of ~10$ = 1,4 x 10

That's the math for it :)

I either haven't gotten to that in math classes yet or I've forgotten it. Can you explain? Thanks!

Read this: eCPM

My mistake: 1,000 page impressions are not equal to 1,000 visitors

If you have 1,400 visitors on your blog that may be ~2,000 page impressions.

Ah, thanks Markus! Now it makes more sense. It's partly because I know what eCPM is now, and partly because I'm not overtired like I was before.

According to Google Analytics, my ~1,400 visits is somewhere in the area of 1,600-1,700 pageviews.

If I put more than one ad unit on a page, would it decrease or increase the eCPM (I know, I'm getting out of legal issues ;-) ?

eCPM for a whole website is a total. Increasing/Decreasing ad numbers and the following eCPM changes are one of the big miracles with AdSense :)