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<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en"> <head>  <script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-J80V1HPMKT"></script> <script> window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag('js', new Date()); gtag('config', 'G-J80V1HPMKT'); </script> <title>Creative Commons Namespace for RSS and Atom</title> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS Advisory Board" href="http://feeds.rssboard.org/rssboard" /> <link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com"> <link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin> <link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Anton&family=Lisu+Bosa:wght@700&display=swap" rel="stylesheet"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://stackpath.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/4.4.1/css/bootstrap.min.css" integrity="sha384-Vkoo8x4CGsO3+Hhxv8T/Q5PaXtkKtu6ug5TOeNV6gBiFeWPGFN9MuhOf23Q9Ifjh" crossorigin="anonymous"> <style type="text/css" media="screen"> @import url("https://www.rssboard.org/images/stylesheet.css"); </style> <style type="text/css" media="screen"> @import url("https://www.rssboard.org/images/spec-stylesheet.css"); </style> <meta name="robots" content="noodp" /> </head> <body>   <div class="container page"> <div class="row"> <div class="col col-md-12 banner"> <h1 class="bannerhead"><a href="/">RSS Advisory Board</a></h1> <h2 class="bannersubhead">Really Simple Syndication specifications, tutorials and discussion</h2> </div> </div> <div class="row"> <div class="col col-md-10"> <div align="center"> <p><script type="text/javascript"> </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="//pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> </script></p> </div>  <div class="specification"> <h3>Creative Commons Namespace for RSS at Atom</h3> <p class="fineprint">Editor's Note: This document was published on June 23, 2023.</p> <h4 id="introduction">1. <a href="#introduction">Introduction</a></h4> <p>Creative Commons (CC) is a set of licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted work such as a book, web page or technical document. A CC license is used when an author wants to allow other people to share, use or build upon a work that the author has created. CC provides an author flexibility in what rights are being granted. For example, they might choose to allow only non-commercial uses of a given work or allow only uses of a work that are attributed to reflect the original author. CC licenses offer protection for the people who reuse or redistribute an author's work from concerns of copyright infringement as long as they honor the conditions specified in the license under which the work is distributed.</p> <p>The cofounder of Creative Commons, Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig, explained the rationale for the licenses this way:</p> <blockquote> <p>Creators who want to say 'All Rights Reserved' need not apply. But creators who want just 'Some Rights Reserved' could use our licenses to express that idea simply. And individuals and institutions that wanted to use work they've found on the Internet could do so without fearing they would be confused with those who believe in 'No Rights Respected' when it comes to copyright.</p> </blockquote> <p>The Creative Commons namespace enables a feed in <a href="https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification">RSS 2.0</a> or <a href="https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4287">Atom</a> format to indicate the copyright license that applies to an entire feed or one or more specific items in that feed. Though the namespace takes its name from the <a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons</a> set of content-sharing licenses, it is not limited to just these license. It potentially <span class="rfc2119">may</span> be used with other licenses.</p> <p>Creative Commons has made available <a href="https://creativecommons.org/choose/">multiple licenses</a> that could be applied to the contents of an RSS or Atom feed.</p> <p>An XML namespace is declared in the top-level element of the document and <span class="rfc2119">must</span> consist of the text "xmlns:" followed by the namespace name, an equal sign, and a URL that uniquely identifies the namespace. The Creative Commons namespace requires a declaration with the URL "http://backend.userland.com/creativeCommonsRssModule" in the top-level element, as in this example for RSS:</p> <p class="example"><rss xmlns:creativeCommons="http://backend.userland.com/creativeCommonsRssModule"></p> <p>A <a href="https://www.rssboard.org/files/creative-commons-namespace.xml">sample feed</a> demonstrates how to incorporate elements from this namespace in an RSS 2.0 feed.</p> <p>The URL of the namespace does not have to resolve to a web page. The namespace name does not have to be "creativeCommons", but the name that is used in the declaration <span class="rfc2119">must</span> also be used throughout the feed in elements that belong to the namespace.</p> <p>To check whether a feed correctly implements the Creative Commons namespace, use the <a href="https://www.rssboard.org/rss-validator/">RSS Validator</a> for RSS and the <a href="https://www.feedvalidator.org/">Feed Validator</a> for Atom.</p> <h4 id="conventions">2. <a href="#conventions">Conventions</a></h4> <p>In this documentation, the key words <span class="rfc2119">may</span>, <span class="rfc2119">must</span>, <span class="rfc2119">must not</span>, <span class="rfc2119">optional</span>, <span class="rfc2119">recommended</span>, <span class="rfc2119">required</span>, <span class="rfc2119">shall</span>, <span class="rfc2119">shall not</span>, <span class="rfc2119">should</span> and <span class="rfc2119">should not</span> are to be interpreted according to the guidelines in <a href="http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt">RFC 2119</a>. <h4 id="channel-license">3. <a href="#channel-license">Channel License</a></h4> <p>The <span class="element">license</span> element, when present in an RSS <a href="https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification#requiredChannelElements">channel</a> or Atom <a href="https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4287#section-4.1.1">feed</a> element, indicates that all of the feed's content has been made available under a copyright license (<span class="rfc2119">optional</span>). The element's value <span class="rfc2119">must</span> be a URL that identifies the license, as in this example:</p> <p class="example"><creativeCommons:license>https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/</creativeCommons:license></p> <p>A channel <span class="rfc2119">may</span> contain more than one <span class="element">license</span> element to indicate its availability under additional licenses.</p> <h4 id="item-license">4. <a href="#item-license">Item License</a></h4> <p>The <span class="element">license</span> element, when present in an RSS <a href="https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification#hrelementsOfLtitemgt">item</a> or Atom <a href="https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4287#section-4.1.2">entry</a> element, indicates that the item is available under a copyright license (<span class="rfc2119">optional</span>).</p> <p>The element's value <span class="rfc2119">must</span> be a URL that identifies the license, for example:</p> <p class="example"><creativeCommons:license>https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/</creativeCommons:license> <p>An item <span class="rfc2119">may</span> contain more than one <span class="element">license</span> element to indicate its availability under additional licenses. An RSS license element in item takes precedence over an RSS license element in item and an Atom license element in entry takes precedence over an Atom license element in feed.</p> <h4 id="Comments">5. <a href="#comments">Comments</a></h4> <p>Comments and corrections regarding this document are encouraged on the RSS Advisory Board's <a href="https://groups.google.com/g/rss-public">RSS-Public</a> mailing list.</p> </div> </div> <div class="col col-md-2 sidebar">  <p class="text-center"> <a href="/"><img src="/images/rss-feed-icon-96-by-96.png" width="96" alt="RSS icon" class="img-fluid"></a> </p> <div class="sidebargroup"> <div class="sidebartitle">Main Menu</div> <div class="sidebarlink"><a href="https://www.rssboard.org/">RSS Advisory Board</a></div> <div class="sidebarlink"><a href="https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification">RSS Specification</a></div> <div class="sidebarlink"><a href="https://www.rssboard.org/rss-profile">RSS Profile</a></div> <div class="sidebarlink"><a 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<div class="sidebarlink"><a href="https://www.rssboard.org/rss-change-notes">RSS Change Notes</a></div> </div> <div class="sidebargroup"> <div class="sidebartitle">Namespaces</div> <div class="sidebarlink"><a href="https://www.rssboard.org/creative-commons">Creative Commons</a></div> <div class="sidebarlink"><a href="https://www.rssboard.org/media-rss">Media RSS</a></div> <div class="sidebarlink"><a href="https://www.rssboard.org/trackback">Trackback</a></div> </div> <div class="sidebargroup"> <div class="sidebartitle">Archive</div> <div class="sidebarlink"><a href="https://www.rssboard.org/site-index" rel="nofollow">Site Index</a></div> </div> <div class="sidebargroup"> <div class="sidebartitle">Board Members</div> <div class="sidebarlink">Rogers Cadenhead</div> <div class="sidebarlink">Sterling "Chip" Camden</div> <div class="sidebarlink">Simone Carletti</div> <div class="sidebarlink">James Holderness</div> <div class="sidebarlink">Jenny Levine</div> <div class="sidebarlink">Eric Lunt</div> <div class="sidebarlink">Randy Charles Morin</div> <div class="sidebarlink">Ryan Parman</div> <div class="sidebarlink">Jake Savin</div> <div class="sidebarlink">Jason Shellen</div> <div class="sidebarlink">Paul Querna</div> </div> <div class="sidebargroup"> <div class="sidebartitle">Other Formats</div> <div class="sidebarlink"><a href="https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc4287" rel="nofollow">Atom</a></div> <div class="sidebarlink"><a href="http://web.resource.org/rss/1.0/" rel="nofollow">RDF Site Summary</a></div> </div>  </div> </div> <div class="row top10header"> <div class="col"> <h2 class="top10">Popular Pages on This Site</h2> </div> </div> <div class="row"> <div class="col"> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.rssboard.org/rss-validator/">RSS Validator</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.rssboard.org/media-rss">Media RSS Specification (Current)</a></li> <li><a href="https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification">RSS 2.0 Specification</a></li> <li><a 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