I have a question regarding the Creative Commons licenses with the "noncommercial" option, for example the Attribution-Noncommercial license. I'd like to know what counts as commercial, and what on the other hand as noncommercial. I understand that selling copies of the work in question would count as commercial, but how about for example showing ads inside an article licensed this way? Which of these are, and which are not ok: Displaying the work on a commercial website Having ads on the same web page as the work Having ads inside the content (eg. article) Modifying the work to include promotional content (obviously not ok with "no-derivatives" licensed work) Including as a freebie with a sold product I tried to read the legal code, but am still kind of lost.
They define it as: So you can't sell the work or sell access to it, but I think you could post it on a site that has ads. 1) Probably no 2) Probably yes 3) Questionable 4) Very questionable 5) Probably not (as there is a direct compensation for the transaction - even though not for that material) Use this form to ask them specifically. They should know.
In a surprisingly quick reply they said that there are no specific guidelines yet, and linked to this NC draft in their wiki. According to that page, having advertising on a page where a NC licensed work is a "primary draw". So assuming you published a CC noncommercial article on your blog, that page could not contain any advertising. That's just a draft though, so we are currently advised to contact the copyright owner, if anything is unclear. I'm even more confused now.