From unported to international in the 4.0 Creative Commons License

photo credit: Wikimedia Commons 

Shiny new 4.0 Creative Commons licenses were released last month and I noticed that unported had been replaced with the word international. So it made me want to investigate just what unported really meant and discover what changes come of using international in it’s stead.

According to the FAQ section of the CC Wiki, unported licenses are/were basically a general international CC license meant to be used and recognized worldwide. However, ported licenses came about when tweaks to the general license were added to clarify issues surrounding local copyright legislation in different jurisdictions. In fact, a whole jurisdiction database was created to compare the different iterations (ports) created for different locales.

So, does the new 4.0 creative license finally bring an end to ported CC licenses?  Not necessarily, though there are currently no ports of the 4.0 license (it is brand spankin' new after all) and the intention was to write it in such a way that ports would not be necessary, the CC wiki leaves the door open a crack as it goes on to say that “few, if any, will be created.” With that being said, the 4.0 license does appear to bring us that much closer to a truly worldwide common standard for open licensing. And that is a very good thing…