The Licensing Suite
Creative Commons offers a core suite of six copyright licenses written to conform to international treaties governing copyright. The international licenses, as well as existing ported licenses, are all intended to be effective anywhere in the world, with the same legal effect. In the past, when it was demonstrated that a ported license was needed, Creative Commons worked with legal experts to craft a localized version of its six, core international licenses. Over 50 ported license suites exist. These ported licenses are based on and compatible with the international license suite, differing only in that they have been modified to reflect local nuances in how legal terms and conditions are expressed, drafting protocols and, of course, language. They are effective worldwide, as is the international license suite. The most recent international license suite available is version 3.0.
Please note that CC’s policy is to not a begin any new porting projects as we are currently preparing for version 4.0.
- Want to let people share and use your photographs, but not allow companies to sell them?
- Looking for access to course materials from the world’s top universities?
- Want to encourage readers to re-publish your blog posts, as long as they give you credit?
- Looking for songs that you can use and remix, royalty-free?
If you answered yes to any of the questions above, then you should learn more about Creative Commons. Probably the quickest and easiest introduction to CC is to watch the following short video:
What is Creative Commons?
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools.
Our free, easy-to-use copyright licenses provide a simple, standardized way to give the public permission to share and use your creative work — on conditions of your choice. CC licenses let you easily change your copyright terms from the default of “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.”
Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They work alongside copyright and enable you to modify your copyright terms to best suit your needs.
What can Creative Commons do for me?
If you want to give people the right to share, use, and even build upon a work you’ve created, you should consider publishing it under a Creative Commons license. CC gives you flexibility (for example, you can choose to allow only non-commercial uses) and protects the people who use your work, so they don’t have to worry about copyright infringement, as long as they abide by the conditions you have specified.
If you’re looking for content that you can freely and legally use, there is a giant pool of CC-licensed creativity available to you. There are hundreds of millions of works — from songs and videos to scientific and academic material — available to the public for free and legal use under the terms of our copyright licenses, with more being contributed every day.
If you would like to see what kinds of companies and organizations are using Creative Commons licenses, visit our Who Uses CC? page.
If you would like to learn more about the different CC licenses, visit our licenses page.
For those creators wishing to opt out of copyright altogether, and to maximize the interoperability of data, Creative Commons also provides tools that allow work to be placed as squarely as possible in the public domain
About The LicensesWhat our licenses doThe Creative Commons copyright licenses and tools forge a balance inside the traditional “all rights reserved” setting that copyright law creates. Our tools give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work. The combination of our tools and our users is a vast and growing digital commons, a pool of content that can be copied, distributed, edited, remixed, and built upon, all within the boundaries of copyright law.
License design and rationale
All Creative Commons licenses have many important features in common. Every license helps creators — we call them licensors if they use our tools — retain copyright while allowing others to copy, distribute, and make some uses of their work — at least non-commercially. Every Creative Commons license also ensures licensors get the credit for their work they deserve. Every Creative Commons license works around the world and lasts as long as applicable copyright lasts (because they are built on copyright).
These common features serve as the baseline, on top of which licensors can choose to grant additional permissions when deciding how they want their work to be used. A Creative Commons licensor answers a few simple questions on the path to choosing a license — first, do I want to allow commercial use or not, and then second, do I want to allow derivative works or not? If a licensor decides to allow derivative works, she may also choose to require that anyone who uses the work — we call them licensees — to make that new work available under the same license terms. We call this idea “ShareAlike” and it is one of the mechanisms that (if chosen) helps the digital commons grow over time. ShareAlike is inspired by the GNU General Public License, used by many free and open source software projects. Our licenses do not affect freedoms that the law grants to users of creative works otherwise protected by copyright, such as exceptions and limitations to copyright law like fair dealing. Creative Commons licenses require licensees to get permission to do any of the things with a work that the law reserves exclusively to a licensor and that the license does not expressly allow. Licensees must credit the licensor, keep copyright notices intact on all copies of the work, and link to the license from copies of the work. Licensees cannot use technological measures to restrict access to the work by others.Try out our simple License Chooser.
Three “Layers” Of Licenses
Machine Readable Human Readable Legal Code
Our public copyright licenses incorporate a unique and innovative “three-layer” design. Each license begins as a traditional legal tool, in the kind of language and text formats that most lawyers know and love. We call this the Legal Code layer of each license. But since most creators, educators, and scientists are not in fact lawyers, we also make the licenses available in a format that normal people can read — the Commons Deed (also known as the “human readable” version of the license). The Commons Deed is a handy reference for licensors and licensees, summarizing and expressing some of the most important terms and conditions. Think of the Commons Deed as a user-friendly interface to the Legal Code beneath, although the Deed itself is not a license, and its contents are not part of the Legal Code itself. The final layer of the license design recognizes that software, from search engines to office productivity to music editing, plays an enormous role in the creation, copying, discovery, and distribution of works. In order to make it easy for the Web to know when a work is available under a Creative Commons license, we provide a “machine readable” version of the license — a summary of the key freedoms and obligations written into a format that software systems, search engines, and other kinds of technology can understand. We developed a standardized way to describe licenses that software can understand called CC Rights Expression Language (CC REL) to accomplish this. .............................................................................
Searching for open content is an important function enabled by our approach. You can use Google to search for Creative Commons content, look for pictures at Flickr, albums at Jamendo, and general media at spinxpress. The Wikimedia Commons, the multimedia repository of Wikipedia, is a core user of our licenses as well. Taken together, these three layers of licenses ensure that the spectrum of rights isn’t just a legal concept. It’s something that the creators of works can understand, their users can understand, and even the Web itself can understand.The Licenses
Attribution CC BY This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.
Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SAThis license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.
Attribution-NoDerivs CC BY-ND This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.
Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NCThis license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.View License Deed | View Legal Code
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-NDThis license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.View License Deed | View Legal CodeWe also provide tools that work in the “all rights granted” space of the public domain. Our CC0 tool allows licensors to waive all rights and place a work in the public domain, and our Public Domain Mark allows any web user to “mark” a work as being in the public domain.
This is a human-readable summary of the Legal Code (the full license).
- to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work
- to Remix — to adapt the work
- to make commercial use of the work
Under the following conditions:
- Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
- Share Alike — If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.
With the understanding that:
- Waiver— Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.
- Public Domain— Where the work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.
- Other Rights— In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license:
- Notice— For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page.
What does "conditions can be waived" mean?
CC licenses anticipate that a licensor may want to waive compliance with a specific condition, such as attribution.
What does "Public Domain" mean?
A work is in the public domain when it is free for use by anyone for any purpose without restriction under copyright.
What does "Fair use" mean?
All jurisdictions allow some limited uses of copyrighted material without permission. CC licenses do not affect the rights of users under those copyright limitations and exceptions, such as fair use and fair dealing where applicable.
What are "Moral Rights"?
In addition to the right of licensors to request removal of their name from the work when used in a derivative or collective they don't like, copyright laws in most jurisdictions around the world (with the notable exception of the US except in very limited circumstances) grant creators "moral rights" which may provide some redress if a derivative work represents a "derogatory treatment" of the licensor's work.
What are "Publicity Rights"?
Publicity rights allow individuals to control how their voice, image or likeness is used for commercial purposes in public. If a CC-licensed work includes the voice or image of anyone other than the licensor, a user of the work may need to get permission from those individuals before using the work for commercial purposes.
New to Creative Commons?[ Considerations before licensing ][ How the licenses work ]
Explore the Creative Commons licenses.[ Want public domain instead? ]
Learn how to share your work with existing communities that have enabled Creative Commons licensing.
Publish
NOTE: This page is for creators and copyright owners who are looking to publish on other platforms. To publish on your own site, see Marking/Creators.
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One way to increase visibility and access to your work is to share it with an existing community. Many content platforms have already enabled CC licensing, making it easy for you to indicate the license along with other information, such as who to attribute. In addition, search engines like Google and Yahoo! will index your work as CC licensed if the metadata is properly attached.
The following are some major publishing platforms categorized by media type. If you cannot find what you are looking for, see more CC-enabled Content Directories and counts of CC licensed works for each. If your favorite community has not enabled CC licensing, you can usually indicate that you are using CC somewhere in an info box, or contact them and let them know it is a feature you would like to see.
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