All Creative Commons licenses have important features in common.
They ensure that you maintain copyright ownership, get credit for your work while permitting others to reproduce and distribute your work. These shared attributes establish a foundation, upon which licensors can choose to provide extra permissions when deciding how they want their work to be used. E.g. the permission to remix the work or use it commercially.
The Creative Commons licenses consist of individual elements, a bit like LEGO, that can be combined in different ways to meet the eceptions from regular copyright, that the creator of a work wishes to grant. The elements and the combinations are explained below.
Creative Commons has developed 4 core license components, illustrated and explained below.
When combined, these elements can represent 6 unique CC license options.
Attribution (BY): This element is always present at any CC license. It means that anyone using the work, must provide appropriate attribution to the original creator/author(s)
NonCommercial (NC): This element restricts the use of the work to non-commercial purposes only. If this element is present, users cannot use the work/article for commercial purposes.
NoDerivatives (ND): This element prohibits the creation of derivative works based on the original (article). If this element is present, users cannot modify the original work/article.
ShareAlike (SA): This element requires that any derivative works be licensed under the same terms as the original. If a user creates a derivative work based on an original article, they must license it under the same Creative Commons license.
All logos are reproduced from the Creative Commons website, link, reuse policy
In addition to the licenses mentioned here, Creative Commons also has two public domain tools represented by the icons below.
The so-called CC0 tool, depicted with a cross-over zero, can be chosen by creators who wish to to dedicate their works to the worldwide public domain to the greatest extent possible. All possible rights they might have to the reproductions of those works are waiwered. You can use CC0 works in remixes as described in the tab about remix in this guide.
All logos are reproduced from the Creative Commons website, link, reuse policy.
As explained, the 4 core license components can be combined to represent 6 unique licenses.
They are listed below from the least to the most restrictive license in terms of the freedom they grant reusers:
The Attribution license or “CC BY” allows use and adaption of the work for any purpose (even commercially) as long as you give credit to the original creator.
The Attribution-ShareAlike license or “BY-SA” allows for use and adaptation of the work for any purpose (even commercially), as long as you give credit to the creator and share any adaptations under the same or a compatible license.
The Attribution-NonCommercial license or “BY-NC”allows you to use the work, or adaptations of the work, for noncommercial purposes only, and only as long as you give credit to the creator.
The Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license or “BY-NC-SA” allows use and adaptation of the work for noncommercial purposes only. You must give credit to the creator and share any adaptations available under the same or a compatible license.
The Attribution-NoDerivatives license or “BY-ND” allows you to use the unadapted work for any purpose (even commercially), as long as you give credit to the creator. You may also adapt the work for your own personal use but you may not share any adaptations publicly.
The Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license or “BY-NC-ND” is the most restrictive license offered by CC. It allows you to use the unadapted work for noncommercial purposes only, and only when you give credit to the creator. You may also adapt the work for your own personal use but you may not share any adaptations publicly
All logos are reproduced from the Creative Commons website, link, reuse policy.
Except where otherwise noted (e.g. illustrations, videos and pictures), content on this site is licensed under a CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
CC-BY-NC-SA logo created by Lucas Ehlinger, https://www.flickr.com/photos/linxa/9059283431, CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0