Creative Commons Licences

Creative Commons is a licencing system that allows you to share, remix and reuse material legally.

Related links

Creative Commons describes itself as “a non-profit organization that develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.

The infrastructure we provide consists of a set of copyright licenses and tools that create a balance inside the traditional “all rights reserved” setting that copyright law creates”

The Creative Commons Licences

Attribution CC BY

  • lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation
  • most accommodating of licences offered
  • recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.

Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA

  • 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
  • licence is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licences. All new works based on yours will carry the same licence, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use
  • the licence used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licenced projects.

Attribution-NoDerivs CC BY-ND

  • licence allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to the author/creator.

Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC

  • lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA

  • lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under identical terms.

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND

  • This is the most restrictive of the Creative Commons six main licences, and only allows 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.