Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law. From the reuser’s perspective, the presence of a Creative Commons license on a copyrighted work answers the question, “What can I do with this work?”
© Creative Commons
There are six different types of licenses:
Attribution
CC BY
This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, 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
CC BY-SA
This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under 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 lets others reuse the work for any purpose, including commercially; however, it doesn't allow derivatives (adaptations) of the work; it cannot be shared with others in adapted form, and credit must be provided to you.
Attribution-NonCommercial
CC BY-NC
This license lets others remix, adapt, 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.
Attribution-NonCommerial-ShareAlike
CC BY-NC-SA
This license lets others remix, adapt, 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 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
Find out more about Creative Commons licenses here:
