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Creative Commons

What is Creative Commons?

  • It is a global nonprofit organisation that provides free, easy-to-use copyright licenses. These licenses enable creators to communicate which rights they reserve and which rights they waive for their creative works.
  • The Philosophy: The Creative Commons philosophy centres around promoting collaboration, open access, and sharing culture, while still respecting copyright and intellectual property rights.
  • Creative Commons licences allow the author of works to maintain creative control over their work even when they are happy for others to use it.
  • Various levels of openness can be applied to a work.
  • Some licences allow users to copy, remix, distribute, display or perform the work.
  • Others are more restrictive and must not be altered and may only be shared under the same license.

Types of Creative Commons Licenses

Creative Commons BY logo. Black and white icon of a person inside a circle, stylized with a round head and rectangular body.

         BY

Works can be copied, displayed, performed and remixed by others. Credit must be given to the creator of the work.

Creative Commons No Derivatives Logo. Black and white icon of an equals sign inside a circle.

       ND

Works can only be copied, distributed, displayed or performed verbatim by others.  No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted.

Creative Commons Share Alike Logo. Black and white icon of a circular arrow inside a circle.

         SA

Works can be distributed by others, only under a license identical to the one the creator has chosen for their work.

reative Commons non-commercial use logo. A black dollar sign with a diagonal line through it, enclosed in a black circle on a white background,.

        NC

Works can be copied, distributed, displayed, performed or remixed but for non-commercial purposes only.

Using Creative Commons

Creators can choose to combine these components to create different license combinations, such as:

 

Attribution-ShareAlike (BY-SA)

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (BY-NC-ND) 

Creative Commons licenses are designed to be interoperable with each other, facilitating the combination and reuse of content with different licenses.

The License CC0 is a special case among licenses – it marks a work as public property. The property creator and owner waives every right they have to the work, meaning that it can be used, shared, edited, and republished without restriction – even for commercial purposes

Digital illustration of a large copyright symbol (C) surrounded by futuristic circular graphics, with icons of a legal gavel and an award ribbon, overlaid on a background of data charts and graphs.