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Creative Commons > What We Do > About CC Licenses Recent Posts

 Creative Commons Board Tribute

About CC Licenses to Departing General Counsel

Diane Peters
 Announcing Our New Strategy:
Creative Commons licenses give everyone from individual creators to large institutions a
What’s Next for CC
standardized way to grant the public permission to use their creative work under copyright law.
 The Improved CC Search
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?” 

In this section
The Creative Commons License Options
 About CC Licenses
There are six different license types, listed from most to least permissive here:  FAQ
 Get Involved
CC BY: This licenseWe'd
allows reusers
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to hear distribute,
you! remix, adapt, and build upon  Team
the material in anyCreative
medium
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or format, so long as attribution is given to the
Commons 
Search the website
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Except where otherwise noted, content on this site
PO Box 1866, Mountain View, CA 94042  Bassel Khartabil Fellowships and
creator. The license allows for commercial use. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution
[email protected] 4.0 International license. Icons by The Noun Memorial Fund
1-415-429-6753 Project.
Frequently Asked Questions  Global Affiliate Network
Contact Privacy CC BY includes
Policies Terms the following elements:
 Creative Commons Platforms
BY – Credit must be given to the creator
 Program areas
 Videos
 
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CC BY-SA: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build
upon the material in any medium or format, so long as attribution is given to
the creator. The license allows for commercial use. If you remix, adapt, or
build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms.

CC BY-SA includes the following elements:

BY – Credit must be given to the creator
SA – Adaptations must be shared under the same terms

CC BY-NC: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build
upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only,
and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. 

It includes the following elements:

BY – Credit must be given to the creator
NC – Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted

CC BY-NC-SA: This license allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build
upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only,
and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. If you remix, adapt, or
build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms. 

CC BY-NC-SA includes the following elements:

BY – Credit must be given to the creator
NC – Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted
SA – Adaptations must be shared under the same terms

CC BY-ND: This license allows reusers to copy and distribute the material in
any medium or format in unadapted form only, and only so long as attribution
is given to the creator. The license allows for commercial use. 

CC BY-ND includes the following elements:

BY – Credit must be given to the creator
ND – No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted

CC BY-NC-ND: This license allows reusers to copy and distribute the material
in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial
purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. 

CC BY-NC-ND includes the following elements:

BY – Credit must be given to the creator
NC – Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted
ND – No derivatives or adaptations of the work are permitted

The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 

CC0 (aka CC Zero) is a public dedication tool, which allows creators to give up
their copyright and put their works into the worldwide public domain. CC0
allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any
medium or format, with no conditions.

Choosing a License 

The six licenses and the public domain dedication tool give creators a range of options. The best
way to decide which is appropriate for you is to think about why you want to share your work, and
how you hope others will use that work. 

For help, try the Creative Commons License Chooser.

Before Licensing

Before you apply a CC license or CC0 to your work, there are some important things to consider: 

The licenses and CC0 cannot be revoked. This means once you apply a CC license to your
material, anyone who receives it may rely on that license for as long as the material is protected by
copyright, even if you later stop distributing it.

You must own or control copyright in the work. Only the copyright holder or someone with
express permission from the copyright holder can apply a CC license or CC0 to a copyrighted work.
If you created a work in the scope of your job, you may not be the holder of the copyright. 

See this page for more pre-licensing considerations. 

How to apply a CC license or CC0 to your work

CC-licensing your work is simple. All you have to do is choose the CC license that suits your needs
and then communicate this choice in a way that will be clear to people who come across your work.
As part of this communication, you should include a link to the license you’ve chosen.

This can be as simple as a bit of text stating and linking to the license in a copyright notice, like this: 

© 2019. This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 license. 

…or as complex as embedding the license information on your website using the HTML code
associated with the particular license. Use the Creative Commons License Chooser to get the
relevant HTML code. 

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