Creative Commons: Using CC Licenses

There is no single answer for which CC license is the best. Consider why you are sharing and what you hope others might do with your work, before making your CC license choice.

When applying a CC license to a work:

1) Use the CC license chooser at https://creativecommons.org/choose/ to determine which CC license best meets your needs. Apply the license code if possible, or copy / paste the text and links provided.

2) If you are using an online platform, use the built-in CC license tools to mark your work with a CC license.

3) Mark your work and give proper attribution to others’ works using the TASL approach (Title, Author, Source, License).

ALL CC licenses require attribution. 

Provide information about works you used to create your new work or incorporated into your work. Indicate who created what parts of the work and whether there are restrictions attached to any element of the work. Identify the terms under which any given work, or part of a work, can be used. 

   The Attribution license, or CC BY allows people to use the work for any purpose (even  commercially and even in modified form) as long as they give attribution to the creator.

   The Attribution-ShareAlike license, or BY-SA, allows people to use the work for any purpose (even commercially and even in modified form), as long as they give attribution to the creator and make any adaptations they share with others available under the same or a compatible license. This is Creative Commons’ version of a copyleft license (a type of open source software license that makes the license permissions viral by design), and is the license required for the content uploaded to Wikipedia, for example.

   The Attribution-Noncommercial license or BY-NC allows others to use, remix and build on a work non-commercially. The new work must acknowledge the licensor but is not required to license derivative works on the same terms.

  The Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, or BY-NC-SA, allows people to use the work for noncommercial purposes only, and only as long as they give attribution to the creator and make any adaptations they share with others available under the same or a compatible license.

  The Attribution-NoDerivatives license, or BY-ND, allows people to use the unadapted work for any purpose (even commercially), as long as they give attribution to the creator. But they cannot use adapted or modified ver- sions of the work (these are called “derivatives”).

The Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license, or BY-NC-ND, is the most restrictive license offered by Creative Commons. It allows others to use the unadapted work for noncommercial purposes only, and only as long as they give attribution to the licensor. Adaptations or modified versions of the work are not permitted. 

 Assignment to the Public Domain, CC0 enables scientists, educators, artists and other creators and owners of copyright- or database-protected content to waive copyright and place works as completely as possible in the public domain, so that others may freely build upon, enhance and reuse the works for any purposes without restriction under copyright or database law.  CC0 license can only applied by the copyright owner.