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Creative Commons is a not-for-profit organization, founded in 2001, that promotes the creative reuse of intellectual and artistic works — whether owned or in the public domain. Creative Commons licenses provide a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators that build upon the “all rights reserved” concept of traditional copyright to offer a voluntary “some rights reserved” approach.
Creative Commons offers creators the ability to allow others to use their works for commercial purposes, or not; to make derivative works, or not. It is, in short, a way of fine-tuning your copyright. Tens of millions of works have been licensed with Creative Commons licenses.
Here’s an easy step-by-step guide to help you choose your license. In short, there are four areas of copyright permissions that you can choose to retain or share:
Attribution – Users must attribute your work in the way you have specified.
Share-Alike – Users must license their version of your work using the same sort of license that you’ve used.
No derivative works – The work cannot be modified in any way.
Non-commercial – The work may not be used for commercial purposes.
The current generation of licenses includes:
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| Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs | |
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| Attribution-NonCommercial | |
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| Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike | |
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| Attribution-ShareAlike | |
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