CC licences, summary
What is an Open Licence?
A licence specifies what you can and can’t do with a copyrighted work such as an image, video or written text. Licences are usually very restrictive, prohibiting copying or redistribution except in a few special circumstances, consistent with local laws and regulations.
An open licence grants rights to access, re-use and redistribute a work with few or no restrictions. For example, an image on a website made available under an open licence would be free for anyone to:
- print out and share;
- publish on another website or in print;
- make alterations or additions.
There are many forms of open licences, one of the most common being a Creative Commons licence.
What is a Creative Commons Licence?
Creative Commons is a set of standardised licence features used to licence copyrighted works (including music, artistic, literary and video works) for public use. Creative Commons works are free to use, provided the licence terms are followed. This is how to easily identify a Creative Commons licence.
You will see this logo, first:
Creative Commons licences can contain any of the following conditions:
| c1 | c2 |
|---|---|
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Attribution (BY) – you must acknowledge the creator of the original work (in most CC licences) |
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NonCommercial (NC) – you can only use the work for non-commercial purposes |
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NoDerivatives (ND) – you can’t make any changes when sharing the work |
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ShareAlike (SA) – you must share any adaptations under the same Creative Commons licence as the original work |
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Zero – the creator hasn’t placed any copyright restrictions on the work |
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Public Domain – the work is in the public domain. |
These conditions can be combined to form the six Creative Commons licences. CC0 is not considered a true CC licence, and in some countries, it is meaningless because the author’s right comes by default, so attribution is mandatory (as it happens in Italy, for example). You can read more about how each CC licence works on the Licence Deeds.
