Open Access

The Creative Commons are a suite of licenses which let you share your creative works while choosing to maintain some of your rights. In contrast to traditional copyright, the Creative Commons licenses are often referred to as copyleft since they focus on what someone can do with your content whereas copyright, by default, shuts down all reuse, remixing, and distribution.

Why would you want to use a Creative Commons license?

Good question! The CC licenses are wonderful choices for a few reasons:

• they make it easier for others to share your works, increasing your exposure
• since the licenses ask others to attribute the work to you, your name is attached to them even if they're shared
• as openly licensed works are made, the commons is strengthed—there are more and more non-commercial cultural objects which can be put to creative uses by artists, designers, or anyone else!
• these are just a few reasons..there are many more!

Still not sure? Well what if I told you that all of Wikipedia and many Flickr and Behance users choose to utilize Creative Commons? Indeed, Creative Commons licenses are used so often, and people search for works which use them so often, that there are filters built into Google and YouTube for finding CC content.

Unsure which license to select? The Creative Commons organization has an easy-to-use tool that walks you through the process by asking simple questions.

List of Creative Commons Licenses

Unsure which license to select? The Creative Commons organization has an easy-to-use tool that walks you through the process by asking simple questions.

Attribution CC BY

This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.

Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.

Attribution-NoDerivs CC BY-ND

This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND

This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.