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For online works, you apply a Creative Commons license to a work by
selecting the
license that suits your preferences.
Once you have selected your license, and if you are applying it to an
online work, follow the instructions to include the html code in your
work. This code will automatically generate the "Some Rights Reserved"
button and a statement that your work is licensed under a Creative
Commons license, or a "No Rights Reserved" button if you choose to
dedicate your work to the public domain. The button is designed to act
as a notice to people who come in contact with your work that your work
is licensed under the applicable Creative Commons license. The html
code will also include the metadata that enables your work to found via
Creative
Commons-enabled search engines.
Yes. For offline works, you should identify which Creative Commons
license you wish to apply to your work and then mark your work either:
(a) with a statement such as "This work is licensed under the Creative
Commons [insert description] License. To view a copy of this license,
visit [insert url]; or, (b) send a letter to Creative Commons, 543
Howard Street, 5th Floor, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA." or
insert the applicable license buttons with the same statement and URL
link.
The only difference between applying a Creative Commons license to an
offline work and applying it to an online work is that offline works
will not include the metadata and, consequently, will not be identified
via Creative
Commons-customized search engines.
A Creative Commons license is based on copyright. So they apply to all
works that are protected by copyright law. The kinds of works that are
protected by copyright law are books, websites, blogs, photographs,
films, videos, songs and other audio & visual recordings, for
example. Software programs are also protected by copyright but, as
explained below, we do not recommend that you apply a Creative Commons
license to software code.
Creative Commons licenses give you the ability to dictate how
others may exercise your copyright rights—such as the right of others
to copy your work, make derivative works or adaptations of your work,
to distribute your work and/or make money from your work. They do not
give you the ability to restrict anything that is otherwise permitted
by exceptions or limitations to copyright—including, importantly, fair
use or fair dealing—nor do they give you the ability to control
anything is not protected by copyright law, such as facts and ideas.
Creative Commons licenses attach to the work and authorize
everyone who comes in contact with the work to use it consistent with
the license. This means that if Bob has a copy of your Creative
Commons-licensed work, Bob can give a copy to Carol and Carol will be
authorized to use the work consistent with the Creative Commons
license. You then have a license agreement separately with both Bob and
Carol.
Creative Commons licenses are expressed in three different
formats: the Commons Deed (human-readable code), the Legal Code
(lawyer-readable code); and the metadata (machine readable code). You
don't need to sign anything to get a Creative Commons license—just
select your license
at our ‘Publish' page.
One final thing you should understand about Creative Commons licenses
is that they are all non-exclusive. This means that you can permit the
general public to use your work under a Creative Commons license and
then enter into a separate and different non-exclusive license with
someone else, for example, in exchange for money.
We have set out some things that you should think about before you
apply a Creative Commons license to your work at this page.
You should choose the license that meets your preferences. The
license is a statement as to what others may do with your work, so you
should select a license that matches what you are happy for others to
do with your work. You can find an
overview of the Creative Commons licenses here.
You can find out information about how our licenses have been applied
by other people to text, audio, images, video and educational
works.
You can also participate in our email discussion
lists
and/or review the discussion archives to see if our community is able
to respond to your questions and concerns and/or has already addressed
them.
Finally, you can also consult with a lawyer to obtain advice
on
the best license for your needs. For information about how you may be
able to locate a suitably qualified lawyer, please refer to this
question and answer.
Creative Commons licenses are non-revocable. This means that you cannot
stop someone, who has obtained your work under a Creative Commons
license, from using the work according to that license. You can stop
distributing your work under a Creative Commons license at any time you
wish; but this will not withdraw any copies of your work that already
exist under a Creative Commons license from circulation, be they
verbatim copies, copies included in collective works and/or adaptations
of your work. So you need to think carefully when choosing a Creative
Commons license to make sure that you are happy for people to be using
your work consistent with the terms of the license, even if you later
stop distributing your work.
No. Creative Commons licenses are designed to be applied to
your
work and to be binding upon people who use your work based on their
notice of the Creative Commons "Some Rights Reserved" (or "No Rights
Reserved" in the case of the public domain dedication) button and the
statement that the work is Creative Commons-licensed.
We do not keep track of or a register of which creative works have been
licensed under a Creative Commons license. We make the licenses, code
and tools available for you to use or not as you wish.
Creative Commons licenses are expressed in three different
formats:
the Commons Deed (human-readable code), the Legal Code (lawyer-readable
code); and the metadata (machine readable code).
The Commons Deed is a summary of the key terms of the actual
license (which is the Legal Code)—basically, what others can and cannot
do with the work. Think of it as the user-friendly interface to the
Legal Code beneath. This Deed itself has no legal value, and its
contents do not appear in the actual license.
The Legal Code is the actual license; a document designed to be
enforced in a court of law.
The metadata describes the key license elements that apply to a piece
of content to enable discovery through customized search
engines.
Yes, so long as you choose a "NonCommercial" license option (ie.
Attribution-NonCommercial, Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike or
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives) because under these licenses
you reserve the right to collect royalties under statutory or
compulsory licenses for commercial use of your work. Whether, as a
practical matter, you can collect these royalties, depends on which
country you are in (check out the answer to the next question).
Under the Creative Commons licenses that permit other people
to
make commercial use of your work (ie. Attribution,
Attribution-ShareAlike, Attribution-NoDerivatives), the licensor waives
the right to collect these royalties.
You need to check with your society. Currently, many of the
collecting societies in Australia, Finland, France, Germany,
Luxembourg, Spain, Taiwan and the Netherlands take an assignment of
rights (or in France what is called a "mandate" of rights that
nonetheless has the same effect practically as an assignment) from you
in present and future works (so that they effectively become the owner
of these rights) and manage them for you. So if you are already a
member of a collecting society in one of these jurisdictions, you may
not be entitled to license your work yourself under a Creative Commons
license because the necessary rights are not held by you but by the
collecting society. Please also read the FAQ on the website of the
Creative Commons project team for your jurisdiction for more
information about this issue in your jurisdiction.
Creative Commons is reaching out to collecting societies in
those jurisdictions where this problem arises to try to find a solution
that enables creators to enjoy the benefits both systems offer.
If you encounter difficulties with using Creative Commons licenses
because of your membership in a collecting society in your jurisdiction
that is not listed above, please let either your country's Creative
Commons project
team
know or email
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Also, if you wish to discuss
ways to try to deal with the situation in your country please contact
your country's Creative Commons project team.
If you are already a member of one of these collecting societies, feel
free to encourage your collecting society to give you the option of
Creative Commons licensing.
Absolutely. Firstly, because our licenses are non-exclusive
which
means you are not tied down to only make a piece of your content
available under a Creative Commons license; you can also enter into
other revenue-generating licenses in relation to your work. One of our
central goals is to encourage people to experiment with new ways to
promote and market their work.
Secondly, the noncommercial license option is an inventive tool
designed to allow people to maximize the distribution of their works
while keeping control of the commercial aspects of their copyright. To
make one thing clear that is sometimes misunderstood: the
"noncommercial use" condition applies only to others who use your work,
not to you (the licensor). So if you choose to license your work under
a Creative Commons license that includes the "noncommercial use"
option, you impose the "noncommercial" condition on the users
(licensees). However, you, the creator of the work and/or licensor, may
at any time decide to use it commercially. People who want to copy or
adapt your work, "primarily for monetary compensation or financial
gain" must get your separate permission first.
One thing to note on the noncommercial provision: under
current
U.S. law, file-sharing or the trading of works online is considered a
commercial use -- even if no money changes hands. Because we believe
that file-sharing, used properly, is a powerful tool for distribution
and education, all Creative Commons licenses contain a special
exception for file-sharing. The trading of works online is not a
commercial use, under our documents, provided it is not done for
monetary gain.
In most jurisdictions, registration is not required. However,
for
creators in the United States registration can be obtained and is
advisable so that you can enforce your copyright in court. For US-based
creators, you should check out the U.S. Copyright Office's ‘Copyright
Basics' page, which explains more about copyright
registration.
If you are based in the US, to find out more about how to register your
copyright, check out the U.S. Copyright Office's ‘Copyright
Basics' page.
No. Applying a Creative Commons license to your work does not give you
the same, similar or alternate protection to registering your
copyright. Creative Commons licenses apply in addition to and on top of
an existing copyright.
No. Creative Commons licenses apply to works that are copyrighted. As a
general rule, in most jurisdictions, copyright protection is automatic
for those works that satisfy the requirements of copyright law.
Generally, copyright attaches to creative and expressive works once
they are fixed in tangible form, ie. the minute you put pen to paper,
brush to easel, hit the "save" button on your computer, the "send"
button on your email or take a photo.
For U.S. based creators, registering your copyright with the
U.S. Copyright Office is advisable so that you can enforce your
copyright in court. For US-based creators, you should check out the
U.S. Copyright Office's ‘Copyright
Basics' page which explains more about copyright
registration.
You do not need to apply a copyright notice to secure copyright
protection. However, a copyright notice can be useful because it
clearly signals to people that you believe you own copyright in your
work and who to contact.
No. All jurisdictions allow some uses of copyrighted material without
permission, such as quotation, current-affairs reporting, or parody,
although these vary from country to country. These are not dependent on
the license and so cannot be affected by it. To make this clear, all of
our licenses include this or similar language: "Nothing in this license
is intended to reduce, limit, or restrict any rights arising from fair
use, first sale or other limitations on the exclusive rights of the
copyright owner under copyright law or other applicable laws." Thus,
regardless of the jurisdiction a user is in, our licenses do not affect
a user's right to use or allow use of content under copyright
exceptions.
Creative Commons licenses are not intended to apply to
software.
They should not be used for software. We strongly encourage you to use
one of the very good software licenses available today. The licenses
made available by the Free Software
Foundation or listed at the Open Source Initiative
should be considered by you if you are licensing software or software
documentation. Unlike our licenses -- which do not make mention of
source or object code -- these existing licenses were designed
specifically for use with software.
Creative Commons has "wrapped" some free software/open source licenses
with its Commons Deed and metadata if you wish to use these licenses
and still take advantage of the Creative Commons human-readable code
and Creative Commons customized search engine technology. You can find
more details here.
Absolutely. Creative Commons licenses work well for all text materials.
As a user, you can choose to use the work under either license.
Generally, a licensor that offers the same work under two different
licenses gives the public a choice between them. If, for example, a
photograph is governed by one license with a NonCommercial provision,
plus a separate license with a NoDerivatives provision, it does not
mean that both provisions apply together. If an owner wants both to
apply together, she should be sure to choose a single license that
contains both provisions.
The Creative Commons Legal Code has been drafted with the
intention
that it will be enforceable in court. That said, we can not account for
every last nuance in the world's various copyright laws and/or the
circumstances within which our licenses are applied and Creative
Commons-licensed content is used. Please note, however, that our
licenses contain "severability" clauses -- meaning that, if a certain
provision is found to be unenforeceable in a certain place, that
provision and only that provision drops out of the license, leaving the
rest of the agreement intact.
Unfortunately, Creative Commons is not permitted to provide
legal
advice or legal services to assist you with enforcing the licenses. We
cannot afford to provide any ancillary services particular to your
situation and, in any case, our mission does not include providing such
services. We are not a law firm. We're much like a legal self-help
press that offers form documentation -- at no cost -- for you to use
however you see fit.
However, if you are based in the US, you may be able to find a suitably
qualified volunteer lawyer in your area from this
site. If you are based in Australia, the Arts Law Centre of
Australia may be able to put you in touch with a volunteer
lawyer.
A Creative Commons license terminates automatically if someone uses
your work contrary to the license terms. This means that, if a person
uses your work under a Creative Commons license and they, for example,
fail to attribute your work in the manner you specified, then they no
longer have the right to continue to use your work. This only applies
in relation to the person in breach of the license; it does not apply
generally to the other people who use your work under a Creative
Commons license and comply with its terms.
You have a number of options as to how you can enforce this; you can
consider contacting the person and asking them to rectify the situation
and/or you can consider consulting a lawyer to act on your behalf. For
information about how you may be able to locate a suitably qualified
lawyer, please refer to this
question and answer.
If you do not like the way that a person has made a derivative work or
incorporated your work into a collective work, under the Creative
Commons licenses, you may request removal of your name from the
derivative work or the collective work.
In addition, the copyright laws in most jurisdictions around
the world (with the notable exception of the US) grant creators "moral
rights" which may provide you with some redress if a derivative work
represents a "derogatory treatment" of your work. Moral rights give an
original author the right to object to "derogatory treatment" of their
work; "derogatory treatment" is typically defined as "distortion or
mutilation" of the work or treatment, which is "prejudicial to the
honor, or reputation of the author." All Creative Commons licenses
(with the exception of Canada) leave moral rights unaffected. This
means that an original author may be able to take action against a
derivative work that infringes the moral right that protects against
derogatory treatment. Of course, not all derivative works that a
creator does not like will be considered "derogatory."
The permission isn't ours to give. Creative Commons simply
makes
available licenses and tools to enable creators and licensors to
license their works on more flexible terms. By applying a Creative
Commons license to a work, the creator or licensor has decided to
clearly signal to members of the public, such as you, that you may use
the work without having to ask for permission—provided that you use it
consistent with the license terms.
Creative Commons, as an organization, does not control how the
licenses are used and does not check or verify whether a Creative
Commons license has been correctly applied to a particular work.
Creative Commons does not endorse or certify any use of its licenses.
Instead, Creative Commons provides the licenses as a tool that
may be adopted (or not) by members of the creative community. Creative
Commons does not determine whether the use of the licenses is
appropriate for your situation or for a particular work.
The key terms of the core suite of Creative Commons licenses
are:
Attribution, NonCommercial, NoDerivatives and ShareAlike. These license
elements are succinctly described as follows:
Attribution=you must attribute the author and/or licensor
in the manner they require.
NonCommercial=you may not use the work in a manner
primarily
directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation.
NoDerivatives=you may only make verbatim copies of the
work, you may not adapt or change it.
ShareAlike=you may only make derivative works if you
license them under the same Creative Commons license terms.
For an overview of our licenses and links to the Commons Deed and Legal
Code, check out this
page. For the key details of our Sampling Licenses check
this
page.
Not quite. The "NonCommercial" license option means that you
do not
receive the commercial rights via the Creative Commons license. You can
always approach the licensor directly to see if they will separately
license you the commercial rights.
A Creative Commons license is a signal to you that you can use
the
work without having to seek out the individual creator or licensor and
ask for permission—provided you use the work in the manner permitted by
the Creative Commons license. The Commons Deed sets out the key terms
governing your use of the work.
If you want to use a Creative Commons-licensed work in a
manner that
is not permitted under the terms of the Creative Commons license, you
need to contact the creator and/or licensor and ask for their
permission. If you use a Creative-Commons licensed work contrary to the
terms of the Creative Commons license, your right to use the work
terminates and you could be sued for infringement of copyright.
As a general rule yes—Creative Commons licenses are made
available
under royalty-free licenses. In the case of Creative Commons-licensed
works that are licensed for NonCommercial use only, the creator or
licensor reserves the right to collect statutory royalties or royalties
under compulsory licenses for commercial uses such as those collected
for public performances; so, you may still have to pay a collecting
society for such uses of Creative Commons licensed works. However,
these are indirect payments, not payments to the licensor.
If you come across a work that says it is made available under
a
Creative Commons license, you are authorized by the licensor to use it
consistent with those license terms. You should satisfy yourself that
the scope of the license covers your intended uses. Since there are a
number of versions of the Creative Commons licenses, you should read
the particular license carefully to ensure that the license meets your
needs. All Creative Commons licenses require that you attribute the
author, licensor and/or any other parties specified by the
author/licensor. To correctly use a Creative Commons licensed work, you
must provide proper attribution. This is explained in the
answer below.
To get an understanding of the key terms of the license, check out the
Commons Deed for the license and/or review this
page, which has links to the Commons Deed and basic
explanations of all of our licenses.
You should be aware that all of the licenses contain a disclaimer of
warranties, so there is no assurance whatsoever that the licensor has
all the necessary rights to permit reuse of the licensed work. The
disclaimer means that the licensor is not guaranteeing anything about
the work, including that she owns the copyright to it, or that she has
cleared any uses of third-party content that her work may be based on
or incorporate.
This is typical of so-called "open source" licenses, where works are
made widely and freely available for reuse at no charge. The original
version 1.0 of the Creative Commons licenses contained a warranty, but
we ultimately concluded that, as with "open source" licenses,
warranties and indemnities are best determined separately by private
bargain, so that each licensor and licensee can determine the
appropriate allocation of risk and reward for their unique situation.
One option thus would be to use private contract to obtain a warranty
and indemnification from the licensor, although it is likely that the
licensor would charge for this benefit.
As a result of the warranty disclaimer, before using a Creative Commons
licensed work, you should satisfy yourself that the person has all the
necessary rights to make the work available under a Creative Commons
license. You should know that if you are wrong, you could be liable for
copyright infringement based on your use of the work.
You should learn about what rights need to be cleared and when
a fair use or fair dealing defense may be available. It could be that
the licensor is relying on the fair use or fair dealing doctrine, but
depending on the circumstances, that legal defense may or may not
actually protect her (or you). You should educate yourself about the
various rights that may be implicated in a copyrighted work, because
creative works often incorporate multiple elements such as, for
example, underlying stories and characters, recorded sound and song
lyrics. If the work contains recognizable third-party content, it may
be advisable to independently verify that it has been authorized for
reuse under a Creative Commons license.
The result of this is that you should always use your informed good
judgment, and you may want to obtain legal advice.
If you are using a work licensed under one of our core
licenses
(Attribution, Attribution-ShareAlike,
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike, Attribution-NonCommerical,
Attribution-NoDerivatives, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
(this is the same as the Music Sharing license)) or under our
Developing Nations license, then the proper way of accrediting your use
of a work when you making a verbatim use of it is: (1) to keep intact
any copyright notices for the Work; (2) credit the author, licensor
and/or other parties (such as a wiki or journal) in the manner they
specify; (3) the title of the Work; and (4) the Uniform Resource
Identifier for the work if specified by the author and/or licensor.
You also need to provide the Uniform Resource Locator for the Creative
Commons license that applies to the work, together with each copy of
the work that you make available.
If you are making a derivative use of a work licensed under
one
of our core licenses or under the Developing Nations license, in
addition to the above, you need to you need to identify that your work
is a derivative work, ie. "This is a Finnish translation of the
[original work] by [author]" or "Screenplay based on [original work] by
[author]."
If you are sampling a work licensed under one of our Sampling
licenses you should credit derivative works you create using those
samples by saying something along the lines of: "Remix of the [original
work] by [author]" or "Inclusion of a portion of the [original work] by
[author] in collage."
A derivative work is a work that is based on another work but is not an
exact, verbatim copy. What this means exactly and comprehensively is
the subject of many law journal articles and much debate and
pontification. In general, a translation from one language to another
or a film version of a book are examples of derivative works. Under
Creative Commons' core licenses, synching music in timed-relation with
a moving image is considered to be a derivative work.
Under U.S. law, generally, changing the format of a work—ie.
from print to digital—where the content of the work has not otherwise
been changed, would also constitute a derivative work; however, the
Creative Commons licenses allow the user to exercise the rights
permitted under the license in any format or media. This means that,
under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
license, for example, you can copy the work from a digital file to a
print file consistent with the terms of that license.
With the exception of those of our licenses that contain the
ShareAlike element, the Creative Commons licenses do not require
everything else to be Creative Commons licensed as well. We
specifically designed the Creative Commons licenses so that they would
not turn all other works they were combined with into being Creative
Commons-licensed. If you combine any work with a Creative
Commons-licensed work that is licensed with a ShareAlike license
provision, then, because of the way that the ShareAlike license element
operates, the resultant work will need to be licensed under the same
license as the original work.
If you include a Creative Commons licensed work in a
"collective work" (ie. a collection of works in their exact original
format, not adaptations), then you only need to continue to apply the
Creative Commons license to that work (even if the work was licensed
under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license provision). You do not
need to apply it to the entire collection.
Generally yes; you can combine one Creative Commons licensed work with
another Creative Commons licensed work or with another work.
The one big caveat is for Creative Commons licenses that contain the
ShareAlike license element (ie. Attribution-ShareAlike,
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike). These licenses require
derivative works (ie. the result of two combined works) to be licensed
under the same license elements. So, you cannot, for example, combine
an Attribution-ShareAlike license with an
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. If you are combining a work
licensed under a ShareAlike license condition, you need to make sure
that you are happy and able to license the resulting work under the
same license conditions as the original work.
You can directly integrate the Creative Commons license
selection
engine into your site. This can be useful if you have an application or
website that allows people to contribute content and you want to give
them the option to apply Creative Commons licenses to their works. Here
is a step-by-step
guide on how to integrate our license selection engine with a
website. We also have a web services API
for integration with any application.
Creative Commons looked for the best way to express the intent behind
the licenses in machine-readable form. We feel that our system provides
the best of all possible worlds: RDF, XML, and even plain text-based
tools can easily process our metadata files because we provide them
with a structured format. But just as XML tools make it easier to
process the information than text-based ones, RDF ones make it even
easier -- so we encourage all of our developers to use RDF tools where
possible. We're also working with the community to provide CC sample
code, in many different languages, that shows how easy it is to take
advantage of the RDF information. We're also open to providing
converters from RDF to other formats. If you have such a tool or would
like one, please send information about it to our metadata list.
You can use it in a variety of ways. A painting, writing, or
drawing
program could let its users know about their rights granted by the
licensor of the file. File sharing software could highlight files with
Creative Commons licenses and encourage users to download them. In
fact, we see peer-to-peer file sharing software as an excellent
distribution mechanism for Creative Commons works, especially large
music, picture, and movie files that the authors might not have the
bandwidth or tools necessary to distribute themselves. Search systems
could allow users the choice of only searching for files with licenses
that permit certain uses (such as searching for pictures of cats that
you can include in your non-commercial collage). There are many ways to
take advantage of this information and we hope the developer community
will surprise us by coming up with others!
We provide license buttons in both formats. Change, e.g., somerights20.gif
to somerights20.png
or vice versa.
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