Creative Commons Licenses

Creative Commons (CC) licenses:

• Advance permission
  • CC licenses allow copyright holders to give advance permission for others to use a work (in specified conditions)
  • Copyrights default is “All Rights Reserved”, but many creators don't want to lock up the totality of their rights
• Easy sharing
  • CC licenses are designed to make it easier for creators to share their work with fewer restrictions and are an important tool in the Open Access movement
• For additional info beyond this LibGuide, see:
  • Creative Commons website

A CC License = a Copyright License:

CC licenses operate within copyright law and apply where copyright law applies:

• Copyright Holder Decides
  • Only the copyright owner/controller of a work has the right apply a CC license to it
  • CC licenses are irrevocable
• Limited Term 
  • As with all copyrighted works, the copyright term of CC licensed works will eventually run out and the work will enter the public domain
• Fair Use 
  • Users still have the possibility of applying Fair Use when using CC licensed works
• Non-Copyright Considerations 
  • Other restrictions, such as patent & trademark law or privacy & publicity rights are beyond CC licenses and must be resolved through other means

All Creative Commons licenses are composed of three layers:

• The legal code (example) -- making the license enforceable in law
• The common deed (example) -- this is the human-readable license
• Machine readable code – this enables searching and filtering by CC license type

To see how the three layers work, explore this interactive graphic from Creative Commons.

[3 Layers Image (c) 2011, Creative Commons, Nathan Yergler, Alex Roberts. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 Unported]