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Creative Commons Licenses

Learn about selecting & applying open licenses to your work, as well as interpreting open licenses.

Public Domain Tools

Public Domain Tools:

In addition to the suite of six CC licenses, Creative Commons also offers 2 public domain tools, used to indicate works that no longer have protection under copyright law.

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CC0 (read “CC Zero”) label indicates a dedication to the public domain by the copyright owner. By applying this label to a work, the copyright owner lets the world know that they have waived all their rights under copyright law, allowing others to use the work without restriction or attribution.

  • Note: Only the copyright owner may apply the CC0 label on a work.
  • CC0 is commonly used by museums and archives to allow free of reuse of their photographs or scans of the public domain objects in their collection. In that context, CC0 is used to clarify that BOTH the photograph/scans and the underlying object in the image are in the public domain.

 

This Public Domain label is used to mark works that have no known copyright restrictions.  This label has no legal impact on the status of a work, but is meant to be helpful information to the public about the likely public domain status of the work.

Note: this tool has been employed by libraries, museums, and archives to label public domain works in their collections.

CAUTION:

  • As a user relying on a work bearing one of these Public Domain labels, you would be wise to be alert and make sure that the work and its public domain label are coming from a trusted source.