Creative Commons without the guesswork

A teacher finds a diagram marked Creative Commons. A musician finds a track with the same CC symbol. The symbol alone tells neither of them what they may do: Creative Commons offers six licenses, each with a different set of permissions and conditions. 1

Before you use a CC work, check three things, in this order:

1. Where the work came from. Go back to the page where the creator published it. Only someone who owns the material, or is authorized to license it, can put a CC license on it. A diagram pasted into someone else's blog does not become theirs to license because they added a CC symbol. 1
2. The full license name and version, for example "CC BY-SA 4.0". Version 4.0 is the current one; earlier versions are narrower in scope, so read the version actually attached to the work. 1
3. What the creator asks you to credit: their name, any copyright notice, and the link they supply. 2

Read the letters as choices about sharing

BY means attribution, and every CC license includes it. CC BY on its own lets you share, remix, adapt and build on the work in any medium, including for commercial use, as long as you credit the creator. 7 When you share the work under CC BY 4.0, keep the creator's name, the copyright notice, the license notice and the disclaimer notice that came with it, link to the work where reasonably practicable, and say whether you changed it. You can do this in any reasonable way that suits your medium. 2

SA means ShareAlike. If you remix, transform or build on BY-SA material, you must share your contributions under the same license as the original. 3 The condition applies only when you modify the work and share it publicly. Placing an unchanged BY-SA work in a collection does not put the whole collection under BY-SA; each work keeps its own license. 1 So decide first whether you made an adaptation or a collection.

NC means NonCommercial: not primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or monetary compensation. 4 The test is the use, not the user. A nonprofit's use can be commercial, and a company's use is not automatically commercial. 1 A free download that promotes a paid product needs a second look. If your use is close to the line, ask the rights holder for permission or choose a work that allows commercial use; Creative Commons will not tell you whether a particular use is commercial. 1 The licensor can also offer you the same work under separate terms, such as a paid license. 4

ND means NoDerivatives. Under the 4.0 ND licenses you may copy and share the unchanged work, and you may make adapted versions for yourself, but you may not share those adapted versions. 5 Translating a work into another language is an adaptation. 1 Setting music, a performance or a sound recording in timed relation with a moving image always counts as an adaptation too. 5 So you can circulate an unchanged copy of a BY-ND article, but publishing your translation of it needs the creator's separate permission.

The combinations are deliberate

The six licenses are CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA, CC BY-ND and CC BY-NC-ND. 1 The letters work together. BY-SA and BY-NC-SA require adaptations to carry the same or a compatible license; BY-ND and BY-NC-ND allow sharing only in unadapted form. 7 For the teacher, a diagram under BY fits a translated workbook; one under BY-ND does not. For a commercial publisher, any license with NC rules out the planned use without separate permission.

CC0 is not a seventh license. It is a public-domain dedication: the creator waives copyright and related rights in the work, permanently and everywhere, and if the waiver fails anywhere, a fallback license gives you the same freedom as far as the law allows. CC0 does not waive the creator's trademark or patent rights. 6 Keep the actual name of the tool in your records and credits instead of relabeling every one of them "free".

If you are the creator, use the Creative Commons license chooser. It asks whether you require attribution, allow commercial use, allow adaptations and require ShareAlike, offers CC0 as an alternative, asks you to confirm that you hold the rights, and then generates marking text for a website, a document or a printed work. 9

The license does not clear everything in the picture

A CC license covers copyright and similar rights. It does not license patent or trademark rights. Moral rights, such as the right of integrity, and publicity and privacy rights are not licensed either; the licensor waives their own such rights only as far as you need to use the license. 2 The license also gives you no permission to suggest that the creator endorses you or your use. 2 A CC-licensed photograph of a person does not give you that person's consent to appear in your advertisement. Get that consent separately, because the license may not give you every permission your use needs. 3

If an exception or limitation such as fair use or fair dealing already covers your use, the license does not apply to that use and does not restrict it, so you do not have to meet its conditions. 23 Know which of the two you are relying on.

Make the invitation easy to recognize later

Credit a CC work with its title, author, source and license. For example: "Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco" by Timothy Vollmer is licensed under CC BY 4.0, with the title linked to the original and the license name linked to the license. If you cropped or otherwise changed the work, say so briefly; if you made an adaptation, name the original and say that yours is an adaptation. 8

If you break a license condition, your license ends automatically. Under 4.0 it comes back automatically if you fix the problem within 30 days of discovering it. 2 The 3.0 and earlier licenses have no automatic reinstatement, and downloading the work again does not give you a fresh license. 1

If you are the creator, the license cannot be taken back once granted. You can stop distributing the work under CC terms, but anyone who already has a copy keeps the right to use it under the license. 14 That is what lets people build on your work with confidence. Choose the license before you publish, not after.