#Creativecommons[]
Primary audience[]
all, free culture advocates
Definition[]
Creative Commons is a type of license created originally by lawyer Lawrence Lessig. It's intended to make sharing of creative works easier, since usual copyright prohibits sharing by default.
There are six core Creative Commons licenses, each a combination of the following:
- Attribution (BY): The original work must be properly attributed to the creator. If modified, the modified work must be properly marked as such and attributed both to the creator and the modifier.
- Share-Alike (SA): Modification is allowed, as long as the modified work uses the exact same license.
- Non-Commercial (NC): Neither the original work nor the modified work can be used comercially.
- No Derivatives (ND): The original work must be distributed verbatim; no modified works are allowed.
This gives us six combinations, more or less in order of restriction:
- BY: Attribution, Commercial allowed, Derivatives allowed without restriction
- BY-SA: Attribution, Commercial allowed, Derivatives allowed as long as also licensed BY-SA
- BY-ND: Attribution, Commercial allowed, Derivatives not allowed
- BY-NC: Attribution, Commercial not allowed, Derivatives allowed without restriction
- BY-NC-SA: Attribution, Commercial not allowed, Derivatives allowed as long as also licensed BY-NC-SA
- BY-NC-ND: Attribution, Commercial not allowed, Derivatives not allowed
It should be noted that only the first two (CC-BY and CC-BY-SA) qualify for Free Culture.