The basic features of Creative Commons licenses & alternatives

The content on this page was originally created by CreativeCommons.org and has been edited and remixed under a creative commons 3.0 attribution license.

The features of the major Creative Commonsⁱ licenses are discussed below. Creative Commons also offers numerous other creative licensing choices including

Public Domainⁱ Dedication – Offer your work to the world with “no rights reserved.”

Sampling licenses – licenses specifically targeting the use of fragments of a work to create a new work.

Founder's Copyrightⁱ – The length of copyright is currently the author's life plus 70 years, up from 14 years with the possibility of renewal for another 14 years at our nation's birth. You can simply agree to the shorter amount of protection offered at our nation's founding by selecting a founder's copyright.

Open Source Software specific licenses – Creative Commons has versions of the Free Software Foundation's GNUⁱ General Public License and GNU Lesser General Public License.

Basic features of all Creative Commons licenses

All Creative Commons licenses have many important features in common.

Every license will help you

• retain your copyright

• announce that other people’s fair use, first sale, and free expression rights are not affected by the license.

Every license requires licensees

• to get your permission to do any of the things you choose to restrict — e.g., make a commercial use, create a derivative work;

• to keep any copyright notice intact on all copies of your work;

• to link to your license from copies of the work;

• not to alter the terms of the license

• not to use technology to restrict other licensees’ lawful uses of the work

Every license allows licensees, provided they live up to your conditions,

• to copy the work

• to distribute it

• to display or perform it publicly

• to make digital public performances of it (e.g., webcasting)

• to shift the work into another format as a verbatim copy

Every license

• applies worldwide

• lasts for the duration of the work’s copyright

• is not revocable

Note that this list of features does not apply to the Public Domain Dedication, Creative Commons' Sampling Licenses, or Founder’s Copyright.