Open Educational Resources (OER): Dive Deep

Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has created and released several copyright licenses, known as Creative Commons licenses, each with a different level of use restrictions and free of charge to the public. These licenses are easy to use and understand. Anybody can apply these licenses to their work to allow others to share, remix, or use the work without having to contact the copyright owner to ask for permission.

License Requirements

There are six basic Creative Commons Licenses based on four requirements of use. The following icons indicate the conditions that must be met to re-use a work:

Creative Commons Licenses

License Icon	License Meaning
	Attribution (BY): You may use the work as long as you give credit in the form the author requests, provide a link to the license, and indicate if you made any changes to the work.
	ShareAlike (SA): You must distribute your derivative work under the same license as the original work.
	Non-Commercial (NC): You cannot use the work for commercial purposes.
	NoDerivatives (ND): You cannot distribute modified versions of the work.

Adapted from Creative Commons website on License Conditions and Types This link opens in a new window.

• Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative or exception to copyright, they are one way for copyright owners to distribute their work within the copyright framework. 
• CC allows creators to specify more flexible forms of copyright that allows "others to copy, distribute, and make some uses of their work."
• Look for copyright information (often at the bottom of webpages). Creative Commons licensed material sometimes display clickable icons that indicate the specifics of licensing.  

See the Creative Commons website for more info on License Conditions and Types This link opens in a new window.