Creative Commons Licenses in a Snapshot

Gone is the day when our creative works were relegated to photo albums to collect dust. As millions of web users are now discovering, we can share our creative works online without giving up control over how they are used. Creative Commons, a nonprofit that offers free copyright licenses, makes it easy to go public with the level of restrictions that feels right to you. If you’re looking to share your images with the world without the hassle of a full copyright, consider these six Creative Commons licensing options summarized below.

• Attribution: This licensing option permits others to copy, distribute, display and modify your work, even if it’s for commercial purposes. The user must give credit to you for the original creation.

• Attribution Share Alike: This licensing is similar to attribution, except that any derivative works based on your work must be licensed under identical terms to the license that sets the conditions for sharing your work.

• Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike: This license has the same conditions as the Attribution Share Alike, except that your work and derivatives of your work may not be used for commercial purposes.

• Attribution Non-Commercial: This license lets others to copy, distribute, display and modify your work for non-commercial purposes. Although any new works based on your work must acknowledge you and be noncommercial, derivative works do not need to have the same licensing terms as you established for the original work.

• Attribution No Derivatives: This license permits others to redistribute your work, for commercial or non-commercial purposes, with credit to you. However, your work may not be altered in any way.

• Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives: This most restrictive license permits others to use your works provided they mention you and link back to you. The restrictions are that your work may not be altered in any way or used for commercial purposes.

Not only does Creative Commons make it easy to publish works publicly, it allows us to appreciate and build on others’ creative works in a way that respects the originator’s desires. What a shame it would be if the above image by nutmeg66 was unpublished. In the case of this image the creator decided to restrict users from creating derivatives of the image. However, countless other images have less restrictive licenses, which enable all of us to build on the images, thus multiplying the creativity of the original contributor.