Creative Commons License

This "all rights reserved" copyright law setting is balanced by the use of Creative Commons copyright licenses and tools. Our tools provide a simple, standardized method for granting copyright permissions to creative work for everyone, from individual creators to large corporations and institutions. Using our tools and our users creates a vast and growing digital commons, a repository of content that can be copied and distributed, edited and remixed within the bounds of copyright law.

All Creative Commons licences share a large number of significant characteristics. – While enabling people to reproduce, distribute, and use their work for non-commercial purposes, each licence enables creators — whom we refer to as licensors when they use our products — maintain ownership of their original work. The credit that is due to the original creators of the work is part of every Creative Commons licence. As long as valid copyrights remain, Creative Commons licences may be used across the globe (because they are built on copyright). Licensors may opt to provide extra rights when selecting how their work should be utilised, but these basic characteristics serve as the baseline.

To choose a licence, a Creative Commons licensor must first decide whether to allow commercial usage and, if so, whether or not to allow derivative works. In this case, the licensor has the option to mandate that everyone who uses the work — or "licensees" — make their new work accessible under the same licence conditions as the original work in question. As one of the strategies that might enable the digital commons flourish over time (if desired), we term this concept "ShareAlike." The GNU General Public License, which is adopted by a slew of free and open source software projects, served as a model for ShareAlike.

Our agreements do not change the legal rights granted to users of copyrighted works, such as fair dealing exceptions and limits. Any of the things that the law reserves to a licensor and that the licence does not specifically allow may only be done with the authorization of the licensor under a Creative Commons licence. Copyright notices must be left intact on all copies of the work made by licensees, and links to the licence must be included on those copies. It is illegal for licensees to employ technical means to prevent others from accessing the work.