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Copyright guide

Creative Commons

Creative Commons logo

Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization, which was founded in 2001 to support the global movement for sharing and collaboration. The organization has released six main copyright licenses known as Creative Commons licenses. They are free, international, easy-to-use and are the standard for enabling sharing and remix. You can choose a Creative Commons license to publish your work in order to expand the range of your work available for others to build upon legally and to share.

Creative Commons licenses do not replace copyright, but are based on it. They replace individual negotiations for specific rights between the copyright owner (the licensor) and the licensee, benefiting both copyright owners and licensees.

The following texts list the six Creative Commons licenses starting with the most accommodating license type and ending with the most restrictive license type you can choose, as well as CC0 – No Rights Reserved.

Creative Commons licenses

All the six Creative Commons licenses allow the following:

  • Copy of the work.
  • Distribution of the work.
  • Display or presentation of the work in public.
  • Digital performance of the work (for example, on an interactive writing board or via live broadcast online).
  • Converting the work to another format.

Based on these points, a number of limitations and opportunities are given in the six different licenses.

The first license is the most generous, while the last one contains the most limitations.

CC BY

Attribution

  • The author, the work’s title and the license must always be specified.
  • Commercial use is also permitted.
  • Adaption of the work is allowed.
     

CC BY SA

Attribution – ShareAlike

  • The author, the work’s title and the license must always be specified.
  • Commercial use is also permitted.
  • Adaption of the work is allowed, provided the new work carries the same license.

 

CC BY ND

Attribution – NoDerivatives

  • The author, the work’s title and the license must always be specified.
  • Commercial use is also permitted.
  • Adaption of the work is not allowed.

 

CC BY NC

Attribution – NonCommercial

  • The author, the work’s title and the license must always be specified.
  • The use can only be non-commercial.
  • Adaption of the work is allowed.
     

CC BY NC SA

Attribution – NonCommercial – ShareAlike

  • The author, the work’s title and the license must always be specified.
  • The use can only be non-commercial.
  • Adaption of the work is allowed, provided the new work carries the same license.

 

CC BY NC ND

Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivatives

  • The author, the work’s title and the license must always be specified.
  • The use can only be non-commercial.
  • Adaption of the work is not allowed.

 

 Bearbetad version ur Creative Commons - en guide för lärare. Skolverket, 2011. https://www.skolverket.se/publikationer?id=2713 [Hämtad: 29.11.2018], CC BY NC SA.

 

In addition to the above six Creative Commons licenses, the author can choose

CC0 – No Rights Reserved  CC0 – No Rights Reserved

to dedicate a work to the public domain by waiving all of his or her copyright and neighbouring and related rights. With CC0, requests for attribution are not binding through legal requirements, but can be based on ethical and professional norms such as citation standards in the academic community (which are based on ethics and professional reputation, not legal conditions).