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Copyright: Basic Facts for Teaching

Creative Commons Mission

 

  

Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation.

 

Their tools give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to keep their copyright while allowing certain uses of their work — a “some rights reserved” approach to copyright — which makes their creative, educational, and scientific content instantly more compatible with the full potential of the internet. The combination of their tools and their users is a vast and growing digital commons, a pool of content that can be copied, distributed, edited, remixed, and built upon, all within the boundaries of copyright law. They’ve worked with copyright experts around the world to make sure their licenses are legally solid, globally applicable, and responsive to their users’ needs.

Creative Commons License Icons

 

Attribution: Author allows user to copy, distribute, display, and perform work as well as derivative works as long as credit is given to author as requested.
 

Share Alike: Author allows user to distribute derivative works under a license that is identical to author's license.
 

Noncommercial:  Author allows user to copy, distribute, display, and perform work as well as derivative works, for noncommercial purposes only.
 

No Derivative Works:  Author allows user to copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of work, not derivative versions.

Creative Commons Licenses

 

Attribution:  License allows user to distribute, modify, and build upon original work for commercial and noncommercial purposes, as long as credit is given to author as requested.
 

Attribution Share Alike:  License allows user to modify and build upon original work for commercial and noncommercial purposes, as long as credit is given to author as requested.
 

Attribution No Derivatives:  License allows user to modify and build upon original work for commercial and noncommercial purposes, as long as credit is given to author as requested.
 

Attribution Non-Commercial:  License allows user to modify and build upon work non-commercially as long as credit is given to author, but derivative works do not have to be licensed on the same terms.
 

Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike:  License allows user to modify and build upon work non-commercially, as long as credit is given to author and their derivative works follow identical terms.
 

Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives:  Most restrictive license that allows user to redistribute works with proper credit given and a link to author, but cannot modify or use works commercially.

Disclaimer

 This guide is for informational purposes only.

 It should not be used in place of the advice of legal counsel.