Each work is automatically protected by copyright, which means that others will need to ask permission from you as the copyright owner. The letter pairs indicate conditions for use. CC BY is the most open license. It allows the user to redistribute, to create derivatives, such as a translation, and even use the publication for commercial activities, provided that appropriate credit is given to the author BY and that the user indicates whether the publication has been changed.
Those changes are not considered adaptations even if applicable law would suggest otherwise. For example, you may redistribute a book that uses the CC BY-NC-ND license in print form when it was originally distributed online, even if you have had to make formatting changes to do so, as long as you do so in compliance with the other terms of the license.
The first question to ask is whether doing so constitutes an adaptation. If the combination does not create an adaptation, then you may combine any CC-licensed content so long as you provide attribution and comply with the NonCommercial restriction if it applies. If you want to combine material in a way that results in the creation of an adaptation i. The NoDerivatives licenses do not permit remixing except for private use the pre All the other CC licenses allow remixes, but may impose limitations or conditions on how the remix may be used.
For example, if you create a remix with material licensed under a ShareAlike license, you need to make sure that all of the material contributed to the remix is licensed under the same license or one that CC has named as compatible , and you must properly credit all of the sources with the required attribution and license information.
Similarly, if you want to use a remix for commercial purposes , you cannot incorporate material released under one of the NonCommercial licenses. The chart below shows which CC-licensed material can be remixed.
To use the chart, find a license on the left column and on the top right row. If there is a check mark in the box where that row and column intersect, then the works can be remixed.
See below for details on how remixes may be licensed. If you make adaptations of material under a CC license i. See the chart below for more details. All licenses after version 1. See the license versions page for details. Since you may not share remixes of these materials at all, there is no compatibility with other licenses. Note that the ND licenses do allow you to reproduce the material in unmodified form together with other material in a collection, as indicated in the next FAQ.
When creating an adaptation of material under the license identified in the lefthand column, you may license your contributions to the adaptation under one of the licenses indicated on the top row if the corresponding box is green.
CC does not recommend using a license if the corresponding box is yellow, although doing so is technically permitted by the terms of the license. If you do, you should take additional care to mark the adaptation as involving multiple copyrights under different terms so that downstream users are aware of their obligations to comply with the licenses from all rights holders.
All Creative Commons licenses including the version 4. You may choose a license for the collection, however this does not change the license applicable to the original material. When you include CC-licensed content in a collection, you still must adhere to the license conditions governing your use of the material incorporated.
For example, material under any of the Creative Commons NonCommercial licenses cannot be used commercially. The table below indicates what type of CC-licensed works you may incorporate into collections licensed for commercial and noncommercial uses. Note that the relevant rights may expire at different times.
For example, you may have a CC-licensed song where the rights in the musical arrangement expire before the rights in the lyrics. In this case, when the copyright in the music expires, you may use it without being required to comply with the conditions of the CC license ; however, you must still comply with the license if you use the lyrics. The CC licenses are irrevocable.
This means that once you receive material under a CC license, you will always have the right to use it under those license terms, even if the licensor changes his or her mind and stops distributing under the CC license terms. All of the CC licenses terminate if you fail to follow the license conditions. If this happens, you no longer have a license to use the material.
If you have lost your rights under a CC license and are not entitled to automatic reinstatement, you may regain your rights under the license if the licensor expressly grants you permission.
You cannot simply re-download the material to get a new license. Note that you may still be liable for damages for copyright infringement for the period where you were not in compliance with the license. The Creative Commons licenses have three layers , as does the CC0 public domain dedication : the human-readable deed, the lawyer-readable legal code, and the machine-readable metadata.
The Public Domain Mark is not legally operative, and so has only two layers: the human-readable mark and machine-readable metadata. When material is licensed using any of the CC licenses or tools, it is highly recommended that a CC button , text, or other marker somehow accompany it.
There are many possible modes for marking. For our licenses, people generally use the CC license chooser to generate HTML code that can be pasted into the webpage where the licensed material is published.
CC0 and the Public Domain Mark have a separate chooser. Many platforms and web services such as Flickr and Drupal support CC licensing directly, allowing you to select an appropriate license.
The service then properly marks the work for you. CC has published some best practices for marking your CC-licensed material, and recommends:. See the marking page for more details. Before Creative Commons developed this vocabulary, it was difficult for a machine to ascertain whether an object was marked with a CC license. There was also no standard, predictable place to house metadata about that license for example, the source URL of the work or the required mode of attribution.
Machine-readable metadata based on well-accepted metadata standards creates a platform upon which new services and applications can be built. Software and services can detect CC licenses and the details of that license, as described by the metadata.
For example, on many websites and search engines such as Google and Flickr, you can run filtered searches for works offered under specific CC licenses.
In addition, CC license deeds can automatically create copy-and-paste attribution code so users may easily comply with the BY condition of the licenses.
When you click on a CC license or button from a page with license metadata, you get copy-and-paste attribution HTML within that license deed page. RDFa is a method for embedding structured data in a web page. For more information about RDFa, see the following resources:. Some search engines like Google allow people to filter their search results by usage rights so that you can limit your search results according to the particular CC license you seek.
For example, if you are looking for a photo to adapt, you can filter your search to return photos that have a CC license that permits creation of adaptations.
You can generally find this search feature on the advanced search page of your selected search engine. You can also use CC Search , which offers a convenient interface to search and a list of those content providers that support searches for content based on usage rights. Please note, however, that you should always double check to make sure that the work you locate through a search is licensed as you wish. Creative Commons provides tools for integrating license selection with your site.
You can find an overview at the Web Integration article on the CC wiki. The Partner Interface is a good way to get started and will always have the most up-to-date license versions and translations.
However, there is also an API available if you want more control. Mozilla has included the Creative Commons search function in many versions of Firefox along with search options for Google, Amazon, and other popular sites. Please take a look at the Firefox article on the CC wiki for an explanation of how to change these features.
If you want to add or remove a particular search option, click on the logo in the search box for example, the CC logo or the Google logo. This will open the pull down menu, which will allow you to select different search providers. You can also alter the order in which the search providers appear on the pull down menu. CC licenses are a form of rights expression, not rights management.
CC provides tools to make it easier for creators and owners to say which rights they reserve and permissions they grant. Copyright law grants exclusive rights to creators of original works of authorship. On the internet, even the most basic activities involve making copies of copyrighted content. As content is increasingly uploaded, downloaded, and shared online, copyright law is becoming more relevant to more people than it was 20 years ago.
Unfortunately, infringing copyrights—even unintentionally or unknowingly—can lead to liability. Successful navigation of the internet requires some understanding of copyright law.
The public domain of copyright refers to the aggregate of those works that are not restricted by copyright within a given jurisdiction. A work may be part of the public domain because the applicable term of copyright has expired, because the rights holder surrendered copyright in the work with a tool like CC0 , or because the work did not meet the applicable standards for copyrightability. Copyright in most jurisdictions attaches automatically without need for any formality once a creative work is fixed in tangible form i.
In some jurisdictions, creators may be required to register with a national agency in order to enforce copyright in court. Although you do not have to apply a copyright notice for your work to be protected, it may be a useful tool to clearly signal to people that the work is yours.
It also tells the public who to contact about the work. An adaptation is a work based on one or more pre-existing works. What constitutes an adaptation depends on applicable law, however translating a work from one language to another or creating a film version of a novel are generally considered adaptations. In order for an adaptation to be protected by copyright, most national laws require the creator of the adaptation to add original expression to the pre-existing work.
However, there is no international standard for originality, and the definition differs depending on the jurisdiction. Common law jurisdictions such as the U. Moral rights protect the personal and reputational value of a work for its creator. CC offers some additional information on how CC licenses may affect your moral rights. Copyright provides an incentive to create works by providing exclusive rights to creators.
However, the distribution or exploitation of a work often involves more than just the creator. For example, if someone writes a song, someone else may perform the song, and another may produce the recording of the song. Some jurisdictions extend copyright to the contributions made by these persons; other jurisdictions extend such exclusive rights in the form of neighboring rights. The Rome Convention sets forth some guidelines on the scope of neighboring rights.
Not all jurisdictions recognize neighboring rights. Sui generis database rights grant qualifying database makers the right to prohibit the extraction and reuse of a substantial portion of a database.
The rights are granted to database makers that make a substantial investment of time and resources to create the database. Sui generis database rights are primarily enacted within the European Union and a handful of other jurisdictions. Collecting societies are copyright management organizations. These societies license works on behalf of their owners and process royalty payments from parties using the copyrighted works.
CC offers additional information on how collecting societies might affect your rights and your ability to apply CC licenses to your work. CC has several pilots underway with collecting societies that have chosen to allow their members to use CC licenses on a limited basis. These terms are used differently in different jurisdictions.
Generally speaking, these rights allow individuals to control the use of their voice, image, likeness, or other identifiable aspect of their identity, especially for purposes of commercial exploitation. Whether and to what extent these rights exist, and if so, how they are labeled, varies depending on the jurisdiction. Creative Commons licenses have a limited effect on these rights where the licensor holds them. Where the licensor has publicity, personality, or privacy rights that may affect your ability to use the material as the license intends, the licensor agrees to waive or not assert those rights.
However, any such rights not held by the licensor are not affected and may still affect your desired use of a licensed work. If you have created a work or wish to use a work that might in some way implicate these rights, you may need to obtain permission from the individuals whose rights may be affected. This page supersedes Databases and Creative Commons. Much of the potential value of data is to society at large — more data has the potential to facilitate enhanced scientific collaboration and reproducibility, more efficient markets, increased government and corporate transparency, and overall to speed discovery and understanding of solutions to planetary and societal needs.
A big part of the potential value of data, in particular its society-wide value, is realized by use across organizational boundaries. How does this occur legally? Many sites give narrow permission to use data via terms of service. Much ad hoc data sharing also occurs among researchers. And increasingly, sharing of data is facilitated by distribution under standard, public legal tools used to manage copyright and similar restrictions that might otherwise limit dissemination or reuse of data, e.
CC licenses or the CC0 public domain dedication. Many organizations, institutions, and governments are using CC tools for data. For case studies about how these tools are applied, see:. Yes, CC licenses can be used to license databases.
The most recent version 4. Sui generis database rights prevent copying and reusing of substantial parts of a database including frequent extraction of insubstantial parts.
In addition to our licenses, the CC0 Public Domain Dedication may be used on databases to maximize reuse of databases. When applied, the effect is to waive all copyright and related rights in the database and its contents, placing it as close as possible into the worldwide public domain.
In certain domains, such as science and government, there are important reasons to consider using CC0. Waiving copyright and related rights eliminates all uncertainty for potential users, encouraging maximal reuse and sharing of information.
The license terms and conditions apply to the database structure its selection and arrangement, to the extent copyrightable , its contents if copyrightable , and in those instances where the database maker has sui generis database rights then the rights that are granted those makers. Notwithstanding, licensors can choose to license some rather than all of the rights they have in a database. Creative Commons advises against this practice. However, if a licensor chooses to do so anyway, we strongly encourage licensors to clearly demarcate what is and is not licensed.
See below for more information regarding how to provide clear notice of what is licensed. Before making a database available under a CC license, a database provider should first make sure she has all rights necessary to do so.
Often, the database provider is not the original author of the database contents. If that is the case, the database provider should secure separate permission from the other author s before publishing the database under a CC legal tool. If a database maker decides to license the database without securing permission from the author s of the database contents, it should clearly indicate the material for which permission has not been secured and clearly mark the material as not being offered under the terms of the license.
For more information, read our pre-licensing guidelines. Database providers should also consider carefully what elements of the database she wants covered by the CC legal tool and identify those elements in a manner that reusers will see and understand.
Under version 4. The other license elements BY, ND, and SA, as applicable must be complied with only if your use is so restricted and public sharing is involved. Prior CC license versions do not require compliance with the license restrictions or conditions when only sui generis database rights and not copyright are implicated. Please see below for more detail about how this works in the current and prior versions of the licenses.
However, you should be aware that whether you have to comply with the CC license terms and conditions will depend on whether the type of mining activity you conduct implicates copyright or any applicable sui generis database rights. If you are not exercising an exclusive right held by the database maker, then you do not need to rely on the license to mine. Because there are many different methods for conducting text and data mining, however, there may be some types of mining activities that will implicate the licensed rights.
If and only if your particular use is one that would require permission , you should note the following:. If your use is not one that requires permission under the license , you may conduct text and data mining activity without regard to the above considerations. As explained above , the current version of the CC license suite 4. Past versions of CC licenses operate differently with respect to sui generis database rights. In the CC version 3. This means that if someone extracts a substantial portion of a CC-licensed database and uses it in a way that does not implicate copyright e.
While this result is the same across all CC version 3. In the 3. However, the conditions of the license are explicitly waived when use of the licensed work only involves the exercise of database rights. By contrast, the 3. As a result, those licenses do not apply when sui generis database rights alone are implicated.
This means a licensee may need separate permission to use the database in a way that implicates sui generis database rights although arguably an implied license to exercise those rights may be deemed granted in some jurisdictions.
More information on the underlying 3. There are many differences between those licenses and CC licenses, but the most important to be aware of relate to license scope and operation. The ODC licenses apply only to sui generis database rights and any copyright in the database structure, they do not apply to the individual contents of the database. The latest version of the CC licenses on the other hand apply to sui generis database rights and all copyright and neighboring rights in the database structure as well as the contents.
See above for more detail about how past versions of CC licenses vary with respect to sui generis database rights. Another important difference is that ODC licenses may create contractual obligations even in jurisdictions where database rights would not otherwise exist and but for the license permission would not be necessary.
CC has crafted its licenses to ensure that they never impose obligations where permission is not otherwise required to use the licensed material. With databases, there are likely four components to consider: 1 the database model or structure, 2 the data entry and output sheet, 3 field names, and 4 the data or other content. The database model refers to how a database is structured and organized, including database tables and table indexes.
The selection, coordination, and arrangement of the database is subject to copyright if it is sufficiently original. The originality threshold is fairly low in many jurisdictions. For example, while courts in the United States have held that an alphabetical telephone directory was insufficiently original to merit copyright protection, an organized directory of Chinese-American businesses in a particular area did.
The data entry and output sheets contain questions, and the answers to these questions are stored in a database. The format and layout of these sheets are protected by copyright according to the same standard of originality used to determine if the database model is copyrightable. Field names describe the contents or data. These are less likely to be protected by copyright because they often lack sufficient originality.
The data or other contents contained in the database are subject to copyright if they are sufficiently creative. Original poems contained in a database would be protected by copyright, but purely factual data such as gene names or city populations would not. Facts are not subject to copyright, nor are the ideas underlying copyrighted content. When the database structure or its contents is subject to copyright, reproducing, distributing, or modifying the database will often be restricted by copyright law.
However, it is important to note that some uses of a copyrighted database will not be restricted by copyright. It may be possible, for example, to rearrange or modify the uncopyrightable data in a way that does not implicate the copyright in the database structure. For example, while as noted above a court in the United States held that a directory of Chinese-American businesses was restricted by copyright, the same court went on to hold that a directory that duplicated hundreds of its listings was not infringing because the listings were categorized and arranged in a sufficiently dissimilar way.
In those situations, compliance with the license conditions is not required unless the database contents are themselves restricted by copyright. Similarly, even where database contents are subject to copyright and published under a CC license, use of the facts and ideas embedded within the contents will not require attribution or compliance with other applicable license conditions , unless doing so implicates copyright in the database structure as explained above.
This important limitation of all CC licenses is highlighted on the license deeds in the Notice section, where we emphasize that compliance with the license is not required for elements of the material in the public domain.
All CC licenses require that you attribute the licensor when your use involves public sharing. Your other obligations depend on the particular CC license applied to the database. If it is a NC license, any regulated use must be limited to noncommercial purposes only. If a ND is applied, you may produce an adapted database but cannot share it publicly.
If it is a ShareAlike SA license, you must apply the same or a compatible license to any adaptation of the database you share publicly. In particular, the right prevents the unauthorized extraction and reuse of a substantial portion of the contents. When a database is subject to sui generis database rights, extracting and reusing a substantial portion of the database contents is prohibited absent some express exception.
It is important to remember that sui generis database rights exist in only a few countries outside the European Union , such as Korea and Mexico.
Generally, if you are using a CC-licensed database in a location where those rights do not exist, you do not have to comply with license restrictions or conditions unless copyright or some other licensed right is implicated. Note that if you are using a database in a jurisdiction where you must respect database rights, and you receive a CC-licensed work from someone located in a jurisdiction without database rights, you should determine whether database rights exist and have been licensed.
If so, you need to properly mark and attribute as the license requires, since the person from whom you received the database may not have been required to keep that information. If you are using a licensed database and you do not have to comply with the license terms because such rights do not exist in your jurisdiction, we recommend that you retain this information where possible. Doing so assists downstream reusers who are required to provide it when they share further.
The answer will depend on the law in the relevant jurisdiction. Note that what constitutes a substantial portion is determined both quantitatively and qualitatively. Also, using several insubstantial portions can add up to a substantial portion.
If the database is released under the current version 4. The other requirements depend on the particular license applied to the database. Under the NC licenses, you may not extract and reuse a substantial portion of the database contents for commercial purposes.
The ND licenses prohibit you from including a substantial portion of the database contents in another publicly shared database in which you have sui generis database rights of your own. And finally, the SA licenses require you to apply the same or a compatible license to any database you share publicly and in which you include a substantial portion of the licensed database contents. Note that this does not require you to ShareAlike any copyright or other rights you have in the individual contents of the database.
The licenses grant permission for reuse in any situation that requires permission under copyright. There are many ways in which CC-licensed work works and even all rights reserved works can be reused without permission. This includes uses that are fair uses , for example. If someone uses a CC-licensed work with any new or developing technology, and if copyright permission is required, then the CC license allows that use without the need to seek permission from the copyright owner so long as the license conditions are respected.
This is one of the enduring qualities of our licenses — they have been carefully designed to work with all new technologies where copyright comes into play. No special or explicit permission regarding new technologies from a copyright perspective is required.
Copyright is the primary obstacle to reuse that our licenses solve, but there are many other issues related to the reuse of content that our licenses do not address and that reusers should be aware of.
These can include privacy and rules governing ethical research and the collection or use of data, which have to be addressed and respected separate and apart from the copyright issues that CC licenses cover. For example, as a general matter text and data mining in the United States is considered a fair use and does not require permission under copyright. This means that reusers engaged in text and data mining do not have to adhere to the marking and attribution requirements in our licenses for that activity even though we strongly recommend they do so anyway.
A second example is linking. Where a CC-licensed work is distributed as part of a database or dataset, and assuming copyright or in the European Union, copyright or sui generis database rights is triggered, then the license conditions must be respected. This means providing the required attribution information in a way that is reasonable under the circumstances. Our licenses allow for some flexibility, and in some cases that may be as simple as providing a link to the website where the relevant attribution information is provided.
Visit our marking practices page for more information. This depends on whether any of the uses made of the works by the company, whether for profit or non profit, are primarily intended for commercial advantage or monetary compensation. This is hard to know without having all of the facts about how a work was used, whether internally by the company for its own purposes or how the work was distributed for further use. Visit our NC page for more information about what constitutes commercial and non commercial uses of works.
If NC-licensed content is redistributed to the public under an NC license, that distribution would not violate the NC clause. CC licenses never require a reuser of a CC-licensed work to make the original work or resulting works collections, derivatives, etc. Regarding ShareAlike, the condition only applies if a work is modified and if the work is shared publicly.
In the situation where a reuser created a dataset of photos and made it publicly available, and assuming copyright permission is required, then what is released is likely a collection or compilation of pre-existing works. CC licenses do not require the collection or the compilation itself to be made available under an SA license, even though each individual work is still licensed individually under an SA license and if they were modified by the distributor the modified photo would need to be licensed under the same terms.
Several remedies are potentially available. Some may be available if the CC license terms have been violated, and others may be available through other, separate avenues because they involve other laws or regulations that the CC licenses do not cover.
An important starting point for any would-be sharer of content under a CC license is to educate yourself in advance about how they work and what rights they do and do not cover.
We have many FAQs on our website. We also provide human-readable deeds with links to the full text of our licenses. Additionally, all of our licenses highlight at the beginning many considerations that licensors should have in mind before they license, and considerations for reusers of works before they do so in order to avoid inadvertent violations. Key Publications, Inc. Chinatown Today Publishing Enterprises Inc.
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