Anatomy of a CC license
Structured text version of a resource referenced in OKHE
Creative Commons licenses and public domain tools allow students, staff and researchers to grant permission to others to use their work. This promotes the creation and sharing of Open Educational Resources (OER), research data/outputs and a wide variety of other materials to enhance teaching and learning.
3 layers of the CC licenses
- Legal code — these terms and conditions are legally enforceable and underpin the license
- Commons deeds — these put the legal code into understandable, accessible language for humans
- Machine-readable version — this allows a website or other technology to understand the license e.g. Google Images can pick up usage rights
License elements — BY
BY denotes Attribution. Anyone using the work must clearly acknowledge the original creator by naming them e.g. The Creative Commons symbols should be attributed to Creative Commons
License elements — NC
NC denotes NonCommercial. The work cannot be used for commercial gain. It is the use of the work that is important, not the status of the user e.g. a non-profit organisation would not be allowed to sell a work licensed with NC
License elements — SA
SA denotes ShareAlike. Any adaptations must be shared with the same license as the original work e.g. an OER created with a CC BY licensed cannot be altered then licensed with CC BY ND
License elements — ND
ND denotes NoDerivatives. The work can be used for any purpose but cannot be changed or adapted prior to sharing. A user may make changes for their personal use but must not share the adapted version.
Public Domain and CC0
The Public Domain mark denotes that a work is already in the public domain and so can be used freely.
In some countries, there is no simple way to relinquish copyright so the CC0 tool allows creators to show that they are happy for their work to be used in any way by anyone without attribution.
Licenses — a quick guide
From least to most restrictive:
- CC BY — Attribute original creator
- CC BY-SA — Attribute original creator, apply the same license they used to your work
- CC BY-NC — Attribute original creator, do not use for commercial gain
- CC BY-NC-SA — Attribute original creator, do not use for commercial gain, apply the same license they used to your work
- CC BY-ND — Attribute original creator, do not share any adaptations of the work
- CC BY-NC-ND — Attribute original creator, do not use for commercial gain, do not share any adaptations of the work
Exceptions and limitations
CC licenses are designed to work within copyright law.
Where a copyrighted work can be used due to an exception to copyright law, a CC license doesn’t need to be applied e.g. copying a short extract from a textbook for private study.
If work is in the public domain, it doesn’t fall under copyright and therefore doesn’t need a CC license.
The use of CC licenses is not encouraged for software as more appropriate licenses exist for this.
Patents, trademarks and other rights are outside the scope of CC licenses.
Attribution and license
This post is licensed by The University of Manchester Library under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This post is a version of “Anatomy of a CC license”, licensed by Jess Napthine-Hodgkinson under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Jess’s reference list can be found here.
