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Creative Commons

This guide explains Creative Commons licenses and how students and faculty can use these licenses to share scholarly and creative works. Disclaimer: this guide is not legal advice, nor is the Libraries staff legal counsel to any college/university party.

What is Creative Commons?

Wanna Work Together? from Creative Commons on Vimeo.

This video is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. 

A Brief History of Creative Commons

Licenses offered by Creative Commons

  Attribution (CC BY) This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. View License Deed | View Legal Code


    Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. View License Deed | View Legal Code


  Attribution-NoDerivs (CC BY-ND) This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you. View License Deed | View Legal Code


  Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.  View License Deed | View Legal Code


  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.  View License Deed | View Legal Code


  Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, only allowing others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.   View License Deed | View Legal Code


Creative Commons also provide tools that work in the “all rights granted” space of the public domain. The CC0 tool allows licensors to waive all rights and place a work in the public domain, and the Public Domain Mark allows any web user to “mark” a work as being in the public domain.

The content in this box is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

Find Public Domain and Creative Commons Resources

How can I apply a Creative Commons license to my work?

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