What is Creative Commons?

It is a new "copyleft license" aimed at flexible handling of copyright

protection for all kinds of creative work, including books, websites, blogs,
photographs, films, videos, songs and other recordings. It is intended to preserve the intellectual property
rights of publishers as well as to allow legal modification and distribution by the consumer. [ SHARE]

Conditions a creator can apply to their work

You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your

Attribution copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it
(by) — but only if they give credit the way you request.

You allow others to distribute derivative works only

Share Alike under a license identical to the license that governs your
(sa) work.

Non- You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your
Commercial work — and derivative works based upon it — but for
(nc) non-commercial purposes only.

No Derivative You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only
Works verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works
(nd) based upon it.

With these conditions, works can have one of six Creative Commons licenses.

Attribution – Attribution –
Attribution – Attribution – Attribution –
Attribution Non-Commercial – Non-Commercial –
Share Alike No Derivatives Non-Commercial
Share Alike No Derivatives

Not complicated enough for you? You can find the legal language behind these licenses at:
http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses

Find Creative Commons-licensed works

The Creative Commons Web site has links to popular search engines to help you find Creative Commons-
licensed videos, photos, music and other media. http://search.creativecommons.org.

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Cite a Creative Commons-licensed work
All current CC licenses require that you attribute the original author(s). If the copyright holder has not
specified any particular way to attribute them, you still need to give attribution as best you can. Gather as
much of the following information as possible:

 A URL link to the original work

 Name, screen name, user ID, etc. of the work’s creator
 Work’s title or name – If the work doesn’t have a name, use something like “Photo by ….”.
 Cite the specific CC license the work is under by adding a link to the license page on the CC website.
 If you are modifying a work, you must make clear that your work is a derivative work.
 If the work contains any copyright notices, you must leave those notices intact.

Examples of online citations:

An attribution for a derivative work

This syllabus is adopted from Classics in Western Philosophy, Spring 2006 by Ray
Langton and used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
3.0 License.

An ideal attribution

This video features the song “Play Your Part (Pt.1)” by Girl Talk, available under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license. © 2008, Greg Gillis.

A realistic attribution

Photo by Flickr user mollyali, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-

Noncommercial License.

Learn more about Creative Commons at their Web site, www.creativecommons.org.

Attributions:

Creative Commons definition from SHARE, Sharing Resources in Education.

Citation information modified from Creative Commons FFAQ.
Second and third citation example from Molly Kleinman, available under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Creative Commons logo from Ivan Walsh, available under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Creative Commons icons by User:Sting, available under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Creative Commons badges by Creative Commons available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

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