Do you “speak CC” yet? This lesson covers the acronyms, terms, and symbols used in connection with Creative Commons tools, as well as some key things to know about how the licenses were designed.

Learning Outcomes

• Differentiate meaning of different CC icons
• Understand CC terminology
• Identify three layers of CC licenses

Big Question / Why It Matters

Given that most of us are not lawyers, what do we need to know about the legalities in order to use the licenses properly?

Creative Commons’ legal tools were designed to be as accessible to everyone as possible while still being legally robust. The founders of CC made several design decisions that make these legal tools relatively easy to use and understand.

Personal Reflection / Why It Matters to You

Have you ever come across a CC-licensed Flickr image that you really liked but were afraid to use because you weren’t sure of the legal terms and conditions? Have you ever been frustrated because you didn’t understand how to decide which of the CC legal tools to use for your own work?

Acquiring Essential Knowledge

Copyright operates by default under an “all rights reserved” approach. Creative Commons licenses function within copyright law, but they utilize a “some rights reserved” approach. While there are several different CC license options, all of them grant the public permission to use the works under certain standardized conditions. The licenses grant those permissions for as long as the underlying copyright lasts or until you violate the license terms. This is what we mean when we say CC licenses work on top of copyright, not instead of copyright.

The licenses were designed to be a free, voluntary solution for creators who want to grant the public up-front permissions to use their works. Although they are legally enforceable documents, they were designed in a way that was intended to make them accessible to non-lawyers.

The licenses are built using a three-layer design.

1. The legal code is the base layer. This contains the “lawyer-readable” terms and conditions that are legally enforceable in court. Take a minute and scan through the legal code of CC BY to see how it is structured. Can you find where the attribution requirements are listed?
2. The commons deeds are the most well-known layer of the licenses. These are the web pages that lay out the key license terms in so-called “human-readable” terms. The deeds are not legally enforceable but instead summarize the legal code. Take some time to explore the deeds for CC BY and CC BY-NC-ND and identify how they differ. Can you find the links to the legal code from each deed?
3. The final layer of the license design recognizes that software plays a critical role in the creation, copying, discovery, and distribution of works. In order to make it easy for websites and web services to know when a work is available under a Creative Commons license, we provide a “machine readable” version of the license—a summary of the key freedoms granted and obligations imposed written into a format that applications, search engines, and other kinds of technology can understand. We developed a standardized way to describe licenses that software can understand called CC Rights Expression Language (CC REL) to accomplish this. When this metadata is attached to CC-licensed works, someone searching for a CC-licensed work using a search engine like CC Search can more easily discover CC-licensed works that fit their particular usability requirements.

CC License Basics

All Creative Commons licenses have many important features in common. Every license helps creators—we call them licensors when they use our tools—retain copyright while allowing others to copy and distribute their work unchanged for noncommercial purposes. Every Creative Commons license also ensures licensors get credit for their work. Creative Commons licenses work around the world and last as long as applicable copyright lasts (because they are built on copyright) and so long as the user complies with the license. These common features serve as the baseline, on top of which licensors can choose to grant additional permissions when deciding how they want their work to be used.

Note for readers: Throughout all of the CC Certificate content, please assume all descriptions of the licenses refer to the most recent version of the CC license suite, Version 4.0, unless otherwise noted. You will learn more about the different versions in Section 3.4.

Choices for the Licensor

All Creative Commons licenses are structured to give the user permission to make a wide range of uses as long as the user complies with the conditions in the license. The basic condition in all of the licenses is that the user provides credit to the licensor and certain other information, such as where the original work may be found.

A Creative Commons licensor makes a few simple decisions on the path to choosing a license —first, do I want to allow commercial use, and then second, do I want to allow derivative works (also known as adaptations)? (We’ll touch on exactly how to do that in a later section.) If a licensor decides to allow derivative works, she may also choose to require that anyone who uses the work—we call them licensees—make their new work available under the same license terms. This is what is meant by “ShareAlike” and it is one of the mechanisms that helps the digital commons of CC-licensed content grow over time. ShareAlike is inspired by the GNU General Public License, used by many free and open source software projects.

These different license elements are symbolized by visual icons.

This symbol means Attribution or “BY.” All of the licenses include this condition.

This symbol means NonCommercial or “NC,” which means the work is only available to be used for noncommercial purposes. Three of the CC licenses include this restriction.

This symbol means ShareAlike or “SA,” which means that adaptations based on this work must be licensed under the same license. Two of the CC licenses include this condition.

This symbol means NoDerivatives or “ND,” which means reusers cannot make adaptations of the work. Two of the CC licenses include this restriction.

When combined, these icons represent the six CC license options. The icons are also embedded in the “license buttons,” which each represent a particular CC license type.

Public domain tools

In addition to the CC license suite, CC also has two public domain tools represented by the following icons:

CC0 enables creators to dedicate their works to the worldwide public domain to the greatest extent possible. (Note that some jurisdictions do not allow creators to dedicate their works to the public domain, so CC0 has other legal mechanisms included to help deal with this situation where it applies. More on this in Section 3.3.)

The Public Domain Mark is a label used to mark works known to be free of all copyright restrictions. Unlike CC0, the Public Domain Mark is not a legal tool and has no legal effect when applied to a work. It serves only as a label to inform the public about the public domain status of a work and is often used by museums and archives working with very old works.

Final remarks

There is a learning curve to some of the terminology and basics about how CC legal tools work. But as you now know, it is far less intimidating than it looks! Now that you understand how to “speak CC” and know some of the fundamentals about CC license design, you are well on your way to becoming versed in CC licensing.