The Creative Commons licenses fill a gap between copyrighted material -- where any use requires permission -- and public domain material -- where no permission is needed. US copyright law begins protecting a work as soon as it's out into a fixed form so, for example, as soon as a picture is snapped only the photographer can legally reproduce the work. However, if the creator wants to allow others to be able to reproduce the work under certain circumstances they can choose to license their work under the CC, putting it in the middle zone between traditional copyright and the public domain.
Making sense of The Spectrum Of Rights by Research Outreach is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
The Creative Commons license framework offers 4 options to add conditions to a CC license. Each option is noted by the two letter code and symbol visible in the graphic below.
Creative Commons licence conditions by Research Outreach is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
By combining different license conditions to suit their needs, creators can end up with 7 different CC licenses. The graphic below compares each type of license by what is permitted. Find more detailed information on each license on the Licenses page.
The Creative Commons licences explained by Research Outreach is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Attribution
CC BY
This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licenses offered. Recommended for maximum dissemination and use of licensed materials.
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Attribution-ShareAlike
CC BY-SA
This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to “copyleft” free and open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use. This is the license used by Wikipedia, and is recommended for materials that would benefit from incorporating content from Wikipedia and similarly licensed projects.
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Attribution-NoDerivs
CC BY-ND
This license lets others reuse the work for any purpose, including commercially; however, it cannot be shared with others in adapted form, and credit must be provided to you.
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Attribution-NonCommercial
CC BY-NC
This license lets others remix, adapt, 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.
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Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
CC BY-NC-SA
This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
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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.
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Text and images on this page from Creative Commons are licensed under CC BY 4.0.
