Creative Commons

Creative Commons is the non-profit organisation founded in 2001 by Lawrence Lessig, and also the family of licences that bears its name.

Lessig, promoting the idea of a «free culture», raised core questions about copyright in the digital age. The practical answer is a shift from «all rights reserved» to «some rights reserved»: the author keeps the copyright and states in advance what others may do, so nobody has to ask permission case by case.

The licences are built from four clauses: BY (attribution, credit the author), SA (Share Alike, derivative works carry the same licence), NC (Non Commercial, no commercial use) and ND (No Derivatives, no changes). These are the six licences:

• CC BY: anything goes, commercial use included, as long as the author is credited;
• CC BY-SA: as above, and derivative works stay free in the same way;
• CC BY-NC: use and changes allowed, for non-commercial purposes only;
• CC BY-ND: redistribution allowed, commercial too, but without changes;
• CC BY-NC-SA: no commercial use, and derivatives carry the same licence;
• CC BY-NC-ND: the most restrictive, the whole work is shared with credit, unchanged and without profit.

CC0 stands apart: with it the author waives their rights as far as the law allows and moves the work towards the public domain. Every licence has its own badge showing the clause codes. Creative Commons licences are designed for text, images, music and data; for software the organisation itself recommends dedicated licences such as the GPL.

Enrico Giubertoni. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0: you may quote, translate and adapt this entry with the author’s name and a link, stating any changes. For commercial use, write to info@enricogiubertoni.com

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