§ 01Four Building Blocks
Creative Commons is not a single licence — it's a system built from four conditions that combine into six usable licences. Understand the conditions first, and the licences become obvious.
BY means attribution. Every Creative Commons licence carries this one. Use the work, but credit the creator in the way they specify.
NC means non-commercial. Others may use the work, but not primarily for commercial advantage or monetary compensation. What counts as "commercial" sits in a grey zone — a blogger with ads, a nonprofit selling books — so when in doubt, check with the rightholder.
ND means no derivatives. The work can be shared but only in its original form. Remix it, adapt it, translate it — all off the table.
SA means share-alike. Adaptations must be released under the same or a compatible licence. It's the copyleft principle: freedom travels downstream.
These four conditions produce six licences. None of them waive copyright — they operate on top of it.
| Mark | Full name | In plain terms |
|---|---|---|
| CC BY | Attribution | Use freely, even commercially; just credit. |
| CC BY-SA | Attribution-ShareAlike | Credit, and share adaptations under the same terms. |
| CC BY-NC | Attribution-NonCommercial | Credit; no commercial use. |
| CC BY-ND | Attribution-NoDerivatives | Credit; share as-is, no changes. |
| CC BY-NC-SA | Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike | Credit, non-commercial, share alike. |
| CC BY-NC-ND | Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives | The most restrictive; credit, no commercial, no changes. |
| CC0 | Public Domain Dedication | All rights waived, as far as the law allows. |
§ 02The Six Licences, Plain English
CC BY — the most open. Credit the creator and do almost anything else: copy, share, adapt, sell, incorporate into commercial products. Widely used in open-access academic publishing precisely because it puts almost nothing between the work and the world.
CC BY-SA — the Wikipedia licence. Same freedom as BY, but any adaptation must carry the same terms. Your derivative stays open, passing the share-alike obligation forward. Remix a BY-SA article and your article inherits the SA condition.
CC BY-NC — free for non-commercial use with credit. A musician might choose this to let fans share recordings while keeping commercial rights to themselves. Adaptations are allowed; commercial use is not.
A musician might choose this to let fans share recordings while keeping commercial rights to themselves.
CC BY-NC-SA — non-commercial and share-alike together. Adapt freely, but only for non-commercial purposes, and publish your adaptation under the same terms. Popular with educational materials where creators want open reuse but not commercial exploitation.
CC BY-ND — credit required, no changes allowed. Someone can redistribute the work exactly as it stands, commercially or not, but cannot modify it. Useful when a creator cares about integrity of form: a photographer who will share prints but not permit cropping or colour edits.
CC BY-NC-ND — the most restrictive. Share it, credit it, don't change it, don't profit from it. This is the floor of CC sharing: it rules out commercial use and derivatives both, leaving only verbatim redistribution with attribution.
There is also CC0 — technically a public domain dedication, not a licence. It waives all rights to the extent permitted by law, asking nothing of users in return, not even credit. Research datasets and government-produced materials often carry CC0 to maximise reuse.
§ 03Picking One (and What You Can't Undo)
Two practical points matter most when choosing a Creative Commons licence.
First, the conditions are stackable only up to a point. ND and SA cannot appear on the same licence — if you forbid derivatives, there is nothing to share alike. So the six combinations are not arbitrary; they are the logical non-contradictory set.
Second, CC licences are irrevocable once applied to a publicly released work. You can stop offering a work under a given licence going forward — stop distributing it, withdraw it from platforms — but you cannot retroactively revoke permissions already granted to people who obtained a legitimately licensed copy. Choose deliberately.
The system is maintained by Creative Commons, the nonprofit organisation founded in 2001. The current licence suite, version 4.0, was released in 2013 and is drafted to work across international jurisdictions without country-specific adaptations. Older versions (1.0 through 3.0) exist in the wild; a CC BY 3.0 work is not automatically interchangeable with CC BY 4.0, though in most practical cases the differences are minor.
APPENDIXAttached to the record
- 2001Creative Commons founded
- 2013Version 4.0 released, replacing country-specific licence ports
| Term | As used in this record |
|---|---|
| BY | Creative Commons condition requiring attribution to the original creator |
| NC | condition restricting use to non-commercial purposes only |
| ND | condition prohibiting derivative works; original form only |
| SA | share-alike condition requiring adaptations under the same licence |
| CC0 | public domain dedication waiving all rights, not a licence proper |
| Copyleft | principle ensuring derivative works carry the same open terms |
| Irrevocable | cannot be taken back once granted to a recipient |
Filed as general information, in a precise reference voice — not legal advice.