Creative Commons

Creative Commons

"Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital creativity, sharing, and innovation." Creative Commons Mission Statement

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that promotes the sharing of creativity and knowledge by providing easy-to-use copyright licenses. Creative Commons licenses work alongside traditional copyright to suit your needs.

Advantages of Creative Commons

There are many advantages associated with using Creative Commons licenses. Below are a few highlighted advantages via creativecommons.org. For additional benefits, see benefits of CC [pdf].

• CC provides global recognition
  • An increasing amount of digital content sites, such as Flickr, Youtube, and Vimeo, allow contributors to apply CC licenses during the upload process. These generic licenses and jurisdiction-tailored licenses are applicable internationally. 
• CC licenses are easy to understand
  • Creative Commons makes it easy to maintain their copyright over their work while allowing others to legally share and reuse that content. Creators can select the CC licenses that best fits their need through the license generator.
• CC offers flexibility
  • Creative Commons offers a variety of licensing options and allows creators to select an appropriate license, instead of one-size-fits-all terms of use agreement.
• CC supports a culture of sharing
  • Using CC licenses can be an effective way of encouraging norms of sharing and reuse within an online community.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Feel free to reuse, remix, or republish but please credit the authors for their work.

Created by: Emma Molls; adapted by Megan O'Donnell & Abbey Elder