Creative Commons helps you share your knowledge & creativity with the world.
Creative Commons licenses are a standardized way to give others permission to share and use your work -- on conditions of your choice. You retain copyright of your work while allowing others to make limited use.
Learn more: creativecommons.org
It is important to understand that while you control how the work can be used with Creative Commons the most basic level of the license does mean that others can use your work, you are just indicating how they can use it. Creative Commons is usually more useful for images as opposed to writing.
(CC BY) This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, 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.
(CC BY-SA) This license lets others remix, tweak, 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.
(CC BY-ND) This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you. This means no edits or changes to the original work.
(CC BY-NC) This license lets others remix, tweak, 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.
(CC BY-NC-SA) This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
(CC BY-NC-ND) This license is the most restrictive of the 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.
Adapted from About CC Licenses, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
This enables works that are no longer restricted by copyright to be marked as such in a standard and simple way, making them easily discoverable and available to others. Many cultural heritage institutions including museums, libraries and other curators are knowledgeable about the copyright status of paintings, books and manuscripts, photographs and other works in their collections, many of which are old and no longer under copyright.
Adapted from Public Domain, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.