Creative Commons Licenses Overview
The Creative Commons (CC) Licenses 
The Creative Commons (CC) Licenses were developed and are used to indicate to others what they are permitted to do with your work. They allow creators to easily change their copyright terms from the default of “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.” The licenses are legal tools to advance permission to share and use your work – on conditions of your choice. There are six different CC licenses and two public domain tools.
Creative Commons License Types
CC BY (Attribution): 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.
CC BY-SA (Attribution-ShareAlike): 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 (e.g., Wikipedia).
CC BY-ND (Attribution-NoDerivs): This license lets others reuse your work for any purpose, including commercially; however, it cannot be shared with others in adapted form, and credit must be provided to you.
CC BY-NC (Attribution-NonCommercial): This license lets others remix, adapt, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although 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 (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike): 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.
CC BY-NC-ND (Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs): This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, 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.
CC License Restrictiveness
This graphic shows the Creative Commons (CC) Licenses from least to most restrictive.
Since Non-Derivative (ND) licenses do not allow for remixing or revising, they don't fully satisfy the open requirements of the Five Rs. However, since ND works can be distributed freely, they can still ultimately lower and/or eliminate textbooks costs for students.
Public Domain License Types
CC0: “No Rights Reserved”: Pronounced CC "Zero", CC0 enables scientists, educators, artists and other creators and owners of copyright- or database-protected content to waive those interests in their works and thereby place them as completely as possible in the public domain, so that others may freely build upon, enhance and reuse the works for any purposes without restriction under copyright or database law.
Public Domain Mark "No Known Copyright": The Public Domain Mark enables works that are no longer restricted by copyright to be marked as such in a standardized way, making them easily discoverable to others. Used by many cultural heritage institutions including museums, libraries, and other curators, the Public Domain Mark operates as a tag or a label, allowing institutions to communicate that a work is no longer restricted by copyright.
NO LEGAL ADVICE: This guide provides general information about copyright, the public domain, and creative commons licenses. It does not apply to any individual work or specific situation; it is not legal advice, nor is it a substitute for legal advice. Images not otherwise attributed are from Downloads by Creative Commons and licensed under CC BY.