CCBY CCBYSA CCBYNC CCBYNCSA CCBYNCND

No, that wasn’t a typo! The acronyms above are representative of the six different Creative Commons (CC) licenses. In Unit 3 you were introduced to open licenses and how they differ from all rights reserved copyright. In this unit, you will learn about the different conditions and permissions of these licenses.

This short slide show presentation provides the nuts and bolts of creative commons licenses and their conditions. Review the presentation first, including the embedded video. Then, come back to this unit and continue learning.

Creative Commons Licensing, The 5Rs, and OER:

The Shortest Possible Introduction

There are six different Creative Commons (CC) licenses that are useful combinations of conditions, all including the primary condition of Attribution. Understanding the meaning of each condition can be useful when deciding which CC license to use on your own work.  As discussed in Units 4 and 5 (Finding and Evaluating OER), understanding the meaning of the conditions can also be useful in evaluating an open resource.

Attribution (BY)

The Attribution (BY) condition is fundamental to all CC licenses. What many creators care about most is receiving credit for their creative work. When reusing CC-licensed work, proper attribution must be given to the original creator — and to other contributors on the work, if any. The CC BY license is the most open of all the licenses and allows for the most re-use.

Share-Alike (SA)

The Share-Alike condition adds a requirement for anyone reusing your work to also license their own creation (based on your work) under the same license. Both the CC BY-SA and CC BY-NC-SA licenses include this condition, effectively making them ‘copyleft’ or ‘viral’ licenses. While this condition effectively “locks open” the content, remixing SA content with non-SA or other-SA licensed work may not be straightforward or allowed at all.

Non-Commercial (NC)

The Non-Commercial condition allows for reuse and sharing but reserves commercial rights for the creator. The meaning of the NC condition itself and its ability to prevent commercial reuse is not always clear, but the license condition does clearly indicate that commercial reuse rights are not being granted.

No-Derivatives (ND)

The No-Derivatives condition allows sharing and reuse but only if the content is left unchanged. This presents an issue when searching for OER, as no customization or adaptation is allowed by the license. For this reason, ND content is not considered OER and should be considered for reuse only in situations where no adaptations are needed.