Copyright

Creative Commons (or CC) licences are a means of granting specific permissions for use of your creations. Some creators may wish to actively promote reuse of their works, while still exercising at least some of their copyright entitlement. All Creative Commons licences are free to apply and legally recognised internationally.

There are four key components to a Creative Commons licence, each represented by a two-letter code. These are:

Attribution (BY) = The requirement to attribute any licensed work to its original creator.
Share-Alike (SA) = The requirement to share any derivative works (i.e. adapted or edited versions of the work) with the same licence
Non-Commercial (NC) = The requirement to not use the work for any commercial purpose.
No-Derivatives (ND) = The requirement to share the work only, and not make any changes to it.
 

Every Creative Commons licence is a combination of these different components. The minimum requirement of any CC licence is that you acknowledge the original creator (the Attribution component). 

• Attribution CC BY
• Attribution ShareAlike CC BY-SA
• Attribution-NoDerivs CC BY-ND
• Attribution-NonCommercial CC BY-NC
• Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike CC BY-NC-SA
• Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND

CC BY is the most open license, while CC BY-NC-ND is the most restrictive.

An artist has developed an image that will be very useful for website design and presentation materials.

They decide that they will license the image, so that others can alter the image if required and use it in any context.

The artist is happy for any use to be made of their image, as long as they get appropriate credit and that any new versions are licensed under the same terms.

This creator should therefore use the CC BY-SA licence. This licence combines the requirements of acknowledging the artist as the creator (Attribution) and licensing any new versions of the work under the same terms (Share Alike).

A band has recorded a new song.

While they are happy to publish the song online for sharing and downloading, they do not want anyone else to edit or change the song, or to make financial profit from it.

These creators should therefore use the CC BY-NC-ND licence. This licence combines the requirements of not using the work for commercial purposes (Non-Commercial), and of not creating any derivative versions of it (No Derivatives), as well as acknowledging the band as the creators (Attribution).