Creative Commons

Creative Commons (CC) is an international non-profit organisation that provides free licences and tools that copyright owners may use. CC resources are works that are open access and have been published with a CC license.

• Creative Commons supports copyright and the right of creators to control the use of their work.
• CC licenses provide voluntary tools to let creators manage their own copyright.
• All CC licenses allow users to at least: copy the work, distribute it, display or perform it in public, and make digital public performances of it.
• There are a number of CC licences which allow commercial use of a work.
• If the conditions of the CC licence are breached by using the material in a way not permitted, copyright is broken and standard copyright laws applies.

Information you can download and print out:

• The What is Creative Commons? information guide provides information for teachers and students. It was jointly developed by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation through Creative Commons Australia and the Copyright Advisory Group of the Ministerial Council of Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs.
• Quick Reference Guide to Finding Creative Commons Material for Teachers and Students Extracted from Creative Commons Information Pack prepared by Smartcopying

Information online:

• CC FAQs
• CC wiki

A video explaining Creative Commons:

Attribution CC BY

Allowed to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work), remix (to adapt the work) and use it for commercial purposes provided you attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

Attribution-NoDerivs

Allowed to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and use it for commercial purposes provided you do not alter, transform or build upon the work and you attribute it in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

Allowed to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and remix (to adapt the work) provided it isn’t used for commercial purposes, you attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor and you distribute it under the same license.

Attribution-ShareAlike

Allowed to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and remix (to adapt the work) and use it for commercial purposes provided if you alter, transform or build upon the work provided you distribute it under the similar license.  You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

Attribution-NonCommercial

Allowed to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) and remix (to adapt the work) provided it isn’t used for commercial purposes. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs

Allowed to share (to copy, distribute and transmit the work) provided you do not alter, transform or build upon the work or use it for commercial purposes and you attribute it in the manner specified by the author or licensor.

Watch this video for a summary of the above licenses.

Attribution

If you use Creative Commons works such as images in your assignments, research, or lecture materials, you will need to attribute the the work to the author. For example, if you used a CC image, you would need to include a caption with the attribution. To attribute a CC work, include the following details:

• Title of the work
• Author / Creator of the work
• The URL of the original work.
• The specific CC license abbreviation, e.g. CC BY NC 4.0.
• If it is a work you were free to modify, add your derivative work's title and a note that it is a derivative work. Follow this with the details for the original work as above.

For more information see to the CC Creative Commons organisation Best practices for attribution .

Referencing

Reference the work according to the guidelines for the style you have been asked to use. If it is an image, reference it as an image. MyCQU has free copies of the guides.

CC0 or CC Zero is a dedication that can be used to indicate that a work is in the public domain. When a work is in the public domain , it is free for use by anyone for any purpose without restriction under copyright law. Public domain is the purest form of open/free, since no one owns or controls the material in any way.

• Creative Commons USA
• Creative Commons Australia
• Creative Commons (International)