Press Kit
Mission
Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that works to increase the amount of creativity (cultural, educational, and scientific content) in “the commons” — the body of work that is available to the public for free and legal sharing, use, repurposing, and remixing.
Creative Commons provides free, easy-to-use legal tools that give everyone from individual creators to large companies and institutions a simple, standardized way to grant copyright permissions to their creative work. CC licenses let people easily change their copyright terms from the default of “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.”
Creative Commons licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They work alongside copyright, so you can modify your copyright terms to best suit your needs. We’ve collaborated with intellectual property experts all around the world to ensure that our licenses work globally.
History
Creative Commons was launched in December 2002. Inspired in part by the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), Creative Commons released a set of free copyright licenses for public use. Creative Commons licenses help people dedicate their creative works to the public domain – or retain their copyright while licensing them as free for certain uses, on certain conditions. Unlike the GNU GPL, Creative Commons licenses are not designed for software, but rather for other kinds of creative works: websites, scholarship, music, film, photography, literature, courseware, etc.
Licenses
Creative Commons offers 6 public licenses that creators can apply to their work. All licenses require attribution to the original author.
Attribution (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, in terms of what others can do with your works licensed under Attribution.
Read the Commons Deed | View Legal Code
Attribution Share Alike (by-sa)
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. This license is often compared to open source software licenses. All new works based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.
Read the Commons Deed | View Legal Code
Attribution No Derivatives (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.
Read the Commons Deed | View Legal Code
Attribution Non-commercial (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.
Read the Commons Deed | View Legal Code
Attribution Non-commercial Share Alike (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. Others can download and redistribute your work just like the by-nc-nd license, but they can also translate, make remixes, and produce new stories based on your work. All new work based on yours will carry the same license, so any derivatives will also be non-commercial in nature.
Read the Commons Deed | View Legal Code
Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd)
This license is the most restrictive of our six main licenses, allowing redistribution. This license is often called the “free advertising” license because it allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they mention you and link back to you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially.
License choices are expressed in three ways:
- Commons Deed. A plain-language summary of the license, complete with the relevant icons.
- Legal Code. The fine print that you need to be sure the license will stand up in court.
- Digital Code. A machine-readable translation of the license that helps search engines and other applications identify your work by its terms of use.
Contact Information
Please direct press inquiries to: press@creativecommons.org
Creative Commons
171 Second St, Suite 300
San Francisco, CA 94105 USA
phone: 1-415-369-8480
fax: 1-415-278-9419
Points of contact for other inquiries may be found on our contact page.
Physical Media
(all in PDF unless otherwise noted)
What is Creative Commons? (Mirror on scribd.com) - Short introduction, designed for half-page double-sided printed flyers.
What is Creative Commons? (Mirror on scribd.com) - Full introduction designed for full page printouts.
What is Creative Commons? poster (Mirror on scribd.com) - Large format poster.
How To License poster (Mirror on scribd.com, Inkscape SVG source files) - Large format poster explaining our six licenses.
Licensing and Marking Your Content (pdf) (Mirror on scribd.com) - Full page printout with information about marking CC content.
Sharing Creative Works Comics (Mirror on scribd.com, Inkscape SVG source files) - A general introduction to copyright and CC licensing.
Encouraging the Ecology of Creativity (pdf) (Mirror on scribd.com) - A background on the history and ideology of Creative Commons.
Logos, Icons, Badges, and Colors
The following SVG, EPS, and PNG files should be used for print publications. Please see our policies page for more information about how our logos may be used.
The SVG and EPS vector files are recommended for use in print materials — The standard screen resolution files will appear blurry or jagged if used in print. There are links to large format, high quality PNG versions of each graphic for web, print, presentations, and video.
Icons
cc
svg eps png
BY
svg eps png
NC
svg eps png
NC (EU)
svg eps png
NC (JP)
svg eps png
SA
svg eps png
ND
svg eps png
Public
Domain
svg eps png
Sampling+
svg eps png
Share
svg eps png
Remix*
svg eps png-
All Icons Zip
svg
eps
png -
Icons Font
Logo and icons in an embeddable TTF.
a: SA, b: BY, c: CC Circle, d: ND, n: NC, m: Sampling, s: Share, r: Remix, C: CC Full Logo
ttf
Logos
Buttons
svg eps gif
svg eps png
svg eps png
svg eps png
svg eps png
svg eps png
svg eps png
svg eps png
svg eps png
svg eps png
svg eps png
Color
Our print colors are as follows:
cmyk
rgb
PMS
Full color palette, and application swatch files.
*The building blocks icon used to represent “to remix” is derived from the FreeCulture.org logo. Thanks to FC.o, an international student movement for free culture!