About

Welcome to the CC Licensing Portal for Educators! The Educator’s Licensing Portal is an informational website for educators interested in licensing their work (be it papers, tools, photographs, video, handouts, lectures, or other educational resources) so that it can be shared with others. If you have resources that you would like to make openly available for access and collaboration, you've come to the right place! (More about the portal.)

If you are not an educator and need general license information,
license your work with the Creative Commons license chooser.

If you are an educator, begin by perusing the blue tabs above.
You can also click on the links below.

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The Licenses

The Conditions

There are currently six Creative Commons licenses, made up from combinations of four different conditions. Creators choose which of the following conditions they wish to apply to their work. Attribution. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work—and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.

Attribution. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work—and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.

Noncommercial. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work—and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only.

No Derivative Works. You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.

Share Alike. You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.

The Licenses

The following describes each of the six main licenses offered when you choose to publish your work with a Creative Commons license. We have listed them starting with the most accommodating (and appropriate for education) license type you can choose and ending with the most restrictive license type you can choose. It’s also helpful to know there are a set of baseline rights all six licenses offer.

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. Read the Commons Deed | View Legal Code

Other Licenses

Our Public Domain Dedication lets you free works from copyright completely. For those licensing software, we offer human- and machine-readable wrappers for the GNU GPL and GNU LGPL licenses.

Licensing Information

Before Licensing

Choosing a License

Licensing Examples

After Licensing

License Your Work

The Educator-specific licensing tool is in development. For now, go to the Creative Commons license chooser to license your educational work. <headertabs/>