Recommended practices for attribution
Contents
Best Practices for Marking Content with CC Licensing: Users
When reusing a CC-licensed work, either as pure sharing or as a derivative work, it is your legal obligation to include what license is being used, as well as obeying by the license conditions provided by the licensor (content owner/creator). From our FAQ:
If you are using a work licensed under one of our core licenses, then the proper way of accrediting your use of a work when you're making a verbatim use is: (1) to keep intact any copyright notices for the Work; (2) credit the author, licensor and/or other parties (such as a wiki or journal) in the manner they specify; (3) the title of the Work; and (4) the URL for the work if applicable. |
- Example: This work, "My Awesome Photo," is copyright (c) 2009 Greg Grossmeier and made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
You also need to provide the URL for the Creative Commons license selected with each copy of the work that you make available.
If you are making a derivative use of a work licensed under one of our core licenses, in addition to the above, you need to identify that your work is a derivative work, ie. “This is a Finnish translation of the [original work] by [author]” or “Screenplay based on [original work] by [author].”
Crediting in Video
Adding the appropriate credit information to you videos could be as simple as a list of the works used at the end with their associated license. Eg:
This video features the following songs- “Desaprendere (Treatment)” by fourstones, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license. “Some Other Song” by fourstones, available under a Creative Commons Attribution license. |
If possible it is desirable to make the title, author, and license a link the viewer can follow.
Crediting in Text
A similar format to the Video example above would be sufficient with the added ability to create links for text available online.
Crediting in Audio
If available online provide a "credit list" of material used and follow the above Text guidelines.
Crediting in Images
If available online provide a "credit list" of material used and follow the above Text guidelines.
Download Markers
- For images & documents:
- For audio:
- For video:
More Technical
We also have a document about marking works that is more technical.
External Guides and Fact Sheets
- Molly Kleinman's excellent, easy to read article CC HowTo #1: How to Attribute a Creative Commons licensed work - includes illustrative examples.