Creative Commons CC

Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that provides free, standardized legal tools enabling creators to share their work while retaining certain rights. The organization maintains a suite of open licenses designed to balance the interests of creators and the public, allowing creators to specify how their work may be used.

The core CC licensing framework consists of six primary licenses built from four licensing modules: Attribution (BY), Share-Alike (SA), Non-Commercial (NC), and No Derivatives (ND). These combine to create the BY, BY-SA, BY-NC, BY-ND, BY-NC-SA, and BY-NC-ND licenses. Additionally, Creative Commons offers CC0, which dedicates works to the public domain. The tools are available in numerous languages and have been adapted for legal systems worldwide, making them fundamental infrastructure for open knowledge, creative collaboration, and digital commons initiatives globally.