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OER: Open Educational Resources : Licenses & Copyright

Creative Commons Licenses and/vs/plus Copyright

Creative Commons licenses provide content creators a standardized way to set copyright permissions on their work. 

Creative Commons licenses allow creators to retain copyright of their work while giving permission for how the work can be used.

These licenses are important to open education materials that can be reused, retained,  revised, remixed, and redistributed.

Once you have an introduction to Creative Commons, the video below will quickly walk through the major types of Creative Commons licenses.

Creative Commons Licenses - Types & Options

Creative Commons licenses provide a standardized way for authors and creators to grant the public permission to share and use their creative works.

Creative Commons licenses mix and match the following elements:

attribution symbol Attribution (BY)
Give credit to the original author
share alike symbol Share Alike (SA)
Distribute derivative works under the same license
non-commercial symbol Non-Commercial (NC)
Only use the work for noncommercial purposes
no derivatives symbol No Derivatives (ND)
Only use verbatim copies of the work

Creative Commons provides content creators a list of licensing considerations to take into account when choosing the appropriate license for a work.  

CC BY license CC BY ND license
CC BY SA license CC BY NC SA license
CC BY NC license CC BY NC ND license