Creative Commons (CC) is a licensing system that lets creators to give users permission to legally reuse content under certain conditions. CC was created in 2001 to respond to the rise in digitally created works and the speed and ease of reuse in the digital environment. Developers of the Creative Commons system wanted to makea way for content creators to indicate that their creations were meant to be shared and to indicate how they wanted them to be shared. There are six variations of Creative Commons licences:
BY-indicates you must acknowledge the creator, either by name or by screen name (in many cases)
NC-indicates you may not us the creation for commercial purposes.
ND-indicates that you may not create derivatives of the creation. Derivatives, in this case refers to different versions--changes of color, addition of elements, addition of text, etc.
SA-indicates that you must include the same license for any derivatives you may create.
For more information on Creative Commons licenses, see the resources below:
OPEN Washington also offers a tool to help with creating open (predominantly CC) attributions:
The anatomy of a good CC attribution:
Title (linked) by Creator (linked, whenever possible), License (linked)
The citation for the image below would be:
Johann König-Saint George Defeating the Dragon by cea+, CC BY
Public domain refers to works that are not covered by any copyright/licensing restrictions whatsoever. Sometimes this is because copyright protection has run out; other times the works are created and distributed purposefully without copyright protection. Materials created by the federal government are in the public domain. One way public domain has been indicated in web environment is thorugh the CC 0 designation For more information on public domain creations, see the resources below:
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