Talk:Creative Commons license/Archive 1

2.0 and 2.5
I noticed that there are versions 2.0 and 2.5 of the licenses. I have some pics licensed under cc-by-sa-2.0. Should I add the mark for cc-by-sa-2.5?

What should I use for new pics? 2.0? 2.5? Both? --Error 21:58, 3 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia isn't a suggestions forum. As for the questions about different versions of the CC licenses, that should be answered. I can't find the differences between 2.0 and 2.5. --70.111.218.254 19:52, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Info is provided here: Info on it should be included in the article to illustrate the differences between old and newer versions of the licenses. --70.111.218.254 19:56, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Some other info:  --70.111.218.254 20:03, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

license icons
fyi, the images of the cc license icons are all available here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Creative_Commons phoebe 19:13, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

I have contributed an article on General Sir Charles Asgill, 2nd Baronet. There is a picture on this article which I want to remove in preference for another, better, picture - unless it is deemed sensible to have both pictures of Asgill on his article? The new picture is copyrighted to the National Army Museum in London. I have, today, had written permission to use their picture and have paid them £45 to do so. There are a number of things I have no idea how to deal with and they are: 1) how do I remove the present picture - or should it stay as well as the new one? 2) how do I upload the new one and under what kind of licence must it now be put onto Wikipedia - NAM hold the copyright, but I have paid them to use it and they have given permission. 3) I am afraid that all the copyright information leaves me still very confused and I do not know how to get this new picture uploaded now that I have paid the money to the National Army Museum. Please could someone give me a child's guide as to how to deal with this?  Thank you.--Arbil44 09:38, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I suggest you ask this question on Media copyright questions. However, I have the feeling you will need to check what conditions they allow you to use the image under. Modest Genius talk 15:46, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

FSF
The Free Software Foundation does not "recommend" these licenses.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#OtherLicenses says:

`We recommend using the Free Art License, rather than this one, so as to avoid augmenting the problem caused by the vagueness of "a Creative Commons license"' —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 193.11.222.167 (talk • contribs) 11:32, 26 April 2006 (UTC-8)


 * Looks like the line is still in there. the citation does not contain anything saying that, so I tagged it with . —Andrew Hampe Talk 02:07, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

"For unknown reasons"
I have listed a couple of things "for unknown reasons" because I find the Creative Commons web site hard to navigate and sparse on information. If anyone can explain (1) why the license having none of the 4 clauses is not considered valid, and (2) why the licenses without attribution are being phased out, please add that information to the article. --Doradus 02:16, Dec 11, 2004 (UTC)


 * Creative Commons with no clauses is the same thing as public domain.
 * I assume that people just didn't use the licenses without attribution. Leaving that clause out seems fairly silly. RSpeer 22:48, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)
 * Much like Rspeer said above, I remember reading that they were getting rid of "without attribution" because 98% of people (or a similiar percentage) chose to keep attribution. So they didn't see much need/demand for a "without" it. Sorry I can't remember the source. --Pengo 10:43, 18 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * "Creative Commons with no clauses is the same thing as public domain" - I don't think so, there would still be a lot of rules and disclaimers left if you remove the attribution requirement from the CC-BY license. I removed that information from the article until somebody can prove otherwise. --V111P (talk) 23:52, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Issues with attribution
As I license a number of images under the CC-BY-SA x.x license with attribution required, I thought of an interesting point. Nowhere in the license (as far as I can see) does it state exactly how the attribution or link to the actual license should occur. It seems like some people, to avoid 'spoiling' their web page or document's visuals, don't actually provide attribution or the license near the image or even on the same page as the image. In the example in question here, this person does provide attribution for the image's use on about page of the website, but the image use occurs every other page, where the attribution is not given. Am I correct in expecting that the attribution should be visible very near the image itself (not on a different page or in tiny fine print at the bottom of the page? The license appears vague, but it does say: I don't want to be unreasonable about licensing my images but it does seem like the terms of the license are not followed correctly in this instance. And it sounds like the license is essentially saying "Well, if you can find an example of where other images are not attributed properly, then you can use that as a precedent for doing the same with your image." I'm not overly concerned about this particular use of my image, but it did raise the issue in my head where images may be used more commercially by bending the rules. Any thoughts? Diliff  | (Talk)   (Contribs) 14:19, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Such credit may be implemented in any reasonable manner; provided, however, that in the case of a Derivative Work or Collective Work, at a minimum such credit will appear where any other comparable authorship credit appears and in a manner at least as prominent as such other comparable authorship credit.
 * You might want to ask this at CC-Community mailing list: . (By the way, CC-BY-SA images can be used together with commercial All-rigths-reserved texts). --V111P (talk) 00:59, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

License of CC License Text
I thought the text of a creative commons license is available under CC-BY. Is this assumption right? --Yamavu (talk) 14:30, 3 March 2008 (UTC)
 * No copyright is asserted, however trademark is -- altered license texts may not be called CC licenses, see http://creativecommons.org/policies Mike Linksvayer (talk) 20:31, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Only 6 valid license types, not 11
The text says (as of 27Jan2006): "Mixing and matching these conditions produces       sixteen possible combinations, of which eleven are valid Creative Commons licenses."

Isn't this incorrect (since in the CC site I don't see any evidence of NOT-by licenses)?

68.8.242.130 04:41, 28 January 2006 (UTC)


 * There were 11 licenses in CC version 1, which had attribution as an option that could be chosen or not. But effectively nobody used the licenses without attribution. CC version 2 licenses inherently include attribution. At least, I believe that's how the phase-out of non-By licenses is happening. Anyway, the article does say that the 5 licenses without By are being phased out.  r speer  / ɹəəds ɹ  05:44, 28 January 2006 (UTC)


 * Btw, four conditions make a total of 14 possible combinations (or 15 if you count the combination which has no conditions included at all), not 16. Wopr (talk) 06:31, 19 March 2008 (UTC)


 * You're wrong, Wopr. The number of possible combinations for 4 yes-or-no choices is 2^4 = 16, which is consistent with what the article says. Swift1337 (talk) 05:58, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

License changes?
What if an image was released on Flickr as CC-BY, and later changed to "All rights reserved"? I heard that licenses cannot be changed like that legally, and that the first license is the one that counts. Can you guys clarify this point? --Nathanael Bar-Aur L. (talk) 23:25, 7 December 2008 (UTC)
 * The original author can release his work under any license or with no license at all ("All rights reserved") at any time. But once you get something released under a CC license, you should not need to worry if the author later decides to start releasing his work under any other license or with no license at all. --V111P (talk) 07:07, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

The Virgin Mobile case

 * The case hinges on privacy, the right of people not to have their likeness used in an ad without permission. So, while Mr. Wong may have given away his rights as a photographer, he did not, and could not, give away Alison's rights. In the lawsuit, which Mr. Wong is also a party to, there is an argument that Virgin did not honor all the terms of the nonrestrictive license

This explaination, while admitedly a quote, seems to contradict itself. First it talks about privacy. Then at the end, it says "Virgin did not honor all the terms of the nonrestrictive license". This seems a bit bizzare since the license of course only covers the copyright of the photo, not the privacy rights of the individuals in the photo, privacy rights (or the right to control how one's image is used) usually being something complete different from copyright Nil Einne (talk) 01:37, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
 * "the license of course only covers the copyright of the photo" - What makes you think so? I don't think the license says that. "Virgin did not honor all the terms of the nonrestrictive license" - This may have nothing to do with the privacy issue. According to Larry Lessig, the photographer claims Virgin did not attribute the picture to him, and probably that's what this sentence is about. It should be deleted from the article, unless somebody can prove that it is related to the privacy problem and explain what it is supposed to mean. --V111P (talk) 18:38, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

I deleted the quote a couple of days ago. I only just saw this talk discussion on it. I've now changed the title of this talk page section to reflect the subject matter. In any case, I didn't feel that the quote added anything useful to the article. It was completely out of context, and presented as a statement of fact, rather than an allegation. The case may have been settled by the parties now. There doesn't appear to be judgement anywhere. It appears that the claimants joined as defendants all those related to the situation, including the photographer, the creative commons people, and virgin mobile.

It's an odd case. The advertisement was published in Australia, a country with weak, or even non-existent privacy right. However, the claim was made in the US, where rights to privacy are recognised.

This is a photograph of the advertisement in question. It's one of a number of similar images which were released, with humorous captions superimposed over photographs which were licensed with a creative commons licence, much like the lolcats phenomenon. Captions included 'dump your penfriend', 'if talk is cheap, texts should be slightly slutty' 'people who talk in lifts have bad breath' etc.

http://katiechatfield.files.wordpress.com/2007/07/flickr_virgin.jpg

In the corner of the advertisement is a link to the flickr page of the photographer. Arpitt (talk) 18:07, 1 January 2009 (UTC)

CC by-sa has been DFSG-approved
FYI - per this page, CC-by-sa 3.0 has been approved by the DFSG. As of this comment, the change hasn't been reflected in the article text. --152.43.1.4 (talk) 20:18, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Differences of Versions
Is there any info on the differences between versions (1,2,2.5,3) and so on? Very interesting would be the legal diffs.--Diaa abdelmoneim (talk) 20:12, 7 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Links explaining the differences at http://wiki.creativecommons.org/License_versions ... no diffs, but would be great if someone created them. Mike Linksvayer (talk) 23:02, 7 July 2009 (UTC)

Berne Convention
I've been working with ccREL recently, both with the REL and on the wiki article on it. To try and test my understanding of ccREL and its relationship to the Berne Convention, there's a discussion on that talk page that may be of interest to anyone interested in ccREL, or automated processing of REL expressed in RDF. Andy Dingley (talk) 16:53, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

The section "Photographers" off-topic
I don't see what the section "Photographers" has to do with Creative Commons licenses. The exact same problems could occur if the work was claimed to be released to the public domain, or any other free license. --Rat at WikiFur (talk) 23:36, 15 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree, if anything it sounds like a ad for ImageStamper. I notion to remove the entire paragraph on Photographs, in fact I may do it soon.--Farmer 21 …  10:38, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * And Medic463 just added back something very similar (and to the Creative Commons article too) --Rat at WikiFur (talk) 03:02, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I've changed my mind and returned the main wording of the Photographers section with what Medic has added. I rushed into the decision to removed the section in the 1st place, not looking into this enough.  Unfortunately the section is required as it is a 'Serious Problem'.  To say its not is niave.  People could spend years in jail and lose their homes, job and familey becuase of this.  In some countries people could be get their hands chopped off or hung on the grounds of theft.  It is a shame because the idea of CC is great in prinicple.  People need to be informed - that is the aim of Wikipedia.  We can not sensor important information.--Farmer 21 …  08:51, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Probably there's at least a seed of something useful in this, but see WP:NOTHOWTO and WP:SELFREF. Also, it doesn't need to be in two places. Creative Commons would be the article about the organization so it seems out of place there. --Rat at WikiFur (talk) 16:05, 18 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I think you are right about what you have said. The essence of the information needs to be included but it needs cleaning up.  I disagree that the 'Serious Problems' and 'Critism' paragraphs etc should be on the CC licences page.  In my opinion the all of the Critism / Controversy / Serious Problems / Legals Cases sections should be removed from the Creative Commons Licences article and transfered, modified and merged with the relevant sections within the Creative Commons article.  The licenses page should have information about the licenses only.  From looking at the CC website, I feel the problem is not with the licences but with the attitude that the organisation has that it will let anyone assign CC licences willy nilly.  The Flickrvio scenario is a serious problem that it will never be able to hide from.  If their attitude or methods ever change then so should their Creative Commons wikipedia article.  But to have a website hompepage urging Joe 'Non-copyright lawyer' Public to search for its "legal to use" CC images is for me a good enough reason to include these issues on their main article.  PS: If you agree with this there is a lot of work to do so please feel free to have a go.  I may try myself tomorrow afternoon if I chance. --Farmer 21 …  18:28, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Is CC0 launched ?
The following links suggests that CC0 is launched. Dodoïste (talk) 21:34, 14 August 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) About CC0 — “No Rights Reserved”, creativecommons.org
 * 2) CC0 FAQ, creativecommons.org
 * 3) Expanding the Public Domain: Part Zero, Diane Peters, March 11th, 2009
 * 4) Flickr Uses CC Zero for their Shapefiles, Fred Benenson, May 22nd, 2009
 * 5) Digg Upgrades to the CC0 Waiver, Fred Benenson, May 27th, 2009
 * See CC0 1.0 Universal. Dodoïste (talk) 23:52, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

by for attribution
Anyone know why BY is used for attribution? The others are easily figured out (ND for No Derivatives), but no so with BY. Why isn't it AT? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.145.251.34 (talk) 13:40, 27 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Oh, ok, "By" as in "Created By". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.145.251.34 (talk) 13:51, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Renaming
I suggest to rename article to "Creative Commons licenses and tools" because this article also about PD tools, but not only about licenses. --TarzanASG (talk) 21:34, 20 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose Clunky great ugly name that is unusable from wikilinks without piping.
 * Secondly, the "tools" are so minor as to not warrant renaming the article for. One of these tools (PD0) is also another "licence" (to most lay-people at least), and is only described as a "tool" instead for a legalistic nicety. Andy Dingley (talk) 23:36, 20 November 2010 (UTC)


 * While in my opinion a clunky name isn't a reason to avoid a rename, a common name is, and I'd bet that the average person lumps them all into licenses. VernoWhitney (talk) 04:10, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Question
Hi! My English is not very good so I'm having a hard time trying to understand some terms... if somedoby could answer this question I would appreciate it: if an user copies contents from a wiki with a CC-BY-NC-SA 2.5 license and adds it to Wikipedia, is that right? --88.16.72.214 (talk) 06:02, 15 May 2011 (UTC)
 * No, that would be a copyright violation because we cannot accept text with the non-commerical clause. WP:CFAQ has a nice visual table showing which licenses are acceptable and which are not. VernoWhitney (talk) 12:11, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Creative Commons - Attribution requirements on wikiPEDIA following proper attribution on wikiCOMMONS
Friends, please help. After an image is uploaded to wiki COMMONS under this CC license, and assuming it is all properly annotated and attributed THERE, do we have to make attribution where a thumbnail is shown on a wikiPEDIA page? After all, some folks won't click the thumb, so they won't see the attribution text.
 * What is the legal requirement?
 * What is the official wiki policy?
 * What do most folks do in actual practice?

The question arose as a small subplot in this l-o-n-g but very constructive discussion about a particular image [here].

I posted a similar question at wiki commons village but got redirected back to 'pedia.

Can anyone answer any of the 3 bullets above? Thanks NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 04:04, 24 August 2011 (UTC)


 * The legal requirement is "... You must ... provide, reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing: (i) the name of the Original Author..." (plus some other stuff). This turns on the vague phrase "reasonable to the medium or means You are utilizing".  What is a "reasonable" way of providing attribution for images on a wiki?  We operate under the assumption that asking a user to click on the thumbnail in order to locate the attribution is "reasonable".  Hence the authorship information is always available (i.e. one click away), but it is often not presented alongside the thumbnail.  A dead tree analogy might be a textbook where all the photographers are cited in a separate list at the back of the book (a fairly common approach), but the reader has to make an effort to look up each image in order to find the attribution.  In that analogy the authorship information is similarly easily available but not immediately at hand.  Of course "reasonable" attribution may not necessarily be ideal from an image creator's point of view, since some individuals would presumably like their name immediately next to every image.  At the moment, we work under the assumption that having attribution statements on every thumbnail is not necessarily under CC-BY.  Someday, the courts may look at the issue and truly decide what is or is not "reasonable" attribution, but for the moment having the author's name be one click away is believed to be good enough.  Dragons flight (talk) 06:22, 24 August 2011 (UTC)


 * PS. This isn't actually the right forum for this discussion. A better place would be something like WP:VPP or WT:Copyrights.  Dragons flight (talk) 06:25, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

What happens without "sa"?
Doesn't no ShareAlike mean you can do whatever you want with the code, thus breaking everything else? -79.177.199.73 (talk) 16:03, 13 April 2010 (UTC)


 * You might find it useful to read up on "copyleft", which is the principle that free resources are best guarded and kept free by the use of a licence that restricts re-use in this kind of way, so that further users of them can't then restrict the licence any further. In practice, it's not that important - CC is a licence, not a grant of moral rights or a relinquishing of all rights, so then channel is still open for other users to get free access to the content (let's assume a CC-by licence) from the original source, even if the first user had re-used this content for a commercial product. -sa is there if you don't want redistribution by others, except on terms at least as free as yours, otherwise not stating -sa doesn't in any way reduce the shareability of the original. For the "intermediate" prohibitions, there's -nc and -nd.


 * There's also WTFPL, which is the "free-est possible" licence, thus meaning that it isn't copyleft and so a recipient of media covered by it can do literally what they like with it, including selling it, including claiming that it's their own original work and thereby suing other users for a breach of their invented "rights" to it.
 * I would be cautious with WTFPL as it tried to be a replacement of "Public Domain" for software. A similar attempt, but much more complete, was the CC0 license. But crafting a "public domain license" turned out not to be as easy as everyone thought. The CC0 was withdrawn 2012 for the OSI approval after discussion and problems observed in it. Likewise the WTFPL was not accepted by OSI. Licenses that are created by individuals usually do not have Intenational Law degrees nor have the expertise of organizations like Linux Foundation, OSI, FSF or Apache. There are already enough well known licenses that are better choices for software projects. Selecting others increase the License proliferation problem. 2013-05-25 jaalto.


 * Also note that CC licences aren't usable for software, so "code" isn't the right term here. If you are dealing with "code", then other licences will often work better for you. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:54, 13 April 2010 (UTC)
 * What I meant was - what is the meaning of X+Y (e.g. "NC + ND") without SA? And why isn't it best suited for code? -79.176.200.211 (talk) 10:40, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Among other things, there are no warranty disclaimers, which software licenses should have. 280.status.net/douglasawh (talk) 20:20, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Music Sharing License
The German article mentions a Music Sharing License which is also mentioned in some Google hits. However, any related page on creativecommons.org seems to be removed and one gets redirected to the standard license selection page, without any further explanation. It seems that there has indeed been a MSL but has silently been dropped some years ago. It has in fact been legally identical to the CC:BY-NC-ND 2.0 license, but with a different (i.e. music-specific) human-readable explanation.

Does anyone know what happened to it? Has it been dropped because it does not play a major rule in practice (e.g. Jamendo offers all current CC licenses, not just the BY-NC-ND as the most restrictive one; there are even albums released under the least restrictive CC:By license)? And why did they remove it so silently?--SiriusB (talk) 12:51, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * "Music Sharing License" is more than identical to BY-NC-ND 2.0--it is that license, just a different name/button and maybe a musical note on the human explanation (linking to BY-NC-ND 2.0 legalcode). It was dropped because although it wasn't actual license proliferation (another license was not created) it incurred some of the costs in terms of another name for users to become familiar with. (I worked for CC at the time and still do at present.) Mike Linksvayer (talk) 17:29, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Are there any citable references which I can use in the German article (refs do not need to be in German, of course)? Even Google didn't show any.--SiriusB (talk) 08:46, 25 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Additional question: Do you know why CC had chosen the most restrictive license as its only "music license"? Is there a general consensus in the CC organisation that the nature of music requires a more restrictive license than other contents (i.e. that music must not be modified by anyone except the composer to protect its originality, and thus authors should not be tempted to waive these rights)? In fact, for example Jamendo is offering music under all kinds of CC licenses, from CC-By to CC-By-NC-ND, but I don't know whether there had been any prior discussion about offering other licenses than CC-By-NC-ND. And, finally, why did CC drop the MSL so silently, without even mentioning that it has been dropped?--SiriusB (talk) 08:53, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't know of any citable references. I may create something about it on the CC site in the next month; if I do will note here. Your additional question is another reason we dropped the branding--other licenses are also used for music, we don't want to encourage people to use the more restrictive licenses instead of less restrictive ones, etc. There was no mention because it was really a trivial thing, just another name for BY-NC-ND. No license was dropped, just a poor alternative name for one. Mike Linksvayer (talk) 14:15, 27 August 2010 (UTC)
 * It might be worth noting that the Free Music Archive still uses the alternative name. 280.status.net/douglasawh (talk) 20:22, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

general update
In order to remove I did a a general update on the article, see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Creative_Commons_licenses&action=historysubmit&diff=383872739&oldid=383787064

Note that I work for CC, but I'm pretty sure all of my updates are strictly factual. Feel free to revert, redo, rewrite, etc.

I didn't touch the Partial list of projects that release contents under Creative Commons licenses and See also sections, both of which probably could use some re-evaluation as to whether they list the most relevant examples and related articles.

Mike Linksvayer (talk) 17:59, 9 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Maybe it is time for revisiting the partial list of projects? As a list, it doesn't seem to make much sense. Tons of projects use CC licenses. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dawhitfield (talk • contribs) 20:24, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

CC-wiki
CC-wiki redirects to Creative Commons license, which has no reference to it. Anyone knows something about and care to add it, please? tks - Nabla (talk) 11:55, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
 * "CC-wiki" was just a different license icon intended to be used with CC-BY-SA and very briefly was used to denote a draft of CC-BY-SA 2.5. Stackexchange sites were the only prominent ones to use it. I see that they still say "cc-wiki" and link to CC-BY-SA-3.0. Anyway it is entirely appropriate to redirect, as "cc-wiki" was a very minor branding experiment. See https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5344 and a couple links there. Mike Linksvayer (talk) 21:10, 11 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Sure. My suggesting still stands, that some (short) explanation would be much better than landing on a page that has no reference to the redirected term. Could just about be your explanation! {and bingo!, I came here from StackExchange} - Nabla (talk) 03:31, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

CC Sampling and Sampling+ Licenses
It would be helpful to describe the historical Creative Commons Sampling and Sampling+ licenses that were originally promoted, but are now retired. This article describes the retiring of the license as it relates to FreeSound.org. In fact, there's a whole list of deprecated licenses here. -Thunderforge (talk) 01:56, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Rename
This article's current name is misleading as there is no one "Creative Commons license" but many Creative Commons licenses with wildly different terms. This is evident from the article contents too. The article should be moved to Creative Commons licenses (plural) to accurately reflect reality. An admin seems to be required. Palosirkka (talk) 18:53, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
 * True there are (I think) 6 different types - so is that 6 types of one license or 6 licenses? I don't know. I suggest use the procedure at WP:RM to gain a consensus.  Ron h jones (Talk) 20:34, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't think we should vote on facts. We can check them at the source. It talks about 6 licenses, not 6 license types. Palosirkka (talk) 18:45, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm an admin, but don't see the consensus yet on moving this. Shall I remove the notice for admin help until something has been decided? -- Fuzheado | Talk 20:18, 17 October 2012 (UTC)


 * oppose MediaWiki names are sometimes hard. They not only have to act as names, but also as text to be linked form other articles. There is also the aspect of context, there may be multiple contexts where we would like to link to this article; some are about the list of licences (plural), but many are also about a single licence (and often just "the licence being used" rather than one of the multiple licences being offered).  In many of these contexts, the singular form is best.  As a link, it's also easier to format a plural link to a singular target than it is to pipe a singular link to a plural target. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:09, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
 * That makes sense to me. I'm clearing the adminhelp. If there is to be a move then it really needs to be done via WP:RM to flag up the move request for a full discussion. Not everyone will see just an adminhelp.  Ron h jones (Talk) 22:27, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: consensus was against use of "licenses" but "licensing" might be worth further discussion. DrKiernan (talk) 20:24, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Creative Commons license → Creative Commons licenses – Per above. Relisted. Jenks24 (talk) 04:28, 29 October 2012 (UTC) Palosirkka (talk) 11:34, 20 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Per above. Which pointed out that in context someone might be writing about the Creative commons licenses and could add an s, but if they were talking about one Creative commons license they would need to either go through a redirect or write it Creative commons license. I would also like to point out that even though there are multiple creative commons licenses, each is a creative commons license. So just like we do not have an article called horses, we have one called horse, even though there are many types of horses. Apteva (talk) 16:29, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose – titles are usually singular, for good reasons, as pointed out already. Dicklyon (talk) 02:29, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Oppose per WP:SINGULAR or we would have half the articles in plural because they happen to be a superset of something. CC license is the subject of the topic, not its variants in particular. — HELL KNOWZ  ▎TALK 12:09, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
 * The current article title is indeed irritating at best, so what about using Creative Commons licensing for general aspects, and separate articles about the individual licenses? -- Daniel Mietchen - WiR/OS (talk) 03:45, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Comment, this is a good idea proposed by, perhaps table this requested move process for now, and have more discussion about this proposed idea? &mdash; Cirt (talk) 06:39, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 24 October 2013

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was no consensus. --BDD (talk) 18:46, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Creative Commons license → Creative Commons licensing – Creative Commons license (singular) is misleading at best, as discussed above, and Creative Commons licenses (plural) has issues with WP:MOS as well as with linking practice. Creative Commons licensing would avoid both classes of problems. Relisted. BDD (talk) 23:48, 1 November 2013 (UTC)  Daniel Mietchen (talk) 23:02, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Survey

 * Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with  or  , then sign your comment with  . Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's policy on article titles.


 * Support This follows the previous discussion above which did not find resolution. This is a better solution.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   01:05, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose This is not right, it is grammatically incorrect. --Pretty les♀, Dark Mistress,  talk,  11:48, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose There are two reasons to choose a name for a wiki article: choosing a good title in isolation and choosing a name that works well as an embedded link. I can see three possibilities here, singular, plural and gerund, all of which have something to recommend them as titles, but none of which are clearly superior to the others. However for the embedded link, the singular form works rather better. I'd thus favour the singular. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:57, 29 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose The gerund form of the title, "CC licensing", might suggest that the topic mainly covers process(es) or how-to's of, say, creating or obtaining a CC license. On the other hand, the article as written definitively treats the title as a nominative phrase, covering what it is and what to do with it. The Naming_conventions_(plurals) guideline seems to lend weight to keeping the article title in singular form. --Litjade (talk) 11:26, 4 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Support It's taken me a while to weigh up the options, but my main reason for supporting the move is that having individual articles for each kind of Creative Commons license (CC-BY, CC-BY-NC etc.) would be very beneficial. It would allow much more accurate wikilinks, for example in the PLOS article the wikilink could be directly to article page for CC-BY. If there are individual articles for each license, then it follows that having a page named 'Creative Commons license' becomes a bit confusing so 'Creative Commons licensing' could cover the general application of the licenses better. User:Andy Dingley's point about embedded links would, in my opinion, not be a problem if there are individual articles for each license. - Lawsonstu (talk) 13:11, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Rather than articles per licence, I'd see this as a role for redirects to sections in a list section of a broader article. We don't need to say much about each licence, that's what the CC site is still for. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:26, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

 * Any additional comments:
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

text-only version
Just curious how this would look. ⇔ ChristTrekker 22:29, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
 * 👤⃝ — 👤⃝</tt>
 * ⊜ or =⃝ — <tt style="font-family:Montagel, monospace;">⊜ or =⃝</tt>
 * $⃠ — <tt style="font-family:Montagel, monospace;">$⃠</tt>
 * ⟲⃝ — <tt style="font-family:Montagel, monospace;">⟲⃝</tt>

Abbreviation BY
Does anyone know where the letters BY stand for? Don't say attribution. --Wickey-nl (talk) 09:56, 26 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Isn't it just 'by' refering to 'this publication was made BY this author' ? Ogoletti (talk) 19:52, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Attribution. Why do you think it's an abbreviation or acronym? Andy Dingley (talk) 20:44, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Silly joke. CC=Creative Commons; SA=Share Alike; ND=No Derivative. Ogoletti's suggestion is plausible, but may be the Y has some special meaning. We need a source. --Wickey-nl (talk) 16:51, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
 * http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ#What_are_Creative_Commons_licenses.3F  Ron h jones  (Talk) 01:07, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Commercial use clause
I am planninng to include in my website/article the following statement: "You MAY use the material for commercial purposes (this Author's modification for this particular article, the standard "may not" is superseded hereby." I think dissemination of ideas is more important than illusional profits. Please advise if you see anything wrong or dangerous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 142.129.129.53 (talk • contribs)


 * Wikipedia does not provide legal advice (see Legal disclaimer). Please consult a lawyer if you need legal clarification. Mind  matrix  16:02, 14 November 2014 (UTC)

Why I added the subheadinjg for Six regularly used licenes
Sorry, but my old age makes it hard for me to remember these licenses, and in my work on Wikiversity, I need to reference them quickly. I just noticed that my poor eyesight caused me to misspell "Six" in a way certain to attract the attention of Bots. I will correct now.


 * Creative_Commons_license (wrong)
 * Creative_Commons_license (will correct asap)

--yours truly --Guy vandegrift (talk) 17:48, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

An example that demonstrates the need for this link currently resides on this an ongoing student lab. --Guy vandegrift (talk) 17:57, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

PLoS License
(moved from Village pump)

Does anyone know whether the Public Library of Science license is compatible with the use of their materials in Wikipedia? It should be similar to the BioMedCentral license.


 * This is a tricky issue. It's the Creative Commons Attribution license, which, as with almost all other attribution-but-otherwise-free licenses, is "almost GFDL compatible".  The GFDL has no problem with requiring authorship attribution in most cases (and in fact does so itself), but when a work has more than 5 authors, only requires you to attribute 5 of them.  Thus, the following scenario would lead to a license conflict: you take a CC-licensed work, and 5 users substantially edit and add to it.  Now under the GFDL, you are permitted to attribute it to these 5 users, and not attribute the sixth author, while under the CC license you are required to attribute the original author still.  This is a relatively minor conflict in my mind, but it may still be a technical one. --Delirium 09:28, Oct 13, 2003 (UTC)


 * You could add the attribution as an invariant section, or you could add the attribution to the "History" section, which is extend-only in the GFDL. Either would work. Martin 16:35, 22 Feb 2004 (UTC)

[Note the above is a very'' old discussion. Wikipedia later transitioned from GFDL to Creative Commons using a sort of special loophole, so this conflict no longer exists... with CC content, that is. Whereas GFDL is now another issue.]'' Wnt (talk) 15:03, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

BY and BY-NC useless, or SA?
See section BY-NC? above. As with CC BY-NC, also the other licenses without SA are useless as soon the original is adapted. If I license an image with CC BY, one can adapt it, should credit me as the maker, but is not obliged to re-license with CC BY, thus it can be published as PD. Right?

Yet, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ reads: "Licensees must credit the licensor, keep copyright notices intact on all copies of the work, and link to the license from copies of the work." (the standard CC BY component). The CC BY Legal Code (Attribution) says:

"If You Share the Licensed Material (including in modified form), You must: A. retain the following if it is supplied by the Licensor with the Licensed Material [bold emphasised by me]: ... i. identification of the creator(s) of the Licensed Material ... to receive attribution... ii. a copyright notice; iii. a notice that refers to this Public License; ... v. a URI or hyperlink to the Licensed Material"(Section 3 – License Conditions). BY, BY-NC and BY-ND contain the same conditions.

One could thus argue that the original license remains valid if a second, third, ... person republishes the original, even if the work is modified. However, in that case the SA component in CC BY-SA and CC BY-NC-SA would be pointless. Note that there exists a CC BY-NC-ND license, but not a CC BY-NC-ND-SA. --Wickey-nl (talk) 11:06, 23 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi, the BY and BY-NC are not useless, they are choices that can be made by the rights owner. BY is indeed the most liberal license and your analysis seems correct. It only holds for an unchanged work. A derivative work can have any other license, as long as it attributes the creator of the original work. source: not a lawyer, but I work for Creative Commons Netherlands. --Martsniez (talk) 09:12, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * What you say about applying a PD license to a CC-BY work is not correct. If PD is applied, then that removes the attribution requirement. It is the CC part of the license that can be changed in a CC-BY license, not the BY part.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  13:57, 8 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Common sense says that you have to retain the name of the creator of the original work. The point is, that the licence says that I must attribute the original creator on my adaption, but it does not explicitly say that the BY part of the next adaption also applies to the original creator, rather than to the creator of the (new) adapted work. It's the subtle difference between common sense and the written text. --Wickey-nl (talk) 17:12, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Ahh, I see the confusion. I think you are mistakenly assuming that when someone adapts a work and applies a license to it, then only the latest applied license is active and all previous licenses are discarded. The issue is that CC licenses never go away unless the work goes into the public domain. When someone applies a CC-By license and then someone later makes a derivative work and applies a new license to that work, the derivative work retains all previous licenses, and then gets a new license from the remixer which has to be compatible with all the other licenses already applied. If you adapt a CC-By work and put your own license on it, then everyone using the work would have to comply with both licenses or be in violation of the terms of use.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  19:30, 9 May 2014 (UTC)
 * You've got it. The problem remains that the CC BY license does not explicitly state that the derivative of the derivative automatically inherits the previous licenses. Hence we need the CC BY-SA, which would otherwise be superfluous! seems to agree with this view. I think, the CC-BY license needs a more clear wording on this point in any case. --Wickey-nl (talk) 07:13, 10 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I now see that CC BY-SA has the same problem. Even when applied on the new derivative, the BY part would still apply to the maker of the last work, not the first one. Thus, SA has the mere purpose to keep all derivatives under CC license, and does not affect the BY component. --Wickey-nl (talk) 12:05, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
 * I am not sure what you mean by the SA licenses being superfluous - they are doing something else still, and you seem to understand how they work. If this conversation continues probably you should come to my talk page or invite me to yours because we are getting out of the territory of discussing how to describe this for the Wikipedia article.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  12:09, 10 May 2014 (UTC)


 * As you can read in my last remark, I am learning. CC BY-SA would only be superfluous to keep previous attributions alive. I suppose that CC BY is meant for doing that. I only do not exactly read that in the license. My remark about a more clear wording regarded the license text, though the WP text is far from satisfying. However, the WP text may not resolve unclear wording in the license without risking to interpretate, rather than explain. --Wickey-nl (talk) 12:41, 10 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, SA-requirements are superfluous for maintaining attribution. The SA licenses require all subsequent licenses to be Creative Commons (or compatible) licenses. The CC-By licenses can have non-free derivatives in which the all rights are reserved as in a traditional copyright. Even if someone accepts the default non-free license for their derivative work of a CC-By license, they still have to give attribution as described in all previous CC-By licenses applied to that work. Cool?  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  13:50, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

Compatibility (somewhat related)
Hi @Wickey-nl. I think what I'm attempting with the new Adaptation subsection under Rights relates to your comment here. My idea is to recreate the "Compatibility chart" of CC licenses found here and summarize its content. By the way, I'm contributing to this article as a WIKISOO student, so please feel free to correct me or offer suggestions. —Litjade (talk) 02:39, 25 March 2014 (UTC)


 * There is a new compatibility chart on that page that is free for reuse under CC0. You can find it here. Source: I am one of its creators. I work for Creative Commons Netherlands. --Martsniez (talk) 09:12, 8 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks @Martsniez. I've uploaded the image to WikiCommons and added it to the Adaptation section. It needs to be reformatted--may be larger with wraparound text so it doesn't "bleed" into the next section. Maybe fellow WikiSOO students or  ideas or how-to's?  Litjade (talk) 22:18, 19 July 2014 (UTC)
 * and : It's not at all clear to me how to read that chart. Why is it symmetrical? I would have thought that the correct way to read it is that if a work is licensed under (license on left), and there's a check mark under (license on top), you may release a derivative work under (license on top), but that would produce an asymmetrical chart. Why is the PD / CC-0 row not all check marks? There is no restriction against remixing PD works, so they should be compatible with all other licenses. 0x0077BE  ( talk ·  contrib ) 23:16, 18 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the late reply, I am not often logged in on the English Wikipedia. @User:0x0077BE those rows are empty because you can never mix something with a license with an NoDerivatives (ND) block. ND means that you cannot make derivative works, therefore you cannot mix it with anything else. Does this answer your question? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Martsniez (talk • contribs) 16:05, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
 * Hm. I guess I understand, but I guess in that case I don't love the idea of the chart in the first place. I didn't realize that this was a chart of, "Which licenses can co-exist in a derived work". I think a more interesting chart is one that indicates which release licenses of the derived work are compatible with CC-licensed works. That gives you more information and gives you this chart by implication (just trace two or more licenses along a row and see if there's a license with check marks in all the boxes). Such a chart would be asymmetrical, because PD-licensed content can be included in ND-licensed works, but not vice-versa. 0x0077BE ( talk ·  contrib )
 * No, ND licensed material can never be used in a derivative, and thus PD work can also not be used in ND licensed work as that would break de ND license.
 * I believe you are confused. Public domain work can be used in whatever you want - there are no restrictions on its use. It's the other way that matters. Consider that the story Snow White is in the public domain. The Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, is a purely commercial derivative work - no conflict. You cannot, however, go the other way - I cannot use Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in any derivative work, including works that are PD-licensed. 0x0077BE  ( talk ·  contrib ) 00:46, 17 March 2016 (UTC)
 * I believe we are saying the same thing. The chart shows us if the the resulting product of such a combination would be infringing on the license. While you can use a PD work in whatever you want, you cannot use a work with a license with an ND element with anything. The resulting product of any work involving a work with an ND license would be infringing. Whether you combine a ND work with a PD work of vice versa.

CC BY-SA 4.0 not backward compatible with CC BY-SA 3.0
According to the table at, CC BY-SA 4.0 is not backward compatible with CC BY-SA 3.0 and earlier. The reference is (see the note in the table):  I think this fact should be mentioned in the article. I am reluctant to do so myself as I am not an expert in the field. Best wishes. RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 16:30, 11 August 2016 (UTC)


 * I have heard this also, and I also feel that it is important. I am not sure what to add, where, or how to put it in an understandable context. It would be nice to also say what significant consequences follow this statement. Do you have ideas?  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  17:18, 11 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Hello. The problem is that the "" source is not particularly substantial.  I tried searching on google but didn't find anything useful.  Maybe one of us can email the WMF and ask.  I am on holiday until 5September 2016 and will be out of contact till then.  Best wishes.  RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 17:42, 11 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Please see the discussion at: Wikipedia talk:FAQ/Copyright. New comments should be posted there: this thread should be considered closed.  Best wishes.  RobbieIanMorrison (talk) 22:25, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Change illustration of openness scale


In an Open access context, the usual view is that "NC is more open than ND",, so, not what was illustrated.

The best reference about this conclusion is at http://www.oaspectrum.org/faq, see "REUSE RIGHTS" column at
 * HowOpenIsIt Guide that originated OpenSpectrum;
 * scores that curators achieve for reuse rights,.

--Krauss (talk) 21:11, 10 January 2016 (UTC)


 * @Krauss: Thanks for pointing to this error. In order to not split the discussion I suggest to continue it on c:File talk:Ordering of Creative Commons licenses from most to least permissive.png. -- Stephan Kulla (talk) 14:24, 11 January 2016 (UTC)


 * I am not sure it is an error, but more a matter of opinion. I think the best perspective would be to show them as equivalently non-free, as they both are non-free licenses. I do agree that it is wrong to rank NC as more open than ND, but I would say the same about ND versus NC.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  16:36, 11 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks @ and @, yes is not an "error" but a matter of (community) opinion, as any design and any subjective ranking... We are the community, but, yes, perhaps the best to decide is the CC community... (if it will be a matter of Wikipedians vote, we can send a message to CC as Kulla suggested)... There are non-subjective logic also. The yellow portion of the openness rank  was exposed by Open Definition, that  says rank(NC or ND) &lt; rank(BY or SA). The logic is objective: this is a good clue...  Lets follow the track, ranking a bit more by logic. The assertion rank(NC)&ne;rank(ND)  is well founded in the "logic of The 4 Freedoms" (better stated here). There are a precedence logic: ND  blocks integrally one of the four freedoms, NC not. --Krauss (talk) 09:10, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Also, ND blocks the remix culture, one of the aims of Lessig tried to achieve with the CC licenses, NC does not. I'm pretty sure Lessig saw ND as more harmful then NC. cheers Shaddim (talk) 19:03, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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Automatic termination clause
What is the reason for the automatic termination clause (see section 6 in CC-BY-SA)? In my understanding the violation of the license conditions (unless permitted by law itself, e.g. fair use) is already illegal and can be sued by the author. So why explicitely terminating the license? Moreover, the termination seems to have an effect for an unlimited future unless resetted by the author (or, in case of CC 4.0, if the violation is ended within 30 days), not just for the duration of the violation (as would be the case in default copyright). What is the purpose behind this? These issues should be addressed in the article - Wikipedia might then be one of the first sites doing so since I could not find any explanation in the web using standard search engines.--SiriusB (talk) 10:52, 12 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Creative Commons is not controlled by Wikipedia, we don't write their policies and cannot explain how they decided upon the details. Have you tried [//creativecommons.org/faq/#license-termination their FAQ page]? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 12:13, 12 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes I tried the FAQ, but this doesn't help. It just says what the licence does, not why it does so. I even sent a message to CC asking for an explanation, but this may take some time depending how busy they are. BTW the GNU General Public License has a similar termination clause, so I think it might be a more general issue. Since some authors might not want an automatic termination, or do want an automatic cure (after the infringement has ended) without time restriction, it might also be of interest which similar licences there are that match these interests better than CC or GPL do. In any case, the legal background should definitively be of interest for an article about such a license.--SiriusB (talk) 13:32, 12 May 2019 (UTC)

Creative Commons license for Translation
I need help to make sure I understood the content of the CC-license for a translation project I'am participating at. Therefore it would be great to get accurate information about the following points:
 * 1) What does it mean, to "provide a link to the license"? Is it meant to add a hyperlink to the new license or just to mention the license. For example we have an origin license CC-BY-4.0, which after translation will be published under CC-BY-SA-4.0; So isn't it enough to declare both licenses in the new work (translation)? So what is exactly the word "link" mean?
 * 2) Attribution parties: who are those exactly?
 * In the project we work on, children stories are translated, so author, illustrator/designer are clear. But what about the publisher, is it considered as part of the attribution?
 * 1) More specific questions: given this origin source, does the new "translated" work (here) fulfil the license requirements? And is it possible to remove the pages of the origin (P.15 - P.17), which include information about the publisher and detailed information about the single materials.

A feedback would be highly appreciated, and it would be great If someone is ready to help us closer (e.g. via chat or E-Mail) in some more specific license questions, as we have no single expert in that yet.

--محمد 11:23, 23 September 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sky xe (talk • contribs)
 * Creative Commons is not controlled by Wikipedia, and we are not their helpdesk. Have you tried [//creativecommons.org/faq/ their FAQ page]? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 19:46, 23 September 2019 (UTC)
 * thank you for your answer. I already contacted the support, but no answer yet since days. I thought, as the CC Project will be uploaded in the wikibooks, it is relevant to get some help, or at least a contact person of the community to clear some of the important issues before uploading irrelevant content.
 * محمد 20:13, 23 September 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sky xe (talk • contribs) 20:13, 23 September 2019 (UTC)

Hatnote
"Particular Creative Commons license names redirect here, such as CC BY-SA which is used by Wikipedia itself and FANDOM (Wikia). See Wikipedia:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License." See Wikipedia:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License" for what? GOLDIEM J (talk) 22:26, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Unclear about how to attribute
Creative_Commons_license

Licensees may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works and remixes based on it only if they give the author or licensor the credits (attribution) in the manner specified by these.

But the following part seem much less strict: Creative_Commons_license

And also this: https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Best_practices_for_attribution

So, is the first part wrong?

--Tuxayo (talk) 15:26, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

What is special about "CC BY-SA version 4.0"?
According to Adding open license text to Wikipedia, Wikipedia accepts text licensed under "CC BY-SA versions 1.0, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, but not version 4.0". This article does not explain what is unusual about version 4.0 that could make it a problem for adoption by those who accept the other listed versions. I suggest that this information should be added to the article. The article also does not list the version numbers, so the reader may not understand why there could be five versions from 1.0 to 4.0 (which seems to be due the existence of a version 2.5 – where there any other candidate "fractional versions"?). —BarrelProof (talk) 17:45, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
 * It's not about it being a special version, it's a backwards compatibility issue.
 * CC-by-sa is a "share alike" licence, meaning that users of such content must make their derivatives available under a similar licence. For CC-by-sa, that means CC-by-sa of the equivalent or later version. WP is (or was, at the time this issue came up) using 3.0.  Thus any additional content brought in under 4.0 couldn't be republished here, until that gets updated.
 * OTOH, Commons ignores this totally and (some editors there at least) will seek to delete new content uploaded under CC versions older than 4.0. Andy Dingley (talk) 18:29, 27 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Trying to understand that, do you mean the equivalent or earlier version? I suppose I can understand that a license cannot anticipate what a later license will say, and thus cannot declare whether such a not-yet-written license is considered acceptable. Is that what the problem is? —BarrelProof (talk) 01:15, 28 February 2019 (UTC)
 * A bit late here, but for anyone reading in the future: They mean or later. It's a clause to allow any works licensed under that license to be used with future versions of the license, but not earlier. The point is to prevent people from porting back to an older version of the license to abuse a flaw that was fixed in a later version of the license. Unfortunately it also prevents it from being combined in works under a different version of the license that doesn't include an "or later" clause. The most famous example is GPLv2 vs. GPLv2+. I suspect CC did this because they're shrinking down to one international license now (without needing porting to account for regional variation). 198.52.130.137 (talk) 02:13, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Localisation
I've added the following - "Creative Commons licenses are available under several juristictions.". However this article really needs contributions from people who know about juristiction and international copyright laws. Does the lack of localised version of the GFDL mean that it's not defendable in the UK? I understand that there are questions regarding "moral rights" and free software licenses as the concept of moral rights apparently doesn't exist in US copyright law. Needs lots - please help! Secretlondon 09:13, 31 May 2005 (UTC) Since there's a linked page titled "Creative Commons jurisdiction ports," I think it would be a better idea to expand on this section on that page for a more detailed discourse. Planning to work on it soon! SaraParkwood (talk) 00:55, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

BY-NC?
I am confused. What is the difference between BY-NC and BY-NC-SA. And if there is a difference, what is the use of BY-NC? Someone can make some modifications and sell the stuff, even under a proprietary license. Or am I missing something? G-u-a-k-@ 20:13, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree, BY-NC seems fairly useless without the SA clause, as anyone could reuse the material under a CC license that doesn't have the NC clause, and make a profit out of it. That's probably why there isn't a ByNC template on Wikipedia. Phoenix-forgotten 22:33, 2005 Mar 4 (UTC)
 * BY-NC would make sense for software applications, though CC licenses aren't thought to be so great as software licenses, since it allows derivative code to be created that contains properietary parts. Can't think of anything with literary derived works.  Charles Stewart 14:43, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * I don’t think so. The difference between BY-NC and BY-NC-SA is not in whether derivative works can be used for commercial purposes. They cannot be! The difference is that BY-NC-SA requires that derivative works are also licensed under BY-NC-SA or a compatible license. BY-NC does not require that: you can restrict the use of your derivative work however you want (so you are not obligated to “share” it with the world), but you still cannot use it commercially – not you, not anybody else. SyaWgnignahCehT (talk) 18:28, 8 February 2015 (UTC)
 * NC does not mean what most people think it means, most text in the article about NC is incorrect.
 * Some people (e.g. the Free-Software foundation), state that the CC-NC licenses are non-free, and they also don't comply with the Free-Software(Irespective of being software or not) or Open-Source definitions. The ND licenses are more free than NC: They are usefull when writing and article of opinion. -- 2021-07-31T13:49 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.150.4.217 (talk) 13:48, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

What problems do the OSI and Debian have with Creative Commons licenses?
The article mentions vaguely that there are problems, but not what they are. Anyone got more info/references? &mdash;Morven

The problem for OSI and Debian is most likely that the licenses don't require source code distribution to be made available. The only way you could stop someone from stripping out the source code from your version is through the no derivatives clause. This violates Debian and OSI's rule that specifically states that derivative works must be allowed. Superm401 18:51, 15 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * Fortunately, a Debian analysis link at the bottom of the page now clarifies all this. Graue 05:58, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * According to |the Creative Commons FAQ, “ Creative Commons licenses are not intended to apply to software.” Criticisms of them as software licenses are thus irrelevant; any criticism should instead be aimed at projects using them for software. -Ahruman 18:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Software often comes with documentation and sometimes people do make the mistake of using a Creative Commons license for their manuals, rather than using a license like the GNU Free Documentation License. That is perhaps how CC licenses intercept with softare projects. --75.69.87.211 21:40, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I have clarified the "anti-DRM" issue... I thought that the phrasing, as it was, seemed to say this: "Debian doesn't like CC because it's anti-DRM!". For what I read, the problem with CC is the "anti-DRM" clause isn't clear enough and can be (mis)interpreted.--213.156.50.70 13:36, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Putting software aside, A big problem is with the NC varients: These do not comply with the Open-Source of Free-Software definitions. ND also does not comply, however it is less problematic: The free-software foundation have stated that the ND varients are sometimes useful e.g. for writing opinions. Also linking an ND work with a Free work is less problematic. Where as linking an NC work, makes the work useless (from a Free point of view). — — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.150.4.217 (talk) 13:56, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

NC or ND
There needs to be a change to policy on CC images. NC and ND should be allowed. This site isn't really commercial, so allow NC. As long as I don't edit the picture, allow ND. Otherwise, this limits what I can put on, or I'd have to be lucky to get to the subject and take my own picture, and that's not an option. Sposato (talk) 10:45, 6 March 2009 (UTC)


 * All of Wikipedia is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License, which allows commercial use and derivative works. This makes them explicitly incompatible with the CC licenses you mention. A Wikipedia article with GFDL text and ND/NC images could be relicensed as GFDL - which would violate the CC copyright owner's rights - or CC, which would violate the rights of the previous authors who only provided a GFDL license to Wikipedia. No matter how you cut it, someone has their copyright privileges violated, and WP is liable. Hence the rules. --152.43.1.4 (talk) 20:24, 10 March 2009 (UTC)


 * I agree with the first comment. Some people put a lot of hard work into the things they make for wikipedia, and probally dont want their work being used to make money as they have no control over it. It also means that you can make your own wikipedia and charge people to use it, because under the licence its released under, its allowed. And since when has wikipedia been commercial anyway? i thought it wasnt because its on .org - 193.61.111.53 (talk) 09:26, 19 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I also agree that Wikipedia should be licensed for non-commercial use only, as it is free to begin with, but that is unlikely to change. In any case, this discussion belongs on a more appropriate place. RedPanda25 23:41, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

This talk about money shows a missunderstanding of the NC licences. The NC clause is not about money. I won't explain here what it is about. I will just say that it makes the licence non-free, and that maybe no-one, including Creative Commons realy understands it. If you want to stop people ripping you off, then use a SA licence, then people can use it but MUST pass on the same Freedoms. — — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.150.4.217 (talk) 14:04, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

"Info-communism" - really?
Any use of "communism" is suspicious. It is usually used by detractors of something to incite a negative response, and it is thus too biased to be here. An example is what Steve Ballmer did in 2000.

Communism has been dead since 1989.

--Mortense (talk) 18:57, 17 August 2021 (UTC)
 * Er, have you been to China lately? Or Cuba? -- Red rose64 &#x1f339; (talk) 21:20, 17 August 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 28 January 2020 and 27 April 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Hguo2.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 18:37, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 January 2021 and 21 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): SaraParkwood. Peer reviewers: ToharZamir, Jimzhen21, Alexdaviesmorris.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 19:34, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Source doesn't say what is claimed in article, it says the opposite (SOLVED)

 * Quote from the article, section Zero / public domain: "...the Free Software Foundation currently does not recommend using CC0 to release software into the public domain.[23]"
 * The linked entry on [23] is https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html
 * gnu.org is indeed run by the Free Software Foundation
 * Quote from that page, in the public domain section "CC0 is a good tool that anyone can use." and later, in the Unlicense section "If you want to release your work to the public domain, we recommend you use CC0."
 * So, while the article claims the FSF does not recommend using CC0, on the page linked to substantiate that claim, the FSF does in fact recommend CC0, at least twice.
 * I have seen a lot of errors on Wikipedia over the last 15years but this might well be the gravest.--91.64.210.178 (talk) 22:02, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Okay, it is the FSF-gnu-Website, which is at fault here, not the editor who wrote this. The quoted recommendations above are from the "Software Licenses" section of the website, yet, later, under the heading "Licenses for other works" the non-recommendation is given: "If you want to release your non-software work to the public domain, we recommend you use CC0. For works of software it is not recommended, as CC0 has a term expressly stating it does not grant you any patent licenses." This is extremely confusing, they are recommending the license in the "Software" section and then explicitly advise against using it for software in the "other works" (i.e. non-Software) section. Nonetheless I want to apologise for my last bullet point.--91.64.210.178 (talk) 22:31, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Perhaps we should link the actual CC FAQ: https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-apply-a-creative-commons-license-to-software where it says "We recommend against using Creative Commons licenses for software". So CC itself is recommending against it.--91.64.210.178 (talk) 22:31, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

meaning of colos in table "Six regularly used licenses"
Under "Six regularly used licenses" there is now a table where the "yes" in the column "attributon required" have a yellow background, while the "yes" in the rest of the table have a green background. I have trouble understanding the difference in colouring. Is a yellow yes somehow different from a green yes? A legend would help - or making the yellow "yes" green. @Oar 145.40.208.28 (talk) 16:42, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

"CC BY NC" listed at Redirects for discussion
An editor has identified a potential problem with the redirect CC BY NC and has thus listed it for discussion. This discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2022 December 6 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. $$M^{atr1x-}_{101}$$ { userpage! | talk! } 18:13, 6 December 2022 (UTC)