Formats and platforms

Choose your Creative Commons license by the freedoms you want to give, then apply it through the service you are posting to, because that service’s own terms and fields will determine how your conditions survive. The license condition is the exact versioned deed, not a badge. No CC license permits you to add DRM or exclusive sublicensing that would restrict downstream recipients, even if the service asks for it. Before you upload, open the service’s current help page for credit fields and copyright settings. Keep a dated screenshot of your license notice separate from the service’s interface.

• What this page is for: It maps the six 4.0 International licenses, CC0 and the Public Domain Mark onto the publishing and credit fields of the services where you share work. Each of the 10 guides below this hub starts at its own specific question, so you only go there once you know what you are trying to do.
• What a CC license is: A standard copyright permission that operates on top of copyright. The creator retains copyright while granting the public specified permissions in advance. Creative Commons is the steward of the tools, not a party to your license, does not register works, does not verify ownership, and does not give legal advice.
• The current suite: Six 4.0 International licenses. All require attribution. The six are: BY, BY-SA, BY-ND, BY-NC, BY-NC-SA, BY-NC-ND. CC0 and the Public Domain Mark are separate public-domain tools, not part of that suite.

When you publish under a Creative Commons license, the license travels with the work, not with the service. A service’s interface is a delivery format, not a legal wrapper. The license conditions you set attach to the work itself, regardless of whether the service displays a badge, drops a link into a footer, or uses its own copyright field. What the service can break is your ability to make those conditions stick downstream.

DRM and Exclusive Sublicensing Conflicts

Under version 4.0, a recipient may not impose effective technological measures that restrict another recipient’s exercise of the licensed rights. If a service applies DRM to your upload, or forces exclusive sublicensing terms on reusers, that service may be creating a direct conflict with the license you chose. A CC badge in the upload menu does not resolve that conflict. Check the service’s current terms about download restrictions, stream ripping, and automated content ID systems before you upload. Keep a record of what you found.

Preserving Your Conditions Across Services

For any format or service, open the official source page of the work you are reusing, not a repost or a search thumbnail. Record the creator, source URL, exact license and version, displayed notices, exclusions, and the date you checked it. For your own uploads, use the service’s credit field if it exists, but also place the full license notice in the description or metadata where a reuser can find it even if the service changes its interface. A consolidated credits page works for many works if the mapping from work to credit is clear and the credits remain readily accessible.

This hub covers the overview. The 10 guides beneath it each answer a single question. Go to the one that matches your activity, not the one whose title sounds closest. Uploading your own work? Choose the guide for the service you are using and read the section about its credit and copyright fields. Reusing someone else’s work? Go to the reuse workflow guide and start at the step about opening the original source page. Combining multiple CC-licensed works into a new project? The adaptation and compatibility guide tells you whether your plan is permitted and whether ShareAlike forces you to license your result under a specific compatible license.

Choosing a License for New Work

Do not pick from a dropdown based on reputation. Open the official chooser at creativecommons.org, confirm that you control the rights you are licensing, and select version 4.0 unless you have a specific informed reason to use an older ported license. The chooser helps create a notice but does not validate ownership. For a work that includes samples, third-party components, or contributions from joint authors, resolve those rights first. A CC license applied to material you do not own does not grant permission to reuse it.

Data and Database Licensing

If you are publishing data or a database, the license covers copyright and, under 4.0, sui generis database rights. It does not license patent or trademark rights. It does not remove obligations under privacy, ethics, or contractual access terms. Separate rights in the database structure from rights in individual contents before you apply a license to the whole thing.

The four conditions, BY, SA, NC, ND, are the same across every format. What changes per service is where the attribution information goes, whether the service lets you supply all the elements the 4.0 legal code requires, and whether the service’s terms override yours.

Attribution And The Credit Field

Under 4.0, a reuser must retain, when supplied by the licensor: identification of the creator and designated attribution parties, a copyright notice, a notice referring to the license, a warranty disclaimer, and a URI or hyperlink to the material where reasonably practicable. The reuser must also link or refer to the license, indicate modifications, and retain earlier modification notices. That is not the same as TASL (title, author, source, license), which is a useful mnemonic but not the complete legal text. For 4.0, you must add an indication of changes and preserve supplied notices.

Platform credit fields vary. Some allow only a username and a short bio. Others let you paste a full attribution block. Some strip hyperlinks from user-submitted text. Where the field is too small or removes links, place the full notice in the description, the file metadata, or a linked credits page. The license does not require a specific placement; it requires a reasonable manner for the medium. A credits page that maps clearly from work to credit and stays accessible qualifies. Academic citation and license attribution serve different purposes; do both when both apply.

ShareAlike In Collections And Adaptations

ShareAlike is triggered when Adapted Material is shared, not when unchanged material merely appears beside other separate works in a collection. A collection keeps each work under its own license. The adapter applies the license named by the applicable SA clause or an officially designated compatible license. Do not assume two SA licenses are compatible. The official compatibility list at Creative Commons controls. One-way compatibility exists from BY-SA 4.0 to GPLv3 for adapted material, but that does not turn a CC license into a software license or create compatibility in the reverse direction. If you are combining a BY-SA work with a BY-NC-SA work, check the chart; the answer is not intuitive.

NonCommercial On Services With Advertising

Version 4.0 defines NC as not primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or monetary compensation. The identity of the user, business, nonprofit, school, or individual, does not decide the issue by itself. Advertising, sponsorship, fundraising, internal business use, and mixed purposes all require context. Do not invent a bright-line rule. If your planned reuse has material commercial risk, get separate permission or local legal advice. A service that runs ads against your work is not automatically a prohibited use under the NC condition; it depends on whether the reuser’s activity meets the definition.

NoDerivatives And Format Shifting

Reproduction in a different format alone does not create Adapted Material under the 4.0 definition. Translation is normally an adaptation. Synchronising music with a moving image is expressly Adapted Material under 4.0. Whether cropping, excerpting, editing, or combining creates an adaptation can depend on applicable copyright law; do not declare a universal boundary. For an ND-licensed work, you may share the unchanged file in any format, but you may not share a modified version.

This section of the site has a plain contract: it maps the license conditions onto the service’s actual publishing and credit fields, including conflicting terms or DRM. It does not assume that a CC badge in an upload menu resolves the license. It does not assume that a default copyright setting matches the license you intend. It expects you to check. Every guide beneath this hub tells you what to look for on the specific service it covers: where the credit field is, whether it accepts hyperlinks, whether the service adds its own terms of service that restrict downstream use, and whether the service’s content ID system can override a valid license.

Because interfaces and terms change, this section describes the durable check rather than claiming a menu path is permanent. The durable check is: open the source page, read the exact license, capture the evidence, and use the service’s current credit field. For YouTube, the built-in CC option has historically been CC BY, but verify its current help page. Do not assume music, clips, or other components share the video’s license. Content ID is a private platform system; proof of a valid license supports a dispute but does not guarantee the outcome.

Open Educational Resources and Open Access

For open educational resources, the 5R permissions, retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute, are supported by BY and BY-SA. ND prevents shared revision. NC narrows downstream contexts. Open access describes access and may not grant broad reuse; read the article’s exact license. Journal, funder, university, and repository rules are additional constraints that a CC license does not override.

If a reuse violates your license, preserve the source page, license notice, dates, files, communications, and the challenged use. Correct an attribution or stop a noncompliant use promptly. Identify the work, exact condition, and requested cure before escalating. Platform reporting and statutory takedown processes have legal consequences and vary by jurisdiction; use qualified advice for a real dispute. Creative Commons does not enforce individual licenses for licensors or decide whether a particular use is lawful.

On breach, rights under a 4.0 license terminate automatically. They are automatically reinstated from the date the violation is cured if it is cured within 30 days after the violator discovers it; they may also be expressly reinstated by the licensor. Cure does not erase possible liability for the period of violation. Older versions have different termination language and do not contain the same automatic 30-day mechanism.

Before you upload anything under a Creative Commons license, open the service’s current help page for copyright, credit fields, and content settings. Take a screenshot of the license notice you place, including the exact deed URL. Store that screenshot with the work’s metadata. That record is what you will need if a dispute arises or if the service changes its interface. Then go to the guide in this section that matches the service you are using. Follow its specific instructions for where to put the attribution, how to handle the credit field, and whether to add a separate notice outside the service’s fields.