What are Creative Commons Licences?
Creative Commons Licences are pre-prepared licences intended to help copyright holders distribute their work, defining how it can be used by others whilst the authors retain their rights, particularly their copyright, in the work. The Creative Commons movement has produced a number of licences (currently there are six main licences) which authors can take ‘as given’ or adapt to their requirements. The author then ‘attaches’ the appropriate licence to the work and that licence becomes the set of rules that the author expects the copiers to obey when they copy the work. The licences tend to be ‘more permissive’ than licences from commercial publishers, and their basic idea is to permit, and almost encourage, the copying of the works as long as due acknowledgement is given to the original author as its source. For more information, see the web page about Creative Commons Licences on this website.
