Creative Commons licenses are a set of copyright licenses that allow content creators to grant specific permissions to others regarding the use and distribution of their work. These licenses offer varying degrees of freedom and restrictions, allowing creators to retain some rights while permitting others to use their work under certain conditions.
On Substack, writers can choose to apply different Creative Commons licenses to their content to define how readers can use and share their writings. Below are examples of different Creative Commons licenses and their descriptions:
Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY):
Allows others to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the original work for any purpose, even commercially.
Requires attribution to the original creator.
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA):
(This is the one I decided to go with, but wouldn’t mind hearing from experts on whether my decision was correct.)
Allows others to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the original work for any purpose, even commercially.
Requires attribution to the original creator.
Requires any derivative works to be licensed under the same terms (ShareAlike).
Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives (CC BY-ND):
Allows others to redistribute the work, even commercially, as long as it remains unchanged and in its original form.
Requires attribution to the original creator.
Prohibits the creation of derivative works based on the original content.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC):
Allows others to remix, adapt, and build upon the original work for non-commercial purposes only.
Requires attribution to the original creator.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA):
Allows others to remix, adapt, and build upon the original work for non-commercial purposes only.
Requires attribution to the original creator.
Requires any derivative works to be licensed under the same terms (ShareAlike).
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC BY-NC-ND):
Allows others to download the work and share it with others as long as they credit the original creator.
Prohibits others from altering, transforming, or building upon the original work.
Prohibits any commercial use of the original work.
Here’s a good Substack post on using Creative Commons by John Inazu, a professor of law and religion at Washington University at St. Louis.
‘Til next time.
ak