Creative Commons choose the appropriate license

If you want to share your content, photos , videos, or articles with the world, there are several types of licenses offered by Creative Commons that you can use for free. This article will help you choose the license that best suits needs your.

Understand how a Creative Commons (CC) license affects your copyright.

Most people believe that by using a Creative Commons, they lose the rights to their work, that the work no longer belongs to them, and that they will not be able to get any financial compensation for it. This is not true. When you use a Creative Commons license, you allow others to use your work under certain conditions, but you remain the owner of the copyright to the work.

Let's say you have a photo that you distribute under the CC-BY-NC license: This basically means that people can use it as long as they credit you as the creator of the work for non-commercial purposes only. A non-commercial blog might use it on its homepage. Then, a company sees it and contacts you about using your photo in one of their brochures, and wants to pay you so they can use it.  The CC-BY-NC under which you distribute the photo does not prevent you from getting paid for the company's commercial use of the photo.

Understand your commitment.

Once you use a CC license for your work , you can always change it . But , if someone used your work under those terms before you changed them , you can’t “ take them back . ” Let’s go back to the photo example : If you change the license to “All rights reserved ,” no one can use your image under a CC license from now on . But the blogger who used it will continue to use it under a Creative Commons license, because that’s the license you distributed it under at the time.  

Know the reasons why you should use a license Creative Commons.

Some reasons to prefer a Creative Commons over "All Rights Reserved":

• The ability of the license to provide a clear description of the rights of the author  and users
• The ability to provide forms of licensing that are legally proven
• The ability to index your content with most of the search engines that support CC licenses
• If you choose a CC license , you can be sure that your name is mentioned everywhere and that all derivative works (if you choose the SA distribution term)  that are based on your work are published under the same terms .

Consider your options carefully.

Each license has its own terms and conditions:

• Do you want to allow modifications to your work? Allowing others to modify your work means that others can correct, update, improve, and adapt its content. This modification capability ensures that your content will be used more and more often because the public will not be limited in how they share and reuse it.  If you decide to allow modifications, you can also choose the term “Share Alike (SA)”. This means that any modifications must be released under the same license. Be aware, however, that it is very difficult for other content creators to reuse works with “share alike”, as they like to mix open content works that have different licenses.
• Do you want to allow others to copy, distribute, and reproduce your work – and derivative works based on it – but only for non-commercial purposes?  Then you should also select the term “Non-Commercial Use” (NC)
• Do you want your name on every copy or modified version of your work's content? The term "Creator Attribution" (CTA) obliges users to cite you, and it becomes a very good tool for promoting your name and work.
• Do you want to allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license that is the same as the license that governs your work? This means you should also select the term  "Share Alike (SA)" 
• Do you want to allow others to copy, distribute, display, and perform only faithful copies of your work, without making any changes or derivative works? Then you should also add the term "No Derivative Works" (ND)
  

Choose the license that best yourpurposes.

Once you are sure of the terms you want to apply (or don't want to apply), you can choose the license that best your needs. Below are the six main CC licenses:

Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY)

This license allows others to redistribute, adapt, modify, and create derivative works of your work, even for commercial use, as long as they attribute you as the original creator. It is one of the most user-friendly licenses available. It is recommended for maximizing the dissemination and use of licensed material.

Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0  (CC-BY-SA)

This license allows others to adapt, modify, and create derivative works of your work, as long as they attribute you as the author and release their new work under exactly the same terms. This license is often compared to free and open source software licenses. All new works based on your work will have the terms of the original license, so derivatives will be allowed for commercial use. This license is used by Wikipedia and is recommended for genres that benefit from incorporating content as is done on Wikipedia and similar licensed works.

Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 (CC-BY-NC)

This license allows others to adapt, modify, and create derivative works of your work, but not for commercial use. Although their new works must attribute you and remain non-commercial, they do not have to license them under the same terms.

Attribution-NoDerivative Works 4.0 (CC-BY-ND)

This license permits redistribution, both commercial and non-commercial, provided that you are credited as the creator and your work remains unchanged in its entirety.

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0  (CC-BY-NC-SA)

This license allows others to adapt, modify, and create derivative works of your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and release their new creations under the same terms.

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND)

This license is the most restrictive of the 6 main licenses, allowing others to access and share your work with others as long as they credit you, but they cannot change it in any way or use it for commercial purposes.