Creative Commons license
family of public copyright licenses for allowing free use of a work
A Creative Commons license (CC license) is one of several public copyright licenses produced by Creative Commons (CC), a U.S. non-profit corporation, that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work" for public good. A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and build upon a work that the author has created. CC provides an author flexibility (for example, they might choose to allow only non-commercial uses of a given work) and protects the people who use or redistribute an author's work from concerns of copyright infringement as long as they abide by the conditions that are specified in the license by which the author distributes the work.
There are several types of Creative Commons licenses. Each license differs by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution. Initially released in 2002, there have also been five versions of the suite of licenses, numbered 1.0 through 4.0. Released in November 2013, the 4.0 license suite is the most current. While licenses were originally grounded in the American legal system, Creative Commons created jurisdiction ports to accommodate international laws.
In October 2014, the Open Knowledge Foundation approved the Creative Commons CC BY, CC BY-SA and CC0 licenses as conformant with the "Open Definition" for content and data.
History
Lawrence Lessig and Eric Eldred designed the Creative Commons License (CCL) in 2001 because they saw a need for a license between the existing modes of copyright and public domain status.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Creative Commons license” is family of public copyright licenses for allowing free use of a work. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Creative, Commons and license, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “family of public copyright licenses for allowing free use of a work” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q284742. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2002, 2013, 2014 and 2001.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Creative Commons license”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Creative Commons license primary sources, Creative Commons license archive and Creative research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Creative Commons license”?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
- Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Creative Commons license” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.