When a work such as an image, video or written text is created, it is automatically protected by copyright. A licence specifies what you can and can’t do with a copyrighted work. Licences are usually very restrictive, prohibiting copying or redistribution except in a few special circumstances.

Open licences support creators that want to share their works freely and grant others the rights to access, re-use and redistribute their work with few or no restrictions. There are many forms of open licences, one of the most common of which is a Creative Commons licence.

Creative Commons is a set of standardised licence features used to license copyrighted works (including music, artistic, literary and video works) for public use. Creative Commons works are free to use and share, provided the licence terms are followed.

Here are the 6 licences from least to most restrictive. 

License name	Abbreviation	Icon	Allows sharing	Requires attribution	Allows adaptation	Allows commercial use	Adaptions must use the same license
No Rights Reserved	CC CC0		Yes	No	Yes	Yes	No
Attribution	CC BY		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Attribution-ShareAlike	CC BY-SA		Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Attribution-NonCommercial	CC BY-NC		Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike	CC BY-NC-SA		Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes
Attribution-NoDerivs	CC BY-ND		Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Not applicable
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs	CC BY-NC-ND		Yes	Yes	No	No	Not applicable

Academics can contact the Library at staffsupport-lib@uwa.edu.au with any questions regarding Creative Commons and open licensing.