Creative Commons licences (CC)

Creative Commons is a complement to copyright that addresses authors wishing to :

  • Share and facilitate the use of their creation by others

  • Allow free reproduction and distribution (under certain conditions)

  • Grant more rights to users by supplementing the default copyright

  • Develop a work and enrich the common heritage (common property or Commons)

  • Save transaction costs

The 4 options that make up the 6 licenses :

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When to use them?

CC licenses are legally recognized in France and respect the moral right of the author, which remains inalienable (right to authorship, integrity of the work, etc.). They are ideal for:

  • Widely disseminate a work while supervising its use.

  • Promote sharing in an academic, cultural or collaborative setting.

  • Clarify the rights for users (no ambiguity about what is allowed or not).

Conditions of application

To apply a Creative Commons license to a work, several rules must be respected:

  • Only the author (or rights holder) can choose and apply a CC license. If the work has several authors, the agreement of all is mandatory.

  • A work can have several versions, each with a different CC license (e.g.: a version ‘with allowed modifications’ and a version ‘without modification’).

Scope of application

CC licenses apply only to the copyright on a work (text, image, music, etc.). They do not concern:

  • Software: use dedicated licenses like GPL, MIT or Apache instead.

  • Industrial property: patents, trademarks, etc.

  • Personal data: their protection falls under the GDPR and not under the CC licenses.

  • The right to the image: the authorization of the people depicted (photos, videos) must be obtained separately.

CC licenses are non-revocable: an author can decide at any time to distribute his works under other conditions, or even to stop distributing them under CC but the effect of the CC license cannot be withdrawn on copies of works that circulate or will have already been distributed, including in adaptations or collections that include the work.

If there are several authors, consider getting the agreement of your co-authors.

Open licence Etalab

Licence designed by Etalab as part of the French government’s policy in favour of open public data. Facilitates and encourages the free reuse of public data.

Copyright

System of protection for literary and artistic works in force in Anglo-Saxon countries. Equivalent to copyright in France.