Choose and apply a CC licence

Before licensing

For those new to Creative Commons licensing, Creative Commons international has prepared a list of things to think about before licensing. The New Zealand Government has done likewise in the New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing framework (NZGOAL); see its review and release process.

In essence, before licensing a copyright work with a Creative Commons licence, you need to be sure that either you own the copyright in the work or have all relevant rights from the copyright owner to license the work with a given Creative Commons licence. If you do, you’ll want to check there are no other restrictions on your releasing your work for re-use and you’ll need to decide which licence is the most appropriate for you in your circumstances. Once you’ve done that, you apply the selected licence to your work.

Applying your licence

The application process can differ depending on whether you’re applying the licence to an online work or a hard-copy work.

Online works

Creative Commons licences are applied to online works (e.g., works constituted by website pages, contained within website pages or linked to from website pages) through the insertion of a snippet of HTML code in the relevant webpage(s). The process of obtaining the HTML code is straight-forward:

  • visit the Creative Commons licensing page at http://creativecommons.org/choose/;
  • select the appropriate licensing options (e.g., to select the Creative Commons Attribution licence, select “Yes” to the question “Allow commercial uses of your work?” and “Yes” to the question “Allow modifications of your work?”);
  • select “New Zealand” in the drop-down menu under “Jurisdiction of your licence”;
  • fill out the additional fields in the “Additional Information” box, to the extent they are relevant (and otherwise leave blank); and
  • click on the “Select a Licence” button and follow the instructions that will appear.

Hard-copy works

Applying your selected Creative Commons licence to a hard copy work is just as easy. If you follow the steps above, after clicking the “Select a Licence” button you’ll see a CC logo and some plain English text. For example, if you were licensing a text called Copyright Freedoms by Jane Smith, whose URL is http://www.janesmith.com, you’d see this text:

Copyright Freedoms by Jane Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand Licence.

You can then simply add “To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/nz/” so as produce this licensing statement:

Copyright Freedoms by Jane Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand Licence. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/nz/

Note that the URL in the statement above is for the Creative Commons Attribution licence. If you choose a different licence, you’ll need to change that URL to point to the URL of your chosen licence. The different URLs for the different Creative Commons licences can be found on our Licences Explained page.

Further information

If you need further information, take a look at the Creative Commons international page on Best Practices for Marking Content with CC Licenses: Creators.