Using a CC licensed work

If you’re thinking about reusing, remixing or adapting a Creative Commons licensed work, you need to check the original licence conditions. These differ for each Creative Commons licence. Some licences restrict commercial reuse; others restrict remixing and tweaking; others require users to re-license their remix under the same restrictions.

We explain the licences here. Click on a licence for a simple description of its terms.

For a more detailed guide to using Creative Commons works, check out the guide produced by Creative Commons Australia.

About Attribution (BY)

All of the licences state that you must attribute a work to its creator if you wish to show or redistribute it. In other words, you are legally required to reference/name/give credit to the licence holder.

When attributing, you should make reference to:

  1. The licence holder. Some licence holders will ask you to attribute them in a specific way.
  2. The CC licence of the work.

This ensures that other potential users know about both the CC licence and the CC licence holder.

Examples

If you are working off-line, or using CC material that isn’t located on the internet, and wish to share and distribute works, use phrases like:

Grey Valley, Westland, New Zealand, 1976 by ‘PhillipC’
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

Otherwise, the best way to attribute is to provide links to both the licence owner’s website and the appropriate licence deed page, as we have done below.

Grey Valley, Westland, New Zealand, 1976 by ‘PhilipC’ (Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)

If you have remixed or altered a work, use words like: ‘based on’ or ‘samples have been used from’. Remember, you are only permitted to change an original work if the licence holder has not included ‘No Derivative Works (ND)’ as part of their CC licence. Under the licence chosen by PhillipC, we are allowed to make changes to the work, as we have done below.

Gathering Clouds based on Grey Valley, Westland, New Zealand, 1976 by ‘PhilipC’ (Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic)

When you are licensing material that is a derivative version of someone else’s CC licensed work, all you need to do is provide the relevant information about the original work (alongside your own new licence details).

When re-licensing, the simplest way to cover your attribution requirement is to visit the International ‘License Your Work‘ page. The ‘Source URL’ box is for you to provide a link back to the original creator and/or work. Following the steps provided, we have chosen to licence our altered image under Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commerical 3.0 New Zealand

Gathering Clouds is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 3.0 New Zealand. Based on a work called Grey Valley, Westland, New Zealand, 1976