Institutional Research Repository

A license is the permission granted by the copyright holder that governs the use of their work. 

Some licenses are given freely by the copyright holders, while others need to be purchased. The Creative Commons set of licenses, for example, are free.

Creative Commons (CC) is the most often used of the free licences. According to Copyrightalliance.org a Creative Commons license is issued by the copyright owner to allow anyone anywhere to use a work in certain specified ways without having to ask for permission. 

There are four components to the licences: 

• BY - attribution required 
• NC - no commercial use 
• ND - no derivative works 
• SA - Share Alike - the license must be the same on any derivative works.

The followings are the types of CC Licences: