By licensing your work, you indicate the conditions under which others may use your work. You retain all your rights. Depending on the type of licence, you give others permission to distribute, share and/or edit your work. Without a licence, everyone would have to ask explicit permission from you for each use of your work; with a licence, it is immediately obvious to everyone what conditions apply.
CC licences offer a simple, standardized way to handle your copyright flexibly. By choosing from the 6 standard licences, you decide to what extent and under what conditions your work may be distributed.
The basis of the CC licences are 4 building blocks:
 Attribution |
Allow copying, distribution and editing of your work, but only if you are mentioned as the creator. |
 Non-commercial |
Allow copying, distribution and editing of your work, provided it is not for commercial purposes. |
 No derivatives |
Allow copying and distribution of your work only in its original state. |
 Share alike |
Allow the release of derivative works based on your work under the same licence terms as your original work. |
These building blocks propose 4 conditions of use, which can be combined to 6 different licences (see box opposite).
Licence choosing tool
This tool will help to make your choice. Handy: an html code is generated that you can use (embed) on a (for example your own) website. By (optionally) entering additional information, machine-readable metadata is added to the html code. This helps others to cite your name.
The licences are ordered from least restrictive to most restrictive right of use:
Tip:
Include the logo of the chosen licence prominently in your work, for example at the bottom of the title page of your publication or in the footer.
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Attribution​ (CC-BY) |
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Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) |
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Attribution-NonCommercial (CC-BY-NC) |
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Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC-BY-NC-SA) |
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Attribution-NoDerivatives (CC-BY-ND) |
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) |
The public domain is a term used to indicate that works are no longer subject to the protection of copyright and related rights. There is no copyright holder and therefore no need to obtain permission to use the works.
According to the Dutch Copyright Act, it is not possible to waive all copyrights, neighbouring rights or database rights. However, you can declare that you will not exercise the rights in any way. In practice, this means that your work will end up in the public domain.
There are two ways to place your own work in the public domain. This indicates that your work can be used without restrictions:
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