How do I share my intellectual property while maintaining copyright ownership?
When you share something on the internet you are NOT giving up your digital rights to that object. Adding a Creative Commons (CC) license to an object allows others to use that object according to the conditions you specify in the license, while still maintaining your copyright ownership.
The Creative Commons is a set of copyright licenses and tools which provides a simple, standardized way to secure copyright while stipulating to others how the object may be used. It can be as open as allowing anybody to use the object, or a derivative of it, for any reason but cite you as the creator and owner of the object (CC-BY), or as restrictive as allowing others to use your object but only in its complete form, for non-commercial purposes, and also citing you as the creator and owner of the object (CC-BY-NC-ND), with several other licenses in between.
If anybody wants to use your object outside your specified restrictions they legally need to contact you, the copyright owner, for permission.
For more information, visit the Creative Commons website for all things creative commons.
Originally Published: July 20, 2022
Last Updated: July 16, 2024
