This is a list of notable works available under a Creative Commons license. Works available under a Creative Commons license are becoming more common. Note that there are multiple Creative Commons licenses with important differences.
An analysis in November 2014 revealed that the amount of CC-licensed works in major databases and searchable via Google sums up to 882 million works. Nine million webpages linking to one of the CC licenses. [1]
Platform name | Number of works (rounded down by millions, November 2014) | Source |
---|---|---|
Flickr | 307 million | https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ |
Wikipedia (all pages in all languages) | 111 million | http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_Wikipedias |
MusicBrainz | 39 million | https://musicbrainz.org/statistics https://musicbrainz.org/doc/About/Data_License |
Freebase | 39 million | https://developers.google.com/freebase/faq#how_big_is_freebase |
DeviantArt | 15 million | https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/35540 |
Geonames | 10 million | http://www.geonames.org/about.html |
YouTube | 10 million | Source at YouTube |
Google Search | 301 million | google-currenttools.csv, google-retiredtools.csv |
Creative Commons offers also a search engine for major databases as: Europeana, Open Clip Art Library, Pixabay, ccMixter and more. [2]
As of January 2016 [update] , 31 governments and 7 intergovernmental organizations have made their information available per CC according to creativecommons.org, [3] similarly dozens of organizations from the GLAM sector (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums). [4]
Creative Commons maintains a book list themselves.
Name | Original release | CC Release | Description | License | Refs |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
The Art of Unix Programming | 2003 | 2005 [5] | book about the history and culture of Unix programming by Eric S. Raymond (with added proviso) | CC BY-ND 1.0 | [6] |
A Briefer History of Time | 1999 | 2004 [7] | science humor book by Eric Schulman | CC BY-ND-NC 1.0 | |
Archimedes Palimpsest | 3rd century BC | 2008 | reconstructed and released by OPenn as Free Cultural Works | CC BY | [8] [9] [10] |
Free Culture | 2004 | by Lawrence Lessig (the first CC licensed book released by a major mainstream publisher, Penguin Books) | CC BY-NC 1.0 [11] | ||
Freesouls | 2008 | 2010 (digital ebook) | book with essays and photos of key people of the free movement by Joi Ito | CC BY [12] | |
The Future of Ideas | 2001 | 2001 | by Lawrence Lessig (originally published by Random House) | CC BY-NC [11] | |
The Future Of The Internet | 2008 | book by Jonathan Zittrain which discusses several legal issues regarding the Internet | CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 | ||
The Honour of the Knights | 2009 | 2009 | A science fiction novel by Stephen J Sweeney | CC BY-NC-SA | |
Meat Atlas | 2014 | 2014 | A collection of graphs and 27 essays on meat consumption and production by Friends of the Earth and Heinrich Böll Foundation | CC BY-SA | [13] |
Move Under Ground | 2004 | A horror novel mashup by Nick Mamatas | CC BY-NC-ND | [14] | |
The New Hacker's Dictionary | 2003 (v4.4.7 by ESR) | 2005 | by Eric S. Raymond (with added proviso) | [ which? ] | |
Warbreaker | 2004 | 2004 | by Brandon Sanderson | CC BY-NC-ND | [15] |
Little Brother | 2008 | 2008 | by Cory Doctorow | CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 | [16] |
Open Access | 2012 | 2012 | by Peter Suber (published by MIT Press) | CC BY | |
Blindsight | 2006 | by Peter Watts | CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 | [17] | |
Code: Version 2.0 | 2006 | by Lawrence Lessig dedicated to Wikipedia: "the one surprise that teaches us more than everything here." [18] | CC BY-SA 2.5 | [19] | |
Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy | 2008 | by Lawrence Lessig in describing the remix culture | CC BY-NC | [20] [21] | |
The Wealth of Networks | 2006 | 2006 | by Yochai Benkler | CC BY-NC-SA | [22] |
Stranger Things Happen | 2001 | 2005 | short horror stories by Kelly Link, Salon Book of the Year | CC BY-NC-SA | [23] [24] [25] |
Name | Description | License | Refs |
---|---|---|---|
Bunny | by Huw Davies | CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 | |
Diesel Sweeties | by Richard Stevens III | CC BY-NC 2.5 | |
Erfworld | CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 | ||
Gaia | by Oliver Knörzer and Puri Andini | CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 | [26] |
Jesus and Mo | religious satire webcomic by Mohammed Jones | CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 | |
Johnny Wander | (the book publication form) | [ which? ] | [27] |
Mimi & Eunice | by Nina Paley | CC BY-SA 3.0 | |
Overcompensating | CC BY-NC 3.0 | ||
Pepper & Carrot | by David Revoy | CC BY 4.0 | |
Sandra and Woo | by Oliver Knörzer and Puri Andini | CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 | [28] |
Seedfeeder's works for Wikipedia | by Seedfeeder | CC BY-SA 3.0, public domain | |
xkcd | by Randall Munroe | CC BY-NC 2.5 | [29] |
Homem-Grilo | by Cadu Simões (pt) | CC BY-SA-4.0 | [30] [31] |
Name | Description | License | Refs |
---|---|---|---|
Connexions | academic course modules, hosted by Rice University | CC BY | |
Khan Academy | CC BY-NC-SA | ||
OpenLearn | Short articles, videos and extracts of courses maintained by The Open University | CC BY-NC-SA | |
Open Courseware | CC BY-NC-SA | ||
The Saylor Foundation | Peer-reviewed college courses and textbooks | CC BY | |
WikiEducator | CC BY-SA (default), CC BY, and CC0 | ||
Project Euler | Site hosting computer programming problems | CC BY-NC-SA |
Name | Description | License | Refs |
---|---|---|---|
Cards Against Humanity | An adult party game using custom-printed cards | CC BY-NC-SA | [32] |
Dungeons & Dragons System Reference Document 5.1 | The core rules of a popular fantasy role-playing game | CC BY 4.0 | [33] |
Eclipse Phase | A transhuman science fiction role-playing game | CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 | [34] |
Tagmar | The first Brazilian fantasy role-playing game fully developed in Brazil | CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 Brasil | [35] |
Violence | A heavily satirical role-playing game inspired by excessive violence in other role-playing games and video games | CC BY-NC-SA 2.5 | [36] |
Secret Hitler | A social deduction party game set in the Weimar Republic | CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 |
Name | Description | License | Refs |
---|---|---|---|
Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead | ASCII graphic rogue like | Artwork and code under CC BY-SA | |
Castle Crashers | One of the soundtracks of a proprietary game released under Creative Commons | CC BY-NC-SA | [37] |
Glest / MegaGlest | A real-time strategy computer game in a fantasy setup. | Artwork under CC BY-SA | |
Glitch | MMO. In 2013, most of the artwork and parts of the code were released under a creative commons license. | CC0 | [38] [39] |
Mari0 | Super Mario clone mashup with Portal | CC BY-NC-SA | |
OpenClonk (former Clonk) | A computer game originally developed by RedWolf Design, later opened to the community. | Artwork under CC BY / CC BY-NC | |
Ryzom | Ryzom is a free and open source software PC MMORPG. Originally developed and released 2004 by Nevrax, since 2010 the source code is under the AGPL [40] and the artistic work is under CC BY-SA. [41] | Artwork under CC BY-SA. | [41] |
Sintel The Game | A game based on the Blender Foundation movie, Sintel. | CC BY | |
The Adventures of Fatman | point and click adventure game | CC-SA-NC-ND | |
Tyrian (now OpenTyrian) | Scrolling shooter | graphic assets under CC BY 3.0 US [42] [43] | |
The Ur-Quan Masters (former Star Control II) | Action RPG | Artwork under CC BY-NC-SA | [44] |
Yo Frankie! | A game resulting from a cooperation between the Blender Foundation and the Crystal Space community | Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution | [45] |
Name | Description | License | Refs |
---|---|---|---|
deviantART | image artwork sharing website | various (15 million CC licensed) | [46] |
Flickr | user photo uploading and sharing service | various CC licenses (350 million CC images of 6+ billion images [47] [48] ) | |
Mapillary | Over 30 million free photos | CC BY-SA | |
Metropolitan Museum of Art | paintings and artworks | CC0 (375.000) | [49] |
Mushroom Observer | collaborative amateur mycology database with approx. 600,000 observational photos [50] [51] | CC BY-SA or CC BY-NC-SA [52] | |
Open Game Art | Media repository for software / game projects | CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC0, others | [53] |
Panoramio | Over 100 million photos | Various | [54] |
Fortepan | archival photographs, and family snapshots of everyday life | CC BY-SA (100.000 images) | |
Unsplash | user photo uploading and sharing service | CC0 prior to 5 June 2017 | [55] [56] |
Wikimedia Commons | free image and data repository, stores Wikipedia images | various free CC licenses (40+ million images in 2018 [57] ) | |
Name | Description | License | Refs |
---|---|---|---|
Airports for Music | By SheedyJaye | CC BY 3.0 | [58] |
ccMixter | Community music website | mostly CC BY-NC | |
Free Music Archive | Various | ||
The Freesound Project | CC0, CC BY, CC BY-NC and Sampling Plus | ||
Ghosts I–IV | By Nine Inch Nails | CC BY-NC-SA | [59] |
#hot111 Charts | By starfrosch | CC BY CC BY-SA | [60] |
Jamendo | Various | ||
NINJAM | Music files/archive | CC BY-SA | |
Palm Mall | By Cat System Corp. | CC BY 3.0 | [61] |
Pulse of the Earth | By Hungry Lucy | CC BY-SA | [62] |
The Slip | By Nine Inch Nails | CC BY-NC-SA | [63] [59] |
Jonathan Coulton | Jonathon Coulton's Works | CC BY-NC 3.0 | [64] |
Paul and Storm | Paul and Storm's Works | CC 2.5 By Attribution NonCommercial and ShareAlike | |
Open Goldberg Variations | CC0 [65] | ||
Cloudkicker | By Ben Sharp | CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 |
Name | Description | License | Refs |
---|---|---|---|
Al Jazeera's broadcasting footage | On January 13, 2009, some broadcasting content from Al Jazeera on the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict was released. | CC BY 3.0 | [66] [67] [68] [69] [70] [71] |
Agência Pública | Online Investigative Journalism outlet with texts in Portuguese, English and Spanish. | CC BY-ND 4.0 | [72] [73] |
Corbeau News Centrafrique | French-language news site from the Central African Republic | CC BY-SA 4.0 | [74] |
Democracy Now! | Internationally syndicated radio and TV news program. All transcripts from broadcasts are republished online and released under a Creative Commons license. | CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 US | [75] |
The Conversation | Online news outlet written by academics and researchers. Localised editions exist for Australia, Africa, Canada, France, Indonesia, the UK and the US. | CC BY-ND 4.0 | [75] |
Deshabhimani | Malayalam language newspaper | CC BY 4.0 | [76] |
Global Voices | International journalism organisation publishing in over 40 languages. | CC BY 3.0 | [77] |
Haitian Times | Online newspaper for the Haitian diaspora in the United States. | CC BY-ND 4.0 | |
La Stampa | 3rd biggest newspaper of Italy. | CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 | [78] |
OpenDemocracy | International online news website. Specific articles are released under a Creative Commons license. | CC BY-NC 4.0 | [79] |
ProPublica | US news website. | CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 | [80] |
Tasnim News Agency | Iranian news agency publishing in Persian, English, Arabic, Turkish and Urdu. | CC BY 4.0 | [81] |
TorrentFreak | News blog. Text licensed under a Creative Commons license. | CC BY-NC 3.0 | [82] |
WikiTribune | News website with crowdsourced fact-checking, proofreading and editing. Published in English and Spanish. | CC BY or CC BY-SA 4.0 | [83] |
Name | Description | License | Refs |
---|---|---|---|
Copernicus Publications | CC BY | ||
Citizendium | a wiki encyclopedia | CC BY-SA | |
Cliodynamics | Research | CC BY 4.0 | |
knol | Website for personal essays. Went offline on May 1, 2012, but was archived on the Internet Archive [84] | mostly CC BY-SA or CC BY-NC-SA | |
PLOS One | CC BY |
Name | Description | License | Refs |
---|---|---|---|
OpenSeaMap | CC SA-BY 2.0 / ODbL | [85] | |
OpenStreetMap | Until September 2012; switched to ODbL | CC BY-SA 2.0 for certain content | [86] [87] [88] |
SNPedia | Database of single nucleotide polymorphisms | CC BY-NC-SA | [89] |
Name | Description | License | Refs |
---|---|---|---|
Arduino | CC BY-SA | ||
Dragonbox Pyra | pre-release schematics released in November 2016 | CC BY-NC-SA | [90] |
Free Beer | In December 2004 brewing recipe, brand and label artwork released under CC by Superflex and students of the IT University of Copenhagen | CC BY-SA | [91] |
OpenMoko Neo Freerunner | CAD, schematics etc. files in 2008 | CC BY-SA 3.0 | [92] [93] |
The Creative Commons maintain a film list themselves.
Name | Description | License | Refs |
---|---|---|---|
Big Buck Bunny | Product of the second Blender Foundation Open Movie Project, released in 2008. | BY | [94] |
Code Rush | 2000 documentary of Netscape's last year as an independent company, focusing on the rush to make Mozilla's source code ready for its release deadline. [95] | BY-NC-SA 3.0 US | [96] |
The Yes Men Fix the World | English language documentary film about the culture jamming exploits of The Yes Men. | CC BY-NC-ND | [97] |
Decay | Zombie film made at CERN | CC BY-NC | [98] |
Elephants Dream | Product of the first Blender Foundation Open Movie Project, released in 2006 | CC BY | [99] |
Working Slowly (Radio Alice) | 2004 Italian drama directed by Guido Chiesa. | CC BY-NC-SA | |
Life Wasted | by Pearl Jam in 2006, first music video from a major record label to be CC licensed | CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 | [100] |
Nasty Old People | A 2009 film in Swedish by Hanna Sköld | CC BY-NC-SA | |
RiP!: A Remix Manifesto | a 2008 open-source documentary film about "the changing concept of copyright" and the remix culture [101] [102] directed by Brett Gaylor | CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 [103] | |
Sita Sings the Blues | feature-length animated film by free culture activist Nina Paley | CC0 | [104] |
Sanctuary | A re-mixable Science fiction film | [ which? ] | |
Sintel | Product of the third Blender Foundation Open Movie Project, released in 2010 | [ which? ] | |
Star Wreck | Amateur movie parodies of Star Trek and Babylon 5 (in Finnish) | [ which? ] | |
Tears of Steel | The fourth Blender Foundation Open Movie Project, released in September 2012. | CC BY | |
Where are the Joneses | online sitcom (series) | CC BY-SA |
Name | Description | License | Alexa Rankings [105] | Refs |
---|---|---|---|---|
Anatomography | CC BY-SA | |||
Association for Progressive Communications | CC BY-SA | |||
BdFISH | CC BY-NC-ND | [106] | ||
Boing Boing | Popular blog | CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 (most) | ||
Devopedia | An open community platform for developers by developers to explain technology in a simple, clear and unopinionated way. | CC BY-SA 4.0 (non-code content) | [107] | |
Fandom | Since June 2009 | CC BY-SA | ||
Identi.ca | CC BY | |||
Internet Archive | Various | 170 | ||
gnu.org | Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License | |||
Mozilla website | Home of the Mozilla Project | CC BY-SA | 166 | |
RationalWiki | CC BY-SA | [108] | ||
SCP Foundation | The SCP Wiki is a collaborative urban fantasy writing website about the fictional SCP Foundation, a secretive organization that contains anomalous or supernatural items and entities away from the eyes of the public. [109] | CC BY-SA | [109] | |
Stack Overflow | CC BY-SA | 57 | ||
The Public Domain Review | Online journal showcasing public domain works. | CC BY-SA (unquoted text in collection posts and articles only) | [110] | |
Uncyclopedia | Satirical online encyclopedia. | CC BY-NC-SA | [111] | |
Wikimedia projects including Wikipedia | Since June 2009; over 80 million items | Text CC BY-SA (plus GFDL in most cases); some in CC BY and CC-0; hosted content also in public domain and various licenses. | [112] [113] | |
Wikitravel | CC BY-SA |
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has released several copyright licenses, known as Creative Commons licenses, free of charge to the public. These licenses allow authors of creative works to communicate which rights they reserve and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators. An easy-to-understand one-page explanation of rights, with associated visual symbols, explains the specifics of each Creative Commons license. Content owners still maintain their copyright, but Creative Commons licenses give standard releases that replace the individual negotiations for specific rights between copyright owner (licensor) and licensee, that are necessary under an "all rights reserved" copyright management.
Lester Lawrence Lessig III is an American legal scholar and political activist. He is the Roy L. Furman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the former director of the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. He is the founder of Creative Commons and of Equal Citizens. Lessig was a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for president of the United States in the 2016 U.S. presidential election but withdrew before the primaries.
Free music or libre music is music that, like free software, can freely be copied, distributed and modified for any purpose. Thus free music is either in the public domain or licensed under a free license by the artist or copyright holder themselves, often as a method of promotion. It does not mean that there should be no fee involved. The word free refers to freedom, not to price.
A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and build upon a work that the author has created. CC provides an author flexibility and protects the people who use or redistribute an author's work from concerns of copyright infringement as long as they abide by the conditions that are specified in the license by which the author distributes the work.
The Free Art License (FAL) is a copyleft license that grants the right to freely copy, distribute, and transform creative works except for computer hardware and software, including for commercial use.
Share-alike (🄎) is a copyright licensing term, originally used by the Creative Commons project, to describe works or licenses that require copies or adaptations of the work to be released under the same or similar license as the original. Copyleft licenses are free content or free software licenses with a share-alike condition.
Remix culture, also known as read-write culture, is a term describing a culture that allows and encourages the creation of derivative works by combining or editing existing materials. Remix cultures are permissive of efforts to improve upon, change, integrate, or otherwise remix the work of other creators. While combining elements has always been a common practice of artists of all domains throughout human history, the growth of exclusive copyright restrictions in the last several decades limits this practice more and more by the legal chilling effect. In reaction, Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig, who considers remixing a desirable concept for human creativity, has worked since the early 2000s on a transfer of the remixing concept into the digital age. Lessig founded the Creative Commons in 2001, which released a variety of licenses as tools to promote remix culture, as remixing is legally hindered by the default exclusive copyright regime applied on intellectual property. The remix culture for cultural works is related to and inspired by the earlier Free and open-source software for software movement, which encourages the reuse and remixing of software works.
The free-culture movement is a social movement that promotes the freedom to distribute and modify the creative works of others in the form of free content or open content without compensation to, or the consent of, the work's original creators, by using the Internet and other forms of media.
Students for Free Culture, formerly known as FreeCulture.org, is an international student organization working to promote free culture ideals, such as cultural participation and access to information. It was inspired by the work of former Stanford, now Harvard, law professor Lawrence Lessig, who wrote the book Free Culture, and it frequently collaborates with other prominent free culture NGOs, including Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Public Knowledge. Students for Free Culture has over 30 chapters on college campuses around the world, and a history of grassroots activism.
Code: Version 2.0 is a 2006 book by Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig which proposes that governments have broad regulatory powers over the Internet. The book is released under a Creative Commons license, CC BY-SA 2.5.
Free content, libre content, libre information, or free information is any kind of creative work, such as a work of art, a book, a software program, or any other creative content unrestricted by copyright and other legal limitations on use. These are works or expressions which can be freely studied, applied, copied and modified by anyone for any purpose including, in some cases, commercial purposes. Free content encompasses all works in the public domain and also those copyrighted works whose licenses honor and uphold the definition of free cultural work.
Creative Commons, since 2011, has created many "ports", or adaptions, of its licenses to make them compatible with the copyright legislation of various countries worldwide.
The GNU Free Documentation License is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify a work and requires all copies and derivatives to be available under the same license. Copies may also be sold commercially, but, if produced in larger quantities, the original document or source code must be made available to the work's recipient.
Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy is Lawrence Lessig's fifth book. The book was made available for free download and remixing under the CC BY-NC Creative Commons license via Bloomsbury Academic. It is still available via the Internet Archive. It details a hypothesis about the societal effect of the Internet, and how this will affect production and consumption of popular culture to a "remix culture".
Creative Commons is maintaining a content directory wiki of organizations and projects using Creative Commons licenses. On its website CC also provides case studies of projects using CC licenses across the world. CC licensed content can also be accessed through a number of content directories and search engines.
RiP!: A Remix Manifesto is a 2008 open-source documentary film about "the changing concept of copyright" directed by Brett Gaylor.
The Definition of Free Cultural Works evaluates and recommends compatible free content licenses.
Software relicensing is applied in open-source software development when software licenses of software modules are incompatible and are required to be compatible for a greater combined work. Licenses applied to software as copyrightable works, in source code as binary form, can contain contradictory clauses. These requirements can make it impossible to combine source code or content of several software works to create a new combined one.
Unsplash is a website dedicated to proprietary stock photography. Since 2021, it has been owned by Getty Images. The website claims over 330,000 contributing photographers and generates more than 13 billion photo impressions per month on their growing library of over 5 million photos. Unsplash has been cited as one of the world's leading photography websites by Forbes, Design Hub, CNET, Medium and The Next Web.
A Creative Commons NonCommercial license is a Creative Commons license which a copyright holder can apply to their media to give public permission for anyone to reuse that media only for noncommercial activities. Creative Commons is an organization which develops a variety of public copyright licenses, and the "noncommercial" licenses are a subset of these. Unlike the CC0, CC BY, and CC BY-SA licenses, the CC BY-NC license is considered non-free.
All materials on OPenn are in the public domain or released under Creative Commons licenses as Free Cultural Works
This data is released for use under a Creative Commons license, with attribution
The entire library of art assets from the game, has been made freely available, dedicated to the public domain. Code from the game client is included to help developers work with the assets. All of it can be downloaded and used by anyone, for any purpose.
Images 599669, Observations 208462, Listed Taxa 51072, Observed Taxa 13184, Authored Name Descriptions 4312, Defined Locations 12812, Authored Location Descriptions 847, Species Lists 685, Species List Entries 89263, Proposed IDs 299937, Comments 113454, Votes 418612, Members 6558
As promised, the Pyra will be more open than the Pandora and Nikolaus had some time to clean up the schematics! Attached to this post are the schematics for the current revision (5.1.3) of the Pyra. Unless a bug is found, these won't change anymore.[...] License is CC BY-NC-SA