Baseline Rights

All Creative Commons licenses have many important features in common.

Every license will help you

• retain your copyright
• announce that other people’s fair use, first sale, and free expression rights are not affected by the license.

Every license requires licensees

• to get your permission to do any of the things you choose to restrict — e.g., make a commercial use, create a derivative work;
• to keep any copyright notice intact on all copies of your work;
• to link to your license from copies of the work;
• not to alter the terms of the license
• not to use technology to restrict other licensees’ lawful uses of the work

Every license allows licensees, provided they live up to your conditions, at least non-commercially

• to copy the work
• to distribute it
• to display or perform it publicly
• to make digital public performances of it (e.g., webcasting)
• to shift the work into another format as a verbatim copy

Every license

• applies worldwide
• lasts for the duration of the work’s copyright
• is not revocable

Note that this list of features does not apply to the Public Domain Dedication, our Sampling Licenses, or Founder’s Copyright.